A video of a fireball streaking across the sky before being hit mid-air and exploding has gone viral, sparking wild theories about what it could be.

The light show was seen above China’s Shandong province on Friday.

People posted on social media about seeing the bright object pass above, before another luminous object travelled to meet it, and there was a flash.

Clips were shared showing the event from different angles, sparking speculation about the cause.

One witness told the Chinese news outlet First Scene: ‘I heard two loud bangs and it was raining, so I thought it was thunder.’

But some users on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, said the object may have been a meteor or UFO which was ‘shot down’.

That would be impressive, but the reality is almost certainly less otherworldly.

Meteors enter the atmosphere at incredibly fast speeds, at around 25,000mph to 160,000 mph, often without little warning, so this would be something unheard of.

Although humans have previously managed to smash into an asteroid, this was in space, after tracking and measuring it extensively, and at a cost of $325 million.

Dr Alfredo Carpineti, an astrophysicist who writes for IFLScience, isn’t exactly saying the truth is out there after seeing the footage.

‘I think what it is might be difficult to find out,’ he told Metro, ‘but it wouldn’t otherwise be a UFO.

‘The problem is that it partly looks like a meteor until it doesn’t. That’s why I’m sceptical.’

Dr Carpineti added that the video is ‘weird’ and ‘bouncy’, making it difficult to discern what the glowing object is.

‘The fastest hypersonic missile is still slower than the slowest asteroid and there is no planetary defence system that uses missiles,’ he said.

Another possible explanation circulated online is a test of a missile interception system. But as yet, there is very little concrete information to explain what happened, just a lot of social media buzz.

Chinese language publication Sohu said weather had been drizzly that night, so some initially thought there was a thunderstorm when they ‘heard noises indoors, feeling windows vibrate slightly’.

Others questioned if there had been a factory explosion, while some pointed to a notice from maritime officials that live-fire training was taking place just off Weifang Port.

The Weifang Emergency Management Bureau said they had not received any reports of accidents in the area and did not have further information.

Although this was likely not a meteor being shot down, China is investing heavily in space technology, including planetary defence.

In 2024, Nasa warned that China may try to take over parts of the Moon in just a few years.

Speaking before a House Appropriations Committee to argue why Nasa needed a $25.4 billion budget for 2025, administrator Bill Nelson said: ‘China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive.

‘We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space programme is a military programme. And I think, in effect, we are in a race.’

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For decades, humans have searched for ways to soar through the air without a care in the world.

Now, a pair of engineers believe they have found a solution to this – but they had to look back on the ground for it.

Inspired by the crash of Air India 171 in Ahmedabad three months ago, Project Rebirth is an aircraft survival system designed to anticipate a crash.

If the artificial intelligence (AI) suspects something may go wrong, such as engine failure, it deploys a massive airbag ‘cocoon’ to cushion the aircraft.

The airbags, which are made of layered fabric, shoot out ‘from the nose, belly, and tail in under two sec,’ absorbing the impact.

The Project Rebirth website includes various mock-ups of the system, which appear to be AI-generated, being riddled with spelling mistakes and having a yellow tint to them.

The concept was created by Eshel Wasim and Dharsan Srinivasan at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Dubai.

They said: ‘REBIRTH is more than engineering – it’s a response to grief. A promise that survival can be planned, and that even after failure, there can be a second chance.’

It deploys airbags in a staggered fashion, as well as CO2 canisters and sensors, alerting pilots and preparing the plane for an emergency landing.

Drag parachutes help produce reverse thrust to slow the aircraft in a controlled touchdown.

The design raises some questions, such as the possibility of the system being activated in error and the inevitable weight it would add to a fuselage, thus increasing costs.

One of the engineers said that he was inspired to come up with a solution to air crashes by his mother’s reaction to the Air India crash.

Flight 171 was bound for London Gatwick when it crashed seconds after takeoff, killing all but one of the passengers on board.

An investigation into the disaster is focusing on the fuel lever switches, with one deployed just after the Boeing 787 lifted off the ground.

It is unknown whether the incident was deliberate or an accident.

Wasim and Srinivasan said that the project was born from ‘a moment of heartbreak’.

‘Why isn’t there a system for survival after failure? I shared this with a friend. That emotional storm became hours of research and design’, they said.

