7 Awesome Acts of Nature (That Science Can't Explain)

7 Naga Fireballs

What would you do if you were walking along a tropical river at night and it suddenly began burping up egg-sized balls of red light? It happens every year in October along the Mekong river (the same one featured in classic Vietnam movies like Rambo II and the flashbacks from Rambo III). The phenomenon is known as the Naga Fireballs, and experts agree that it is "just weird as shit."

What happens is this: starting under water, tens to thousands of glowing red lights are seen rising out from the bottom of the river, then lifting hundreds of feet into the sky before disappearing.

It literally appears that the river is spitting out flaming M&Ms. They have never harmed anyone, and don't even seem to touch anything let alone set anything on fire. However, both of those facts were probably unavailable to dull the ferocity of the pant-crapping that took place when the event was first witnessed.

The Naga Fireballs are viewed by thousands of people every year, and a healthy number of videos documenting the phenomenon are hosted on YouTube, which is the most reliable scientific journal on the Internet next to Wikipedia.

So, What do the Smart People Think is Happening?

The number one theory suggests that fermented sediment in the river, things such as decomposing remains and animal waste, release bubbles of self-immolating gas that rise to the surface and combust. That's right, the best explanation science has come up with for the Naga fireballs is essentially that it eats too much meat. Suspiciously absent from this theory is a reason why the phenomenon occurs around the same time every year. Unless the Mekong eats a regimented diet of Activia yogurt, those meat eaters among us have to be somewhat suspicious of such a regular rate of expulsion.

The locals are simply unwilling to accept any scientific explanation for the Naga Fireballs, preferring to preserve a sense of mysticism. Scooby-Doo could roll up in the Mystery Machine and uncover a giant underwater cannon shooting phosphorous balls into the sky and he'd probably be told to fuck off. Also, they would probably eat him.

6 Star Jelly

It is no surprise that shit falls from the sky during a meteor shower (that's pretty much 90 percent of the definition). But sometimes what rockets to the Earth is not what you would expect. Rather than a big hunk of stone or metal, sometimes people find what looks like a jellyfish that splattered down from outer space.

There have been reports for over a century of people finding what the Germans call sternenrotz (which literally means "star snot") in conjunction with meteors falling from the sky. It's usually clear or yellowish, smells awful and disintegrates after being handled, much like one of our erections. Despite being described thoroughly in numerous newspaper and police accounts for over 150 years, no one has ever really been able to study it in depth because the substance falls apart too quickly to allow for a sample to be obtained.

Case in point: in 1950, four Philadelphia police men found a six-foot lump of star jelly outside of town. When they tried to pick it up, it dissolved into "odorless, sticky scum." No doubt they all took a shower afterward and couldn't look each other in the eye ever again.

So, What do the Smart People Think is Happening?

Most scientists are more than happy to say witnesses are full of shit and leave it at that, but some at least try to explain it. The glob found by the policemen in Philadelphia was a half mile away from the Philadelphia gas works, so some assert that it was a discharge of some sort (which is simultaneously plausible and just as unlikely as space boogers).

Other theories have included bird vomit, frog spawn vomited up by other animals and generally a bunch of other vomit-related ideas. The goo could also be mundane types of algae slimes that people just happen to notice around the time of a meteor fall. By far the most ball-crushingly awesome theory claims that star jelly is the remains of atmospheric beasts, mythical creatures that some claim float around in the atmosphere. Why we're not constantly scraping such creatures from the windshields of airliners is not explained.

5 Blue Jets and Red Sprites

While they may sound like two squads of a gay relay team, blue jets and red sprites are actually the names of what occurs above the clouds during a lightning storm. Only visible from space or from an airplane (or from a space airplane), these things look like the exhaust ports on a Megazord and we are totally putting them on our Christmas list.

Sprites and jets are always associated with lightning storms. Sprites are red most of the time and happen as high as 50 miles off the surface of the ground, while jets shoot directly out of the tops of storm clouds, sometimes traveling as far as 30 miles up into the Ionosphere.

So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening?

Top minds are pretty sure the phenomena has something to do with whatever is causing the lightning we see in every storm, but beyond that, they don't seem to know. They know the sprites kick off as a result of a lightning strike on the ground, but the jets seem to fire whenever they goddamn please.

Jets also sometimes come in the form of the imaginatively named gigantic jets, which can shoot up as high as 43 miles above the cloud cover and look like something you uppercut your opponent into after a spirited game of Mortal Kombat. For now, science is content to shrug its shoulders and see what else is on The Discovery Channel.

