The fires currently searing through the Australian bush between Lithgow and Bilpin could create an unusual cloud formation known as a ‘Fire Cloud’ or pyrocumulus, predict fire analysts. The unique weather phenomenon only forms when areas of intense heat, such as bush fires or volcanoes, meet with an unstable atmosphere.

As fires burn, the hot air generated rises in a huge column upwards, with the space underneath being filled by cooler air, a process producing a convection column. The hot-air columns created can be extremely large and can rise high into the atmosphere carrying a large amounts of water vapour – one of the main combustion products of fire.
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Prophets and soothsayers have been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years, with possible extinction-level events cited as super-volcanoes or earthquakes, giant solar flares, pollution, plague and pestilence, and the favourite of the 20th century, nuclear war. There is no doubt that planet Earth is currently under-going what Confucius would describe as ‘interesting times’, with all of these proposed threats simmering away ominously in the background as we continue our ordinary lives. One of the other threats which could end Life as we know it, and one which has been credited with extinguishing the dinosaurs millions of years ago, is if the Earth was to be struck by a sizeable asteroid, and it is this scenario which could occur in the not-too-distant future.
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An aeronautical engineer has taken a snapshot showing two clear UFOs over the River Dart in Devon. He had the camera examined and found that there was no dust on the sensor. Nine seconds after the objects appeared, they were gone. He knows this because he took two shots nine seconds apart. He did not see the UFOs when he was taking the pictures. Normally, UFO photos come in the form of blurs, but these are very clearly round objects, not birds or planes. Probable unknown.
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