A sudden bright spot in the night changed colors from blue to orange before streaking across the sky and disappearing has caused hysteria amongst residents in California, Arizona and beyond.

While many scientists are pegging the light show as the result of a basketball sized piece of interplanetary debris burning up through our atmosphere, we are not so quick to agree. While a spaceship seems unlikely, a secret military satellite being blown out of orbit (as posited in the beginning of Andrew Mayne’s debut novel Public Enemy Zero) and crashing down to Earth could work. From the picture posted above, we also can’t rule out that dozens of sitcom stars had simultaneous given a poignant piece of advice and the resulting streak was simply a The More You Know punctuation.

Do you have a conspiracy theory? Post it below.

[CBS 2]

[GhostTheory]

In 2001, a bizarre scarlet rain showered southwest India on-and-off over two months. Many were baffled by the cell structures which gave the droplets its red hue. Some even suggested they might be extra terrestrial.

Those people have a sturdier stage to stand on today as a new study links historical accounts of similar red rains with meteor passings.

Mc­Caf­ferty an­a­lyzed, as he wrote, “80 ac­counts of red rain, an­oth­er 20 ref­er­ences to lakes and riv­ers turn­ing blood-red, and 68 ex­am­ples of oth­er phe­nom­e­na such as col­oured rain, black rain, milk, bricks, or hon­ey fall­ing from the sky.”

Six­ty of these events, or 36 per­cent, “were linked to me­te­oritic or com­et­ary ac­ti­vity,” he went on. But not al­ways strongly. Some­times, “the fall of red rain seems to have oc­curred af­ter an air­burst,” as from a me­te­or ex­plod­ing in air; oth­er times the odd rain­fall “is merely recorded in the same year as a stone-fall or the ap­pear­ance of a comet.”

If this study is on to something and if we can link meteor air bursts to this type of rainfall and if we can assume that something is being dropped from outer space into our atmosphere, the next question is… what is it?

[World-Science]

Panicked cheeseheads across the Quad Cities area of Wisconsin reported seeing a massive fireball light up the night sky on Wednesday. But, was the brilliant streaking light, thought to be caused by a meteor shower, just a repeat of another similar phenomenon that some believe left far greater devastation nearly a century and a half ago?

In short, could a fireball like this be what ignited the Great Chicago Fire?

In 2004 engineer and physicist Robert M. Wood posited exactly that, citing other fires that began at the same time the Chi Town conflagration began in… guess where… the farming towns of Wisconsin!

All of this has happened before and it will happen again. Except now we have modern fire brigades and flame extinguishing foam.

[CNN]

According to Spaceflight Now, NASA researchers are about to release new evidence that a Martian meteorite shows evidence for life. The research team originally announced the discovery of the meteorite back in 1996. There was a lot of controversy over what exactly they found. Critics pointed out that the kind of bacterial fossil they claimed to have found was far smaller than any terrestrial example and may have been a product of geology. But the science hasn’t stopped:

Now, 13 years after the Martian meteorite life story emerged, the science team finally feels vindicated. Their data shows the meteorite is no smoking gun but is full of evidence that supports the existence of life on the surface of Mars, or in subsurface water pools, early in the planet’s history.

link: Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Martian meteorite surrenders new secrets of possible life

Here’s Wikipedia’s article on the meteorite:

On August 6, 1996[4] ALH 84001 became newsworthy when it was announced that the meteorite may contain evidence for traces of life from Mars, as published in an article in Science by David McKay of NASA.

The electron microscope revealed chain structures in meteorite fragment ALH84001 Under the scanning electron microscope structures were revealed that may be the remains—in the form of fossils—of bacteria-like lifeforms. The structures found on ALH 84001 are 20-100 nanometres in diameter, similar in size to the theoretical nanobacteria, but smaller than any known cellular life at the time of their discovery. If the structures are really fossilized lifeforms, they would be the first solid evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life, aside from the chance of their origin being terrestrial contamination.

link: Allan Hills 84001 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More elusive than Bigfoot, cagier than Nessie and capable of eating twice as much human flesh as the average Wendigo – It’s Michael Rooker, and when you aren’t checking him out in his new Web series “Rooker,” or in everyone’s favorite film, “The Bone Collector,” your reading about him all this week, as we celebrate his contribution to genre films, right here at WeirdThings.com

Law and order. Crime and chaos. Rooker has chased down dark, wandering demons, pinned them up against mountains and torn out their still-beating hearts with his teeth. And Rooker has eaten the black hearts of wraiths and become a demon himself, leading fool-headed heroes on perilous, grueling pursuits, with the promise that only one man would live to see another sunrise.

“But, hold on!” you say. “What about love?”

