The phenomenon of mysterious booms is continuing around the world, with the sound of unexplained explosions being reported from locales as diverse as Michigan, Lapland, St Ives, Swansea and Yorkshire.

Booms reported by residents of six counties in Alabama have been investigated by police, NASA, and the Birmingham Alabama National Weather Service, with the latter tweeting on November 14:

"Re: loud boom heard: we do not see anything indicating large fire/smoke on radar or satellite; nothing on USGS indicating an earthquake. We don’t have an answer, and can only hypothesize with you. 1) sonic boom from aircraft; 2) meteorite w/ current Leonid shower?"
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New observations of the Solar System’s first known interstellar asteroid, A/2017 U1, has revealed new and unusual information regarding our visitor from afar, including its size, color — and that it is shaped like a cigar.

Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, astronomers have found that the asteroid, now named ‘Oumuamua, is a dark red color, much like other Kuiper belt objects that orbit on the extreme fringes of the solar system.
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La Niña conditions are currently forming in the Pacific Ocean, however forecasters expect that if these conditions persist through the winter, this will only be a mild episode, compared to La Niña that have occurred in the past.

La Niña, Spanish for "little girl", occurs when sea surface temperatures drop to below normal along a band following the equator in the Eastern Pacific, the counterpart to the phenomenon of above-average sea surface temperatures known as El Niño. These two phenomena are part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), one of the strongest drivers of climate variation in North America and around the world.
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Researchers have found what may be the earliest depiction of dogs hunting alongside a human companion in Saudi Arabia, in a sandstone carving believed to be more than 8,000 years old. The human is armed with a bow and arrow, accompanied by thirteen dogs, including two that appear to be tethered to their biped counterpart by what the researchers believe are leashes — possibly the oldest record of the use of such a restraining device by humans.
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