Project Rebirth is a finalist for the James Dyson Award, which spotlights inventions that can change the world.

The idea is the latest in a line of unusual concepts to improve air safety.

In 2016, Ukrainian inventor Tatarenko Vladimir Nikolaevich caught global attention with his detachable aircraft cabin.

The fuselage was designed to be made with ultra-lightweight materials such as Kevlar and carbon fibre and would be assisted with parachutes.

However, critics suggested the innovative cabin could in fact weaken an aircraft’s structure.

Concerns were also raised that the removable cabin could pose a risk to people on the ground as it featured no steering function.

Some aircraft have been designed with in-built parachutes, which release in the event of an emergency to bring the whole aircraft slowly to the ground.

One such design is the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System, which became FAA-approved in 1998 and to date remains the only system of its kind.

The parachute is activated within seconds by a solid fuel rocket housed in the rear of the fuselage.

As of 2019, 21 out of 24 aircraft which crashed with the system on board were successfully repaired and returned to service.

However, the main question to be asked of these innovations are whether they are needed in a world where aviation accidents remain incredibly rare.

Last year’s IATA safety report showed that just 1.14 out of a million flights were involved in an accident.

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Hot mic moments are not uncommon in politics, and can give citizens a real insight into how their leaders think and feel.

A recent conversation recorded between Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, without them knowin,g raised eyebrows as the three leaders discussed, very enthusiastically, the likelihood of living 150 years – or even achieving immortality.

But while this topic may sound like it belongs in the realm of science fiction, one scientist has claimed some of their ideas could be ‘viable’.

The Russian, Chinese, and North Korean leaders were chatting together through translators as they walked towards the historic Tiananmen Gate in Beijing.

Putin said: ‘With continuous advances in biotechnology, human organs will be increasingly transplanted — letting us live younger and younger, and perhaps even achieve immortality.’

Xi nodded encouragingly, adding:  ‘In this century, it’s anticipated that it may be possible for people to live to 150 years old.

‘Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days, at 70 years, you are still a child.’

Both Putin and Xi are 72 years old, with the Chinese president only nine months younger than his Russian counterpart.

Though Kim is only 41, he seems to share the same ambition as the Chinese and Russian leaders to keep hold of power for as long as possible.

And one scientist says the possibility of head transplants to keep someone alive for up to 150 years is much closer than the average person might think.

How realistic is a ‘head transplant’?

Alex Zhavoronkov, originally from Latvia but now based in China, is the founder of AI-powered drug discovery company Insilico Medicine.

Last month, he spoke at the world’s largest conference on longevity, held in Denmark, where almost 200 scientists spoke about techniques to improve our lifespans.

He told MailOnline there are numerous scientists ‘working on developing technologies for whole-body transplantation’ – and claimed young organ or whole-body transplantation, also known as ‘body replacement’, is a ‘viable strategy’ for extending life.

Educated in Canada and the US and with a PhD in physics from Moscow State University, Zhavoronkov financed an eight-minute video imagining how a human head transplant could work last year.

The body would come from a brain-dead young donor and the head of the older person seeking would be severed and surgically attached to the donor’s frame.

But head transplants aren’t the only method to turn back the clock in development.

How else could Putin look to extend his life?

Some companies are working on growing specific cells in a lab, in order to repair damaged organs.

Others are looking into ‘recellularisation,’ whereby the scaffolding of an existing organ is used, but with fresh tissue replacing the old.

Meanwhile, others are experimenting with ‘bioprinting’ – using a 3D printer to create organs, which can then be implanted into a human.

Putin’s interest in staying youthful is nothing new. Last year he announced the ‘New Health Preservation Techologies’ project in which he told researchers to work on ‘medical products aimed at reducing the burden of cellular aging’.

The Russian health ministry also ordered researchers to look into neurotechnology to prevent cognitive decline; ways to ‘correct the immune system based on critical markers identified in the aging process’; and bioprinting.

In 2022 the Russian government spent more than 57million rubles in bioprinting, and a year later a Russian company ‘printed’ skin directly onto an open wound, a world first.

But progress has stalled after many leading scientists fled the country after the invasion of Ukraine.

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There’s no shame at all in having problems in the bedroom, but ‘sorry, my forehead teeth won’t get up,’ might be a new one.

