Two things happened yesterday that took people in the UK by surprise – multiple sightings of beams of towering light and an earthquake.
So… what on earth is going on?
At around 5.30am, people told Metro they saw a beam of light poking out from behind houses and trees.
They were mainly seen in towns and villages near the coastline, from Newton Stewart, Scotland, to Colchester, Essex, some 300 miles away.
Later that same day, an earthquake hit the north of England, rattling most of Lancashire and the Lake District at 11.23pm.
That epicentre in Silverdale is right in the centre of a triangle of some of the sightings of the mysterious lights.
Is this a sign that aliens are trying to communicate with us? Was the quake the thud of Mr Bean falling from the sky? Or does the UK have its very own Bermuda Triangle?
Metro has looked at the facts.
Lighting sightings
Darren Steger-Lewis, 38, spotted the vertical light while out for a morning run at 5.30am at Ness Point – the most easterly point of England.
The administrative manager for a mobility scooter manufacturer said the light was out at sea and was crystal clear.
His first thought was that it must have been solar activity, but he did wonder if it might be little green men.
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Darren said: ‘The alien thought did naturally cross my mind, but the question arose: If we were being visited, would Lowestoft really be the destination of choice?’
Wayne Jensen, 43, told Metro he saw the beacon at about 5am in Mildenhall, Suffolk.
He said: ‘I have absolutely no idea what it was, but it definitely wasn’t man-made. My guess is something to do with gases in the atmosphere.’
It didn’t need to be ‘man-made’ though – beams are commonly reported during alleged sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, otherwise called UFOs.
The phenomenon was seen as far south as Colchester, Essex, with Metro reader Vida Page seeing it from her bedroom window.
‘It was so bright initially and perfectly straight, by the time I ran upstairs to grab my phone, it had already started fading in strength and height,’ she told Metro.
‘It also seemed to move from left to right like the sun would, so definitely in the atmosphere and not localised lights.’
North Yorkshire Police confirmed to Metro that the force is not aware of any reports of UFOs in the region, either.
Seismic Silverdale
Hours later, at 11.23pm, there was another natural phenomenon that woke up the people of Lancashire – an earthquake that felt like an underground explosion.
The UK experiences around 300 tremors every year, but only 20 or so are strong enough to be felt.
Can Barrow really be compared with the Bermuda Triangle?
Countless aircraft, boats and people have vanished in the area connecting Virginia’s Norfolk, Puerto Rico and Bermuda.
Officials and scientists have debunked the idea that aliens or a mysterious force in the 500,000 square mile section of the Atlantic Ocean is to blame.
Yet, the myth is so enduring that any eerie cluster of incidents anywhere tends to get the Triangle treatment.
What are ice pillars?
Also called ice pillars, light pillars are a type of atmospheric optics, or the way light travels through the atmosphere.
When it’s nippy outside around sunrise or sunset, clouds that are normally high in the atmosphere drift down towards the Earth’s surface.
Within these clouds are millions of ice crystals that, when an artificial light from a ground source shines through them, reflect it like tiny mirrors.
If the light comes from the sun, they’re rather aptly called ‘sun pillars’.
Ice can cause all sorts of illusions, such as the ghostly blur of diamond dust, when these teeny-tiny mirrors reflect streetlights.
Jim NR Dale, a meteorologist with the British Weather Services, told Metro there’s probably a much more mundane, but still spectacular, explanation.
Dale said they are more likely ‘light pillars’, an atmospheric optical illusion, and, ‘no’, the light phenomena isn’t connected to the quakes.
Yet physicist Les Cowley, who runs a website on atmospheric optics, said he doubts what people saw that morning were light pillars.
These columns of sparkling light were simply too bright, narrow and high to be the icy optical illusions.
Cowley told Metro: ‘More diffuse-looking pillars often appear over bright ground lights and are produced by tiny horizontal ice crystals in sub-zero temperature air reflecting the ground light back to the ground.
‘We did not have these Arctic temperatures. If they occurred in the UK, I would expect to see just a fragment high up where the air can be cold enough to produce the crystals.’
Metro’s verdict
In all seriousness, the strongest explanation here is coincidence.
When you introduce Colchester to the Beamuda Triangle map, you’re left with something more closely related to a four-sided shape.
But the Essex Wonky Diamond doesn’t have quite the ring to it, does it?
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