4 Earthquake Lights

As far back as 373 BC people have claimed to see weird lights in the sky during earthquakes, and sometimes for minutes before the shaking actually starts, as seen in this video:

They seem to occur in China quite often, probably because the government only permits people to see a rainbow if they are moments from cataclysmic natural destruction. The lights were also witnessed during the recent earthquakes in Peru.

"Hey, check out the rainbow!"
"Yea, that's cool. The garage just fell on grandpa, by the way."

So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening?

There are a number of theories surrounding earthquake lights, but unfortunately none of them are very conclusive. One suggests that the imminent earthquake releases gases that are electrically charged in the air, while another says that the tectonic stress fucks with the magnetic field of the earth and creates an aurora.

Yet another claims that the ground beneath contains a lot of quartz, which sparks up like Blanka from Street Fighter 2 when shaken by a tremor. Not one of these theories has a shred of evidence to back it up, though, so really we would accept any theory as long as we can tie it to some kind of fighting game reference.

3 Red Rain in Kerala

When you think of getting caught in the rain, you typically worry about things like "Will my socks get wet?" and "Do I have time to restraighten my hair?" Unless you lived in the Kerala region of India back in 2001, when the universe douched Kool-Aid all over the subcontinent.

From July to September, Kerala experienced a prolonged period of red rainfall (there was also some black, green and yellow rain, but scientists agreed that the red was way more extreme).

As the summer progressed, colored rain continued to fall from the sky in well-delineated areas, sometimes in places directly adjacent to areas with normal, non-terrifying precipitation. The ground was stained, linens were ruined and numerous little league games were canceled in the red rain's wrathful wake.

So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening?

Following the analysis of several samples, many theories were put forth, including red dust from the Sahara coming down as precipitation and alien microorganisms from an exploding meteor that also came from a comet (this last one was quickly dismissed after no one in Kerala gained superpowers).

Ultimately it was determined that the red coloration was caused by an abundance of a certain type of algal spore, though how the spores themselves came to be in the rainwater has yet to be explained (we like to think they were involved in a race around the globe when their hot air balloon was struck by lightning).

2 Raining Animals

For centuries, people have reported seeing animals falling from the sky in places all over the world. Frogs and toads rained off and on for an extended time in Japan, worms rocketed to the earth in Louisiana, fish fell in Singapore and Rhode Island and in California, what they were pretty sure was at one time a cow exploded into the Earth like a giant post-Fuddruckers dump from the ass of Paul Bunyan.

Good milk comes from happy cows. This is where fear milk comes from.

So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening?

The prevailing theory (and the likely cause of most of these events) is that during particularly shitty weather, waterspouts and tornadoes will scoop up animals, spin them around for a while and then toss them out miles away.

This seems like a reasonable explanation, but it fails to tell us why in most cases, there is only a single species represented in the rain. If a waterspout sucked up a lake, it should rain frogs, snakes and Jason Voorhees, not just fish. Also, this theory has never been successfully proven or replicated; it simply seems to have been accepted as the least retarded one.

1 Spontaneous Human Combustion

Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) refers to when a person bursts into flame for no apparent reason and burns down into charcoal offal reminiscent of the stuff on the bottom of a bag of overcooked popcorn. As you may have already guessed, this is awesome.

Interestingly, the confusion isn't really about how this happens--scientists have a provable method in something called the Wick Effect, which has been successfully demonstrated on pigs. It shows that if someone a bit lardy catches on fire, their skin and clothing act like the wick of a candle, collecting fat as it melts and allowing it to burn at a constant high temperature for an extended period in a localized area.

The real question is what the hell is setting these people on fire.

So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening?

Sometimes people fall asleep or die with a lit cigarette in their mouth, which could conceivably set them ablaze like an octogenarian's birthday cake. It takes about 570 degrees Fahrenheit to get human flesh to combust, though, so unless you're smoking the Devil's pole, this seems unlikely.

Another theory suggests that built up static causes a spark that can instantly turn you into Johnny Storm. This, along with the cigarette theory, tie in with another suggestion that victims of SHC are alcoholics that somehow manage to get a blood alcohol level high enough to turn them into a Bunsen burner. However, a 23 percent concentration of alcohol in the blood would be required to cause ignition, and anyone other than Kiefer Sutherland is typically dead before they hit one percent.

A few more whimsical ideas involve ball lightning, which is our favorite theory because it is kind of like getting hit with a hadouken.

Others suggest something having to do with gamma rays, but neither theory is anywhere close to proven (scientists aren't certain ball lightning exists and gamma ray-producing cosmic events rarely occur within the living room). Science simply cannot agree on the cause of this phenomenon, so really there's nothing we can do except hope someone is able to record our combustion and make a YouTube video set to We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

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To find out how else Science is stupid, check out 6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain and 6 Famous Unsolved Mysteries With Really Obvious Solutions.

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