Male ratfish, also called ghost sharks, live in the depths of the north-eastern Pacific Ocean and have bulbous green eyes, venomous spines and plates of teeth used to crunch the shells of clams and crabs.

They also have a fleshy rod inside a pocket above their eyes, a bit like the dorsal fin of an angler fish, covered in spikes.

Now researchers have discovered that these are actually teeth, complete with mineralised tips.

These gnashes, however, aren’t used for eating – this appendage, called a tenaculum, is for gripping a female’s pectoral fin during mating, new research has found.

Karly Cohen, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs, who collaborated with the team, said scientists had never spotted teeth outside the mouth in this way before.

She said: This insane, absolutely spectacular feature flips the long-standing assumption in evolutionary biology that teeth are strictly oral structure.

‘The tenaculum is a developmental relic, not a bizarre one-off, and the first clear example of a toothed structure outside the jaw.’

Gareth Fraser, a professor of biology at the University of Florida and senior author of the study, added: ‘If these strange chimaeras are sticking teeth on the front of their head, it makes you think about the dynamism of tooth development more generally.

‘If chimaeras can make a set of teeth outside the mouth, where else might we find teeth?’

To clarify, Fraser doesn’t mean ratfish are a chimaera, best known as a fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail.

Chimaera are cartilaginous fish like sharks, but lack many shark-like traits, like, well, sharp teeth or scales.

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But Fraser and his team wanted to know why ratfish actually have shark-like teeth, albeit ones on a club-like gripper used for sex.

So the researchers examined 40 ratfish specimens, with some over two and a half feet long, as well as fossils, according to the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By using micro-CT scans, they watched as the tenaculum grew over the ratfish’s lifetime from a tiny nub to a long rod used to give love bites.

Molecular tests identified tooth-forming genes in the appendage, which are typically found in the mouths of sharks.

One of the ghost shark’s ancient relatives, the Helodus simplex, which lived 315million years ago, also had a tenaculum stretching from its snout to its upper jaw.

This suggests that tenaculum teeth formed because of evolutionary tinkering or ‘bricolage’, said Michael Coates, a professor of biology at the University of Chicago.

‘We have a combination of experimental data with paleontological evidence to show how these fishes co-opted a preexisting program for manufacturing teeth to make a new device that is essential for reproduction,’ he added.

For Fraser, how a gnarly, not-a-shark shark with a toothy appendage that hooks mates came to be isn’t too surprising. It’s the depths of the ocean, after all.

From fields of wispy crimson worms to alien-like glowing snailfish that have never seen daylight, all sorts of life thrives in this dark, crushing environment.

‘There are still plenty of surprises down in the ocean depths that we have yet to uncover,’ Fraser said.

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No good at football or rugby?

Perhaps you might be do better in this sport, which judges how well players can toss their meat.

Every August there is a contest in eastern Spain, which looks at just that.

You missed it for this year, but could get practising in time for 2026.

Footage from this year’s event shows entrants hurling a large ham into a marked area, to see how far they can get it.

This tradition has been going for decades, and is now a major tourist attraction for the village.

Carrascosa de la Sierra is usually home to just 70 residents, but the population swells to 400 people eager to see the festivities each summer.

Known as the Campeonato de Lanzamiento de Pernil (Ham Throwing Championship), players chuck the jamón as far as they can, much like in the Olympics sport of hammer throwing, but not as globally recognised.

The bizarre sport began as a joke among friends at a local bar in 1997, but is still going decades later.

To stop the jam from going to waste, it is wrapped in tape and bubble wrap before being launched, and players say that if it does have any impact, it will make it more tender.

Whoever wins gets the meat as a trophy, but the done thing is to share it around with locals and visitors alike, so that everyone gets a bit of ham.

There are also categories for women, who throw shoulder hams; children, who launch salchichón; and even toddlers, who toss mini fuet.

This year’s men’s champion was Sergio García, whose throw reached 20.55 metres.

Usually more niche than Spain’s famous La Tomatina festival, this year the ham throw went viral thanks to Talía Benedicto, 24, who has roots in the village and shared a montage of the event on TikTok.

‘The locals are really excited because we’ve put Carrascosa on the map’ she told local media.

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If you’ve ever tried your hands at the drums, but given up, look away now.

That’s because you’ve been outdone by a bunch of mushrooms.

One Manchester band is showing the world that fungi, and some plants, can create music now too.