For Rooker in love – and I don’t mean typical Hollywood c-plot stolen glances over a patrol car dashboard culminating in a road-weary third-act kiss interrupted by gunfire – one need look no further than James Gunn’s superlative 2006 horror-comedy, “Slither.” Plot-wise, Rooker’s character Grant Grant is a small-town business mogul who becomes possessed by an alien being that uses Grant’s body to initiate an elaborate reproductive cycle through which the town’s inhabitants are enslaved by the malicious being’s collective consciousness. The brilliance of the film (aside from, like, that entire concept) is that the alien hive mind absorbs Grant’s core emotional memories, which it passes on to the newly zombified townsfolk. At the beginning of the film, Rooker plays a character who’s focused, authoritative, arrogant and, though lustful towards his beautiful, young wife, Starla (played by the always-stellar Elizabeth Banks), hardly romantic. Once his consciousness is consumed and his body is horrifically mutated, aside from his pride and ambition (now directed toward the systematic assimilation of the human race), the only thing that remains of Grant, and his former life with Starla, is his love, which he broadcasts out through the tortured voices of every townsperson, while their deforming bodies – now dehumanized mental appendages of a sinister interstellar despot – lurch and stumble through the ruined town.

You could make the argument that Grant’s urge to rise above his small-town roots had already resulted in the capture of his brain by the hive mind of American capitalism, which seeks to undermine small-town life and private business through corporate homogeneity. In that reading of the film, Starla was already wed to a monster, who only comes to truly appreciate his wife through possession by the alien being and the realization that he has defiled himself and become something foreign and hideous. Still, Grant loves Starla, and that single emotional fact dominates a film that, at its heart, is really about disgusting slugs and the way they try to force themselves down the throats of naked teenagers. That the details of Grant’s life exist on the page is only secondary to the way Rooker inhabits the character, and, even through a twisted cocoon of plastic and make-up, gives the audience something to feel and someone flawed, pathetic and wholly relatable to feel it for.

The subtle, somehow-sympathetic arrogance of Rooker’s performance in “Slither” is present (though, by virtue of the character’s role, not as fully developed) in an earlier film – Kevin Smith’s lovable cinematic debacle, “Mallrats.” Playing Mr. Jared Svenning, who, like Grant, is a physically intimidating, ambitious, money-hungry conniver, Rooker’s performance fills the necessary role of the cartoonishly rotten antagonist. Because the film is more character-driven comical picaresque than plot-based narrative, Svenning’s intentions earn more screen time than his specific motivations – the intention being to ensure that his daughter, Brandy, never marries TS, a consummate (but pure-hearted) slacker. Now, on the surface, Jared Svenning really does come off as just an immense cosmic butthole. And, watching the film at age 15, it’s easy to hate Rooker’s character and root for those lovable mallrats to dick-joke their way to a happy ending. Watching the film now, while I still cheer as Svenning savors those pretzels, I also understand that, for better or worse, he loves is daughter. Sure, he wrongly projects his already over-inflated sense of entitlement upon her, but, ultimately, he doesn’t want his little girl pawed on by a food court-lurking lollygagger – and who can blame him? Leave it to Rooker to sum up a father’s love in screams, puke and a gong-accompanied butt-cheek reveal.

Seriously. Leave it to Rooker. He’s a professional and he’ll do it right now if he has to. In fact, he wants to. He even bought an automated gong that’s programmed to sound every time he shimmies his round ass out of the shower.

More Rooker on Friday.

Wither the reputation of poor Catherine O’Leary. A muckraking hack thinks it’d make a great read to libel your name by insinuating a cow under your control kicked a lantern, which ignited the surrounding hay, which torched the barn which started the Great Chicago Fire.

These tall tales were eventually revealed to be what they were, fibs told by a fibbing fibber.

So what was the real reason Chi Town burnt down? Meteor showers! At least according to a 2004 report from engineer and physicist Robert R. Wood.

On October 8, 1871, a fire started that burned much of Chicago, killing 300, and destroying $200,000,000 worth of property. Most people are unaware that within a few minutes, major fires started in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, killing more than 2000 people in the farming country. Because of the poor communications with the upstate areas, the magnitude of the upstate horror was not known for weeks.

Biela’s Comet, with a solar orbital period of 6 years 9 months, had been disturbed by Jupiter on a previous passage and broke into two large comets. It has been hypothesized that one of them struck Earth and broke into several smaller pieces. These pieces, consisting of frozen comet gases would have likely included combustibles like methane CH4 and acetylene C2H2 that melted, vaporized and explosively ignited, causing impressive incendiary results upstate, consistent with surviving witness reports.

Blame that on a cow!