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Published 18 Mar, 2017 07:48am

The weekly weird

Beautiful fire rainbow in the sky mistaken for UFO

A beautiful fire rainbow that appeared in the sky over Singapore was mistaken for a UFO after it ‘came out of nowhere’.

The rare light phenomena was spotted over the north-east district of the country and hovered there for more than 15 minutes, according to witnesses. Baffled residents commented on the extreme brightness of the rainbow, which initially caused some onlookers to believe that the light was actually a sign of alien life.

Bernard Ong, who recorded footage of the magnificent phenomena, said: “I have never seen such a beautiful Mother Nature before. This was totally something amazing. Someone said it looks like a UFO, too.”

Fire rainbows are a rare phenomenon, also known as circumhorizontal arcs, and occur when light bursts through ice-crystals in cirrus clouds.


Unique albino ’gator in a wildlife park

Alligators are scary and this fellow possess quite unique colouration besides being scary. A Florida wildlife park is drawing viral attention thanks to an unusual resident — an albino alligator with all-white skin and pink eyes.

The Gatorland Park in Orlando said the alligator, named Pearl, has become the star attraction at the 110-acre preserve and pictures of the unusually-coloured gator have gone viral on social media.

“Pearl is 10 years old and very popular at Gatorland,” a Gatorland spokesman told. “She is 7.5 feet long and weighs 105 pounds.”

Park officials said Pearl and Bouya Blan, another albino gator at the park, would have difficulty surviving in the wild due to their inability to properly camouflage with their surroundings.


The magic bottle will now solve your ‘ketchup problem’

One of the thorniest scientific problems facing mankind is how to get ketchup out of the bottle without either smashing it or wiggling it. But now scientists might have solved it — and the solution is going on sale.

Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, say that the secret isn’t wiggling the bottle in some mysterious way — it’s a new coating, which makes bottle interiors slippery.

The coating is slick, like an oily floor and is so slippery that liquids slide out without leaving a trace. The liquid-solid coating is being developed by start-up Liquiglide by the MIT scientists behind the breakthrough — who secured £12 million in funding this January.

Bottles using the technology are already on sale in Norway. The researchers say that it could also work on toothpaste, cosmetics and even super-sticky substances such as glue.

Prof Kripa Varanasi, who worked on the coating, told the BBC, “The cool thing about it is that because the coating is a composite of solid and liquid, it can be tailored to the product. So for food, we make the coating out of food-based materials and so you can actually eat it.”

Published in Dawn, Young World March 18th, 2017

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