Bionic and the Wires, created by Jon Ross and Andy Kidd in 2023, are producing tunes in a way you have never seen before.

They plug mushrooms and plants into sensors, which then turn their tiny electrical signals into music notes.

These sensors are attached to bionic arms which then strike down on to instruments.

Ross explained: ‘We connect the plants through some equipment that measures the internal bioelectrical signals in the plant, and that’s converted into a music language which is called MIDI, and that is then translated into motor signals, which is how the robotic arms move.’

The band’s array of mushrooms and plants create different beats due to their different electrical activity, producing breathtaking music for audiences to behold.

The group rehearse in the Boiler House community workshop in Manchester’s Moss Side and source their mushrooms from the local greening iniative Sow the City.

They want their music to change how people see plants and fungi.

‘It’s a really good way to connect with them and a really sort of emotional experience,’ Ross said.

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Israel’s military forces have recovered the bodies of two more hostages in Gaza.

The remains of Ilan Weiss and another unnamed captive were found just as Israel launched an offensive on the region.

Mr Weiss, 33, was killed during the attacks of October 7, 2023, at Kibbutz Be’eri.

His body was seized by Hamas and has been held for nearly two years by the terrorist group.

His wife Shiri, 53, and daughter, Noga, 18, were both also taken hostage but were released during a one-week ceasefire in November 2023.

The second recovered body has been identified as that of Idan Shtivi, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7.

He was 28 years old when he was taken hostage during the Hamas attack at the festival. It is not yet clear when or how he died.

A total of 48 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, according to official statistics, of which only 22 are thought to be alive.

Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said his country ‘would not rest’ until the rest of the hostages, both living and dead, are brought home.

The latest development comes as thousands of Palestinians have been told to evacuate Gaza City ahead of large scale offensive by the Israeli military.

The IDF said it would suspend humanitarian pauses to allow aid in Gaza, while it ramps up its offensive.

Among those that have been killed have been Gazans searching for food.

Earlier this week, a ‘double tap’ attack on a hospital left 20 people dead.

The IDF claimed to have been targeting a Hamas surveillance camera.

An initial strike hit a top floor of one of the hospital’s buildings.

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Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri was killed in that blast while filming from the site, according to a fellow journalist and a doctor at the hospital, along with a second person.

Health workers in orange vests, journalists and relatives of patients then rushed up an external staircase to reach the site of the first blast.

Photos taken from below showed at least 16 people gathered on the staircase, trying to help those hit. No one on the staircase was seen holding weapons.

Video footage taken by Al-Ghad TV shows the second strike hitting, causing a large boom and engulfing everyone on the staircase in smoke.

Hospital officials say 18 people were killed in the second strike.

The military did not elaborate on why it struck a second time or how it would have identified militants among the crowd on the staircase.

Its statement was issued after an initial inquiry into the attack, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a ‘tragic mishap’.

He did not elaborate on the nature of any mistake.

The Israel-Hamas war has been one of the bloodiest conflicts for media workers.

Some 189 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza in 22 months of fighting, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Thursday, an Israeli airstrike killed the prime minister of Yemen’s Houthi government as well as several other ministers.

Ahmad Ghaleb al-Rahwi, who became prime minister nearly a year ago, was largely seen as a figurehead rather than part of Houthi top leadership.

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‘Frankenstein’ rabbits with black tendrils sprouting from their faces have been spotted in the US.

Looking like they’re straight out of HBO’s fungus horror show, The Last of Us, these mutated bunnies have been spotted in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Rabbits have long called the town home, often seen hopping from garden to garden, munching on lawns.

But local resident Susan Mansfield said she recently saw one with ‘black quills or black toothpicks sticking out all around’.

She told local TV station KOSA: ‘I thought he would die off during the winter, but he didn’t, he came back a second year, and it grew.’

What… is going on?

Recent sightings of the bunnies with sluglike growths date back to at least last year, when a Reddit user shared photographs of a rabbit in her garden covered in horns.

The bunnies are infected with a disease called cottontail rabbit papilloma, which was first described in the 1930s in cottontail rabbits from Iowa and Kansas.

Behind the infection is the wily Shope papilloma virus, which wriggles inside a rabbit’s skin cells and rewires them so they replicate uncontrollably.

Over time, these cells pile up and form warty, black lesions called rabbit papillomas that sprout from the rabbit’s neck, shoulders, eyes and eyelids.

