This footage was recently caught on an Iowa school's webcam. It shows giant waves, known as "undular bores", pulsing across the sky. Atmospheric scientists compare these waves to the ripples spreading out from a stone thrown into a pond, the waves of cold air in this case being propelled by an approaching storm. These bores often occur at night, so are not usually caught on tape as dramatically as in the video below.
Now that Sputnik's golden anniversary is here, it's worth recapping just what it was about this alien-looking object that made such a big impression on the public.
Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union on October 4th 1957, and over the following 93 days it orbited the Earth around 1400 times, before burning up on re-entering the atmosphere on 4th January 1958.
It certainly looked the part - a shiny metal ball containing two transmitters, with four whisker-like antennas protruding from its surface, it could easily have been a spare prop from the War of the Worlds set.
Sputnik originally had a long list of tasks to perform, such as measuring the density of the atmosphere, recording solar radiation, magnetic fields, cosmic rays and so on. However as time wore on, and the U.S. drew closer in the race to launch the world's first artificial satellite, this list was abandoned in favour of one basic task - to simply get up there and orbit the Earth.
This it did, to unnerving effect. The fact that it was visible to the naked eye for millions of Americans (and audible to anyone with a shortwave receiver) led to what became known as the Sputnik crisis. Mainland American airspace had never been intruded upon, even through two world wars, so to have this odd metallic insect moving intently through the night sky felt like a violation to some. The Soviet press was quick to pick up on this, reporting in Pravda that the U.S. was "showing signs of hysteria." Not all Americans were quivering with techno-fear of course - one restaurant saw the funny side and created a Sputnik sandwich, which featured an olive with four protruding toothpick antennas.
An event of this size could not go past without a few alternative theories arising. One of the more fanciful was that Sputnik had not in fact burned up on re-entry, but had ended up in pieces in a back yard in Encino, California. One Earl Thomas claimed that as he was leaving his home to go to work, he noticed something glowing beneath a tree in his yard. The source turned out to be several pieces of plastic tubing, which he said matched structural diagrams of the Sputnik 1 satellite:
These parts are now on exhibition at the Beat Museum in San Franciso in a show titled What remained of Sputnik?
50th Anniversary articles:
Arthur C Clarke remembers Sputnik In this interview Clarke recalls his delight at the news of Sputnik's first orbits: "Our theories and speculations had suddenly become reality!" He also reveals that his 1952 book The Exploration of Space was used to convince President Kennedy that it was possible to go to the Moon.
Sputnik spares A Texas space memorabilia collector on his authentic spare Sputnik
Mission to Mars BBC news looks at the significance of Sputnik, and reports on the recent £6 billion budget given to the Russian space program, with a possible plan to send a team to Mars.
Video:
"Reds launch first space satellite"
Take off
Radio:
Ken Hollings and Thomas Dolby present Born Under Sputnik, a discussion of the impact of the satellite on the 20th Century, with background sounds selected by Fortean Times contributor Mark Pilkington. The show is broadcast oat 8pm on 4th October on 104.4fm in London, or via the Resonance FM website
You can't help but flinch at this footage of giraffes flailing away at each other.
This is what Wikipedia has to say about these fighting rituals: "These battles can be fatal, but are more often less severe. The longer a neck is, and the heavier the head at the end of the neck, the greater force a giraffe will be able to deliver in a blow. It has also been observed that males that are successful in necking have greater access to estrous females, so that the length of the neck may be a product of sexual selection. After a necking duel, a giraffe can land a powerful blow with his head occasionally knocking a male opponent to the ground. These fights rarely last more than a few minutes or end in physical harm."
This transparent frog was created by a research team led by professor Masayuki Sumida at Hiroshima University’s Institute for Amphibian Biology. They weren't just trying to make a froggy freak - the idea behind it is that the transparency will allow the status of internal organs and blood vessels to be observed by lab scientists while the frog is alive and without having to dissect it.
It was developed through selective breeding - two specimens of Japanese brown frog (Rana japonica) that had a genetic mutation giving them pale skin were bred, then their offspring were selectively bred to focus on the transprarency. The frog is something of a rarity - most of the world’s known transparent creatures live underwater, and few are four-legged animals.
Professor Sumida says, "Transparent frogs will prove useful as laboratory animals because they make it easier and cheaper to observe the development and progress of cancer, the growth and aging of internal organs, and the effects of chemicals on organs."
This kinetic sculpture by Jeff Lieberman featured at this year's Sonar festival in Barcelona, and its creator proudly admits it is directly inspired by the thinking of FT's favourite neglected genius Nikolai Tesla. The bulb is levitated by electromagnetic feedback, and uses wireless power transfer to light itself up. Amazingly this set up uses less than half the power than a directly powered bulb. Link
This animatronic critter is still in the early stages of development - it hasn't quite mastered navigation yet - but it's an impressive feat on the part of its creator nonetheless. It's the first robot to achieve liftoff that’s modeled on a fly and built on such a small scale. Link
Cartoonist Adam Koford was struck by these wispy shapes in the sky. He lives 55 miles west of the Space Shuttle launch site, and was initially unsure as to whether the forms were related to the launch. This report from spaceflightnow.com, however, shows that these scribbly contrails are a regular feature of take-off time.
Scientists often invoke a sense of 'wonder' at the natural world, yet then claim to offer explanations of it. Does science dissolve mystery and dispel wonder? Or should our spirit of inquiry be tempered by a sense of humility? Read more
‘The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.’ Does this express the humility or pessimism of we humble human inquirers? And what should a Fortean make of it? Read more
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