On July 26th, the Chinese city of Leshan witnessed a phenomenon that’s puzzling experts: What appeared to be three suns in the sky at once:

The best guess so far was a kind of Sun dog (see the images of the ones in Antarctica to get really blown away).  Perhaps it is due to the fact Leshan is known for having terrible amounts of air pollution.  My conjecture?  Sun dogs are created by ice crystals bending light (the ice bends light by 22 degrees – and can even do other effects if the crystals start aligning as the fall uniformly to the ground); perhaps an airborn chemical/pollutant in the area bends light by different amounts to get this effect.  Should be a way to find out what the local factories are pumping into the air, do some samples at low/medium/high altitudes, and see their refractive properties are when combined with ice/water in the air…

Another strange phenomenon:

This isn’t the only recent weird sky phenomenon that has scientists scratching their heads.  Discredited for years, it’s now pretty clear that before some earthquakes – strange ‘lights’ appear in the sky.  This has only come to light in the last 3 years or so with widely photographed and filmed lights before the gigantic earthquake in China a few years back, and several more recent events in Chile.

This has lead all kinds of conspiracy theory nuts go wild about it being because of HAARP experiments, the coming 2012 Maya apocalypse, UFO’s, ‘scalar weapons’, etc.  Still – it’s intriguing and very curious stuff.

Here’s a video of the lights supposedly taken only 30 minutes before the great Chinese quake: