Mysterious white sphere crashes into Indiana street during storm, turns out to be...
An Indiana neighbourhood was left in shock when a large white sphere, later identified as a radome, suddenly came crashing down onto a residential street during a powerful storm that swept across the Midwest on Wednesday night. Radomes are designed to shield radar systems and antennas from harsh conditions.(X/@Stuntman_Mik3)
The mysterious object, which resembled something out of a sci-fi film, sparked confusion and concern among residents who initially couldn't identify it. According to neighbours who spoke to CBS4, the dome had apparently blown away from a nearby property during the extreme weather.
Also read: 'Bangalore is slowly killing us': Entrepreneur couple on moving out of city after 2 years What are Radomes?
Radomes are designed to shield radar systems and antennas from harsh conditions. They are typically used in aviation and military settings. This particular one had visible scuff marks from the fall, and a side hatch was found partially open.
'It kinda looks like an eyeball,' observed CBS4 news anchor Chelsea Helms.
The aerospace and defence company V2X, which has a facility located about a mile from where the object landed, later confirmed the radome belonged to them. However, the circumstances surrounding its unexpected flight remain unclear.
'I think it probably got turned over and caught in the wind and unfortunately, it flew away. We're really thankful no one got hurt or anything. No one got injured. But that's what it is, I can confirm it's not an alien satellite or an alien spaceship,' said Andrew Belush, a site executive at V2X.
The company clarified that the radome had not been in use and was stored off to the side of their building before the storm hit.
Also read: Canadian rapper slammed for dressing up as Maa Kali in explicit video: 'Stop appropriating Hindu culture'
The bizarre incident adds to a string of strange environmental occurrences in the last year. In late 2024, residents of New Jersey reported seeing inexplicable drone fleets hovering across the skies for weeks. More recently, in February, beaches in Florida were littered with black tar balls, raising health concerns and questions about environmental safety.
-
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
4 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Mysterious white sphere crashes into Indiana street during storm, turns out to be...
An Indiana neighbourhood was left in shock when a large white sphere, later identified as a radome, suddenly came crashing down onto a residential street during a powerful storm that swept across the Midwest on Wednesday night. Radomes are designed to shield radar systems and antennas from harsh conditions.(X/@Stuntman_Mik3) The mysterious object, which resembled something out of a sci-fi film, sparked confusion and concern among residents who initially couldn't identify it. According to neighbours who spoke to CBS4, the dome had apparently blown away from a nearby property during the extreme weather. Also read: 'Bangalore is slowly killing us': Entrepreneur couple on moving out of city after 2 years What are Radomes? Radomes are designed to shield radar systems and antennas from harsh conditions. They are typically used in aviation and military settings. This particular one had visible scuff marks from the fall, and a side hatch was found partially open. 'It kinda looks like an eyeball,' observed CBS4 news anchor Chelsea Helms. The aerospace and defence company V2X, which has a facility located about a mile from where the object landed, later confirmed the radome belonged to them. However, the circumstances surrounding its unexpected flight remain unclear. 'I think it probably got turned over and caught in the wind and unfortunately, it flew away. We're really thankful no one got hurt or anything. No one got injured. But that's what it is, I can confirm it's not an alien satellite or an alien spaceship,' said Andrew Belush, a site executive at V2X. The company clarified that the radome had not been in use and was stored off to the side of their building before the storm hit. Also read: Canadian rapper slammed for dressing up as Maa Kali in explicit video: 'Stop appropriating Hindu culture' The bizarre incident adds to a string of strange environmental occurrences in the last year. In late 2024, residents of New Jersey reported seeing inexplicable drone fleets hovering across the skies for weeks. More recently, in February, beaches in Florida were littered with black tar balls, raising health concerns and questions about environmental safety. -
Time of India
3 days ago
- Time of India
Which Indian temples are known for floating statues
