A horrified mum discovered a hissing 7ft snake slithering through her child’s bedroom.

Natasha Robinson thought her fiancé Gary Minshull was playing a prank when she discovered the Taiwanese Beauty Rat Snake in their children’s bedroom.

But the 34-year-old’s jaw dropped when she spotted the serpent’s tongue suddenly flick in and out of its mouth.

Natasha, from Chester, Cheshire, said: ‘To begin with, I thought “it’s got to just be a grass snake” or something else not so dangerous but it didn’t look anything like the pictures – and it was so big.

‘We realised with the size and the look of it that it definitely wasn’t native.

‘My partner and I were just in disbelief really – especially knowing it had been in there with our daughter.

‘I’m just so grateful it was spotted and that she didn’t accidentally tread on it.’

The wedding accessories business owner quickly ushered three-year-old Primrose along with her sons Jacob, seven, and six-year-old Theo into the garden and checked on her pet cats who she feared might have been eaten.

Natasha and her 40-year-old health, safety and quality manager partner contained the snake for two hours before a couple living locally, who own exotic pets, took it away.

Taiwanese Beauty Rat Snakes are a non-venomous constrictor snake butthey can grow up to 10ft long.

It’s legal to keep without a licence in Britain and they are usually docile but can strike if they perceive a threat.

‘One of my sons is autistic, he would’ve grabbed it. I dread to think what could’ve happened then,’ Natasha said.

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Natasha believes the snake may have got into their house before last month’s incident through an open window.

Although now safely fostered, she spent the days after the incident frantically checking the bed in case another one got in.

Natasha said: ‘The children weren’t frightened of it, they thought it was really cool having a snake in their bedroom.

‘It was totally bizarre. You’d think if it was a loved pet it would’ve been claimed.

‘We have been like celebrities around here ever since, I’m asked about it constantly.’

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It’s been 56 years since Neil Armstrong plonked a boot on the Moon and made history.

Yet, much to the rest of humanity’s annoyance, they haven’t followed in his footsteps – literally.

The grey, pockmarked orb doesn’t exactly scream real estate, but Nasa hopes to build homes for astronauts and civilians on the Moon by 2040.

Chinese scientists have suggested that this might not be as far-fetched as it might seem – the soil on the Moon could potentially support life.

According to a study, the Chinese University of Hong Kong have invented a way to extract water from the chalky lunar soil.

This celestial water is then used to convert carbon dioxide – such as that exhaled by astronauts – into carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, which can be used to make fuel and oxygen for the astronauts to breathe.

Just like on Earth, fuel and food would be costly on the Moon, given how expensive it would be flying up essentials into space.

Travelling light is critical to spaceflight, where just one kilogram of supplies can cost well over £74,000 to ship up by rocket.

And this includes water, too. The academics estimated that getting a single gallon of water to the Moon would cost £61,000, barely enough to quench the four gallons an astronaut would drink a day.

But the researchers say this technology could ‘potentially open new doors for future deep space exploration’ by eliminating these eye-watering costs.

Lead researcher Lu Wang said: ‘We never fully imagined the “magic” that the lunar soil possessed.’

Appearances are deceiving when it comes to water on the Moon, where years of being pelted with asteroids and comets have left water on it.

Shadowy craters on the lunar poles, known as permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), never see sunshine, meaning there’s water ice tucked inside minerals such as ilmenite.

The tool developed by the Chinese researchers would involve taking the reoglith – a layer of loose material that blankets solid rock – of ilmenite and heating it using sunlight to release the water.

Carbon dioxide is then chucked in, causing the ilmenite to undergo photothermal catalysis – a novel method that uses sunlight to speed up chemical reactions.

Wang added in a statement that ‘one-step integration of lunar water extraction and photothermal carbon dioxide catalysis’ could make efforts to build lunar outposts or Tescos (we assume) more energy efficient.

Easier said than done, however, the researchers said, given that ‘drastic temperature fluctuations’, radiation and low gravity can make harvesting oxygen and water from the land tricky.

Nasa’s plan to build a colony on the Moon similarly involves making the most of the materials already there.

The plan, first reported on in 2023, will involve blasting a 3-D printer into the heavens that will build structures out of lunar concrete created from the rock chips, mineral fragments and dust that cover the Moon.

This debris is harmful to humans and is easily kicked up into the air – or rather, the lack of it – as astronauts lumber around in their heavy boots.

The first lunar Americans could get some neighbours pretty soon, with South Korea to develop lunar landers by 2040 before building a ‘lunar economic base by 2045’, according to The Korea Times.

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A couple have been left astounded after a thunderstorm produced a glowing orb of light thought to be mysterious ‘ball lightning’.

Ed and Melinda Pardy were watching a storm from their porch in Alberta, Canada, on June 2 when lightning struck.

After a tornado warning had been issued Ed, a weather enthusiast, saw a ball of light moving across the horizon in the lightning bolt’s wake.

He said it was floating about seven metres above the ground, a little under a kilometre from their home outside Edmonton.

‘Once the lightning bolt kind of disappeared, the ball of light kind of got bigger, intensified, like, really bright,’ he said, according to broadcaster CTV News.

‘Then I was like, “Oh, that’ll go away really soon,” and it didn’t.’

He started recording the phenomenon on Melinda’s phone, capturing about 23 seconds of video before the ball of light disappeared.

‘There was a little bit of pop and then it just kind of disintegrated,’ Ed said.

‘I was like, “what is this? I’ve never seen this before.” It was pretty neat,’ added Melinda.

Ball lightning is a disputed weather phenomenon that has been described by eye-witnesses for centuries but still has no widely accepted explanation among scientists.

They have usually been associated with thunderstorms and conventional lightning strikes.

Ball lightning, a mysterious and rare atmospheric electrical phenomenon, has inspired numerous legends, myths, and folklore over the centuries due to its strange appearance.

In medieval Europe, strange glowing orbs seen hovering near swamps or in the air were often explained as “will-o’-the-wisps”—ghostly lights said to trick travellers.

During a church service in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, a ball of fire reportedly entered the church, killing four people and injuring other worshippers. This was at the time explained as a manifestation of the devil himself but could have easily been ball lightning.

During the Siege of Leningrad in the Second World War, soldiers reported seeing strange glowing orbs that moved erratically, sometimes entering bunkers or tanks.

These were interpreted as experimental weapons, divine intervention, or even UFOs.

Storm chasers, people who pursue and study thunderstorms, have speculated that ball lightning could travel along power lines, but the Pardys said it was not in this case.

‘Definitely not,’ said Ed.

Melinda added that it was ‘a long way’ from any power lines.

The couple said they have since been contacted by scientists from the University of Calgary.

‘If I saw one of those fairly close to me, I don’t think I would want to get near it, because that’s a lot of energy. It’s a lot of power,’ said Ed.

‘I never thought I’d see anything like that in my lifetime.’

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