Blogs / Discoblog

No one is quite sure what caused bizarre 600-mile-long tubular clouds to form above a small Australian town. But because the fluffy white rods, known as Morning Glory clouds, can move up to 35 miles per hour, they can pose a problem for airplanes flying through the area.

Wired reports:

A small number of pilots and tourists travel there each year in hopes of “cloud surfing” with the mysterious phenomenon.

Similar tubular shaped clouds called roll clouds appear in various places around the globe. But nobody has yet figured out what causes the Morning Glory clouds.

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Image courtesy of Mick Petroff

Think you know all there is to know about the witches of the 17th century? Well, don’t be so cocky. The recent discovery of a so-called “witchcraft bottle” in England has shed new light on the beliefs of that period, thanks to CT scans, chemical analysis and other tests.

While around 200 other witchcraft bottles have been found, all of them were open and eroding—until this one, that is. This bottle held, among other things, a dozen iron nails, hair, fingernail clippings, a piece of leather shaped like a heart and pierced with a nail, what could be navel fluff, and brimstone, also known as sulfur… all bathed in human urine. Scientists say the bottle shows that people of the time actually followed bizarre-sounding recipes to combat witchcraft, such as one requiring a man to “take a quart of your Wive’s urine, the paring of her Nails, some of her Hair, and such like, and boyl them well in a Pipkin.”

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