The legends and mysteries surrounding Sanatan Dharma and its temples often travel into realms far beyond human understanding. These stories have been passed down through generations, and frequently describe the stories of Indian Scientific thought, mentioned in the Purana and sacred books before the Western world could even discover it. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Yet there are several events and structures that challenge our basic understanding of physics, engineering, and the natural world without going into great detail. While temples are seen as places of worship, some ancient Indian temples are actually threads of philosophy, cosmology, and science woven into the fabric of time and mysteries. In the Hindu tradition, where God is believed to reside in everything from the vast cosmos to the tiniest atom, such marvels provide for both spiritual and intellectual wonder. Still, there are some legendary stories of places which remain unproven by science and whose origins are not defined or registered in history books, be it the floating stones used to build Lord Rama's bridge or the gravity-defying idols. Among such are two extraordinary legends of the levitating Shiva-Linga of Somnath and the floating Sun idol of Konark, which continue to ignite interest in the minds of historians, scientists, and devotees. The levitating Shiva-linga of Somnath The Somnath temple, situated on the western coast of Gujarat, is one of the twelve sacred Jyotirlingas of Lord Shiva. While history remembers it mainly for Mahmud of Ghazni's infamous raid in 1025 AD, a lesser-known yet astonishing aspect is the legend of its levitating Shiva-Linga. A Persian geographer Zakariyah Al Kazvini said as mentioned in research , 'Unlocking the ancient secret of the levitating Shiva-lingam of the Somnath Temple', published in International Journal of History, 'This idol was in the middle of the temple without anything to support it from below, or to suspend it from above… whoever beheld it floating in the air was struck with amazement…' As mentioned in the same article, the idol floated in mid-air, likely due to a clever arrangement involving a canopy made of lodestone or a natural magnet and the Linga made of a strongly magnetic iron-nickel meteorite. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now This was not just legend; historical sources such as Abulfeda and Farrukhi Sistani confirmed the idol's extraordinary material hardness, consistent with meteorites. Scientific analysis in the article explains that this phenomenon may have involved a magnetic levitation system. Due to the restrictions of Earnshaw's Theorem, stable magnetic levitation is only possible when diamagnetic materials like bismuth are used. The article also mentions that bismuth, often mistaken for lead due to its appearance, was used in the temple's structure, 'The edifice was built upon fifty-six pillars of teak, covered with lead,' said Zakariyah Al Kazvini. Modern comparisons show bismuth has a much stronger diamagnetic property than lead. This diamagnetic reaction could have stabilised the magnetic field, allowing the heavy Shiva-Linga to levitate. The theory is based on references to ancient Indian metallurgical expertise, like the famed wootz steel and ancient zinc smelting at Zawar. Bismuth, although rare, was likely extracted as a byproduct of lead from mines in nearby Rajasthan. The floating Sun Idol of Konark Temple The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha, which was built by King Narasimhadeva I between 1243–1255 AD is another mystery laced with legendary stories. The temple was originally situated by the sea and was said to house a Sun idol that floated in mid-air within its main sanctum. According to the Konark official website, 'The statue of the Sun God inside the temple was built of a material with iron content and was said to be floating in air, without any physical support, due to the unique arrangements of the top magnet, the bottom magnet and the reinforced magnets around the temple walls. ' The temple's architectural design had embeddings of iron plates between stone layers and a massive 52-ton lodestone, which was placed at the top of the temple's main tower. The magnetic field, legend says, held the iron-rich idol suspended in mid-air. The alignment was such that the first sunray would fall directly on the deity through the Nata Mandir, reflecting off a diamond placed on the idol's crown. Another widely circulated belief claims that the magnetic field disturbed the navigational compasses of passing ships. To prevent disruption, Portuguese sailors allegedly removed the lodestone, leading to the collapse of the temple's main tower, or Deul. Though no concrete evidence remains of the lodestone today, local guides still tell these legends to visitors, and the mystery persists. Certainly, what modern science is now slowly catching up to explain is something marvelous that our ancestors may have achieved centuries ago!
The Hindu
4 days ago
- The Hindu
Rice reveals surprise ability to adapt to cold faster than evolution
In the early 1800s, 'the theory of acquired characters' was the most widely accepted explanation of evolution. Simply put, the theory stated that characteristics that an organism developed during its lifetime, through use, disuse or environmental influence, could be inherited by its offspring. The French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck formalised this idea in two laws in 1809, and it remained unrivalled until half a century later. In 1859, Charles Darwin proposed natural selection, which said that variations are passed from parents to offspring and that changes that confer benefits survive while the detrimental ones perish. The two ideas co-existed for a brief while until two major scientific developments challenged Lamarck's views. The first was German evolutionary biologist August Weismann's demonstration that even after cutting the tails of mice continuously for over five generations, there was no inheritance of this acquired characteristic in the offspring. The second was the rediscovery of the work of Gregor-Johann Mendel, who showed that inheritance is governed by stable, particulate units (now called genes) that are passed unchanged from parents to offspring. The integration of Mendel's work with Darwin's ideas laid the foundation for understanding heredity. When DNA was later identified as the genetic material, it explained how changes in DNA sequence (called mutations) are passed from parents to offspring. Traits that improve an organism's chances of survival and reproduction are more likely to be passed on while less advantageous traits tend to be lost over time. This was called, in short, survival of the fittest. For a long time, Lamarck's ideas lay forgotten. If you have it, express it In 1956, Canadian plant geneticist Royal Alexander Brink noticed something strange in maize. Despite having two copies of the gene for rich, purple-coloured kernels, some plants produced only weak pigments. Even more curious, their offspring also showed weak pigmentation despite carrying the same genes. This suggested that something other than DNA was influencing the trait and that this mysterious influence was heritable. Scientists soon realised that having a gene is not enough: it must also be expressed, meaning its information must be used to make proteins. This expression is regulated in various ways. One important method involves small chemical tags added to the DNA that help cells decide whether a gene should be switched on or off. This system of gene regulation without altering the DNA sequence is called epigenetics. In 1975, scientist Arthur Riggs proposed that these chemical tags, or epigenetic marks, could be inherited. This meant organisms could potentially pass on instructions about gene activity without changing their DNA sequence. Since it's easier to change these marks than to mutate DNA, it raised an intriguing possibility: if an environmental trigger caused a heritable epigenetic change, then Lamarck might have been partly right. Inheritance, at least in some cases, could be due to environmental influence. The DNA itself didn't need to change. Over the next 50 years, sporadic reports appeared stating that this might be the case — but none were convincing enough to firmly prove that a natural environmental cue could induce a heritable epigenetic change. Lamarck redeemed On May 22, a landmark study published in Cell showed, for the first time, that rice plants can acquire tolerance to cold temperatures by changing the epigenetic marks on a gene called ACT1. Surprisingly, this change was induced by exposing normal rice plants to low temperatures. Even more surprisingly, the change was heritable over five generations — proof that what Lamarck suggested over two centuries ago could indeed happen, albeit in a laboratory. The authors of the study achieved the feat by subjecting the rice plant Oryza sativa to low temperatures and using the number and quality of seeds produced as a way to assess how well the rice adapted. They observed that from the second generation onwards, seed quality improved and, importantly, the improvement was sustained across subsequent generations. Then they sequenced the total DNA of the cold-adapted rice and compared it with a control group grown under identical conditions but without the cold exposure. Although they found multiple genetic differences, none appeared to account for the enhanced cold tolerance. They next examined differences in gene expression between the two groups and identified 12 genes whose activity varied. To understand why these 12 genes produced different levels of protein, the researchers investigated epigenetic marks and discovered more than 12,380 differences between the two groups. One of these changes was near a gene they called ACT1. Interestingly, ACT1 was also among the 12 genes with altered expression. What life has endured The team then explored how this epigenetic change regulated ACT1. They found that ACT1, a gene involved in plant growth and development, is normally expressed at high levels in rice. But when exposed to cold, its expression is switched off by the addition of a methyl group, an epigenetic tag that tells the plant's cells not to produce the protein. Without sufficient ACT1, normal rice plants struggle to survive in the cold. The cold-adapted plants, however, didn't add this methyl signal. As a result, they continued to produce the ACT1 protein, which supported their development under cold stress. These epigenetic marks were then passed on to their offspring, ensuring subsequent generations also expressed ACT1 and survived in cold conditions. In the century or so since they were discarded, Lamarck's ideas on evolution have been exhumed several times — mostly for criticism. It is perhaps poetic that nature itself had to step in to show us that he was not entirely wrong and that the environment can indeed influence heredity. The cold-adapted rice has shown us that sometimes, very rarely, inheritance is not determined by the code for life but rather by what that life has endured. Arun Panchapakesan is an assistant professor at the Y.R. Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education, Chennai.