They can vary in size, from as small as a pea to a few centimetres.

These unsightly tumours aren’t just to freak us out – they’re there so the virus has plenty of space to keep on spreading.

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Though, the tumours themselves aren’t infectious. The virus is transmitted by mosquitoes and ticks, with cases peaking in summer when the biting insects are most active.

Will the rabbits be okay?

Rabbits typically overcome the disease on their own, with research suggesting that in about 35% of affected rabbits, papillomas disappear within six months.

There is no known cure, and while most infected cottontails survive, the growths can limit a rabbit’s ability to eat, causing it to starve to death.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife says in an advisory: ‘For this reason, CPW does not recommend euthanising rabbits with papillomas unless they are interfering with the rabbit’s ability to eat and drink.’

Sometimes, however, the warts progress into squamous cell carcinoma, a serious form of skin cancer.

Is there any risk to humans? What about other animals?

Colorado wildlife officials have warned people not to touch or feed these strange-looking rabbits.

But people shouldn’t fear them, Kara Van Hoose, a spokeswoman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told Metro.

‘This current strain of the Shope papilloma virus cannot be transmitted to humans,’ she stressed. ‘But it’s impossible to say if the virus mutates in the future, that it couldn’t.’

Cottontail rabbit papillomavirus is part of a family of viruses called papillomaviruses.

Many mammals have species-specific papillomaviruses. In deer, for example, it can cause them to grow fleshy, bubble-shaped tumours.

Humans have our own – HPV, otherwise called human papillomavirus. There are many types of HPV, a common sexually transmitted disease, which tend to cause genital warts.

‘It, thankfully, does not cause us to grow tentacles or horns on our faces,’ said Van Hoose.

‘We couldn’t say for sure if that could change in the future, as viruses can evolve and mutate over time.’

There is some risk of the virus transmitting to domesticated rabbits, so pet owners have been warned to keep their furry friends indoors, said Van Hoose.

If they do become sickened with cottontail rabbit papillomavirus, they should be taken to a veterinarian, according to a CPW tipsheet.

Is an outbreak possible?

Probably not, Van Hoose stressed, who called reports about rising cases or outbreak fears ‘overblown’.

‘This is a virus which appears every summer and can affect rabbits all over the US. The public in general should not be concerned,’ she said.

Van Hoose said the agency didn’t receive a single report of an infected rabbit until news outlets began reporting on them this month.

‘Since then, we’ve taken maybe two dozen reports?’ she said. ‘It could be 24 different rabbits or six rabbits seen four times.’ 

Some social media users say they have seen the horny rabbits in Washington, looking almost like a unicorn.

Chase Gunnell, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told Metro that agency officials have not received any recent sighting reports from Seattle or elsewhere in the state.

‘We cannot provide confirmation of a wildlife disease based on an unverified social media post alone,’ Gunnell added.

‘While we are not aware of risks to people, we also cannot comment on human health implications.’

Rabbits with antlers, colloquially called jackalopes, were described in journals between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Historians and scientists believe that sightings of these mythical creatures may have simply been rabbits suffering from papilloma.

‘I think they look pretty metal!’ Van Hoose added. ‘It’s interesting what nature can do.’

This article was first published on August 13, 2025.

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Wild pigs in the US are turning a colour only comparable to Cool Blue Gatorade.

California is home to some 400,000 feral hogs, but game hunters say the insides of wild pigs they have killed this year are a neon blue.

Dan Burton, who owns a wildlife control company, told the Los Angeles Times that he found a discoloured swine in Monterey County in March.

He trapped some wild pigs which had been nibbling the crops of an agriculture firm, only to see their insides were a slushie blue when he cut them open.

‘I’m not talking about a little blue,’ the Salinas local said. ‘I’m talking about neon blue, raspberry blue.’

Blue pigs, however, are nothing new. A user on the image-sharing website, Imgur, shared photographs of a ‘weird pig’ in 2015.

‘My in-laws live on a ranch in Morgan Hill, [Santa Clara County], and they shot a wild pig on it. They thought it was a normal pig until they cut it open,’ they wrote.

While their in-laws do live near an abandoned mercury mine – copper poisoning can tint flesh blue – the user said they’ve shot pigs before and not seen them have blue fat.

They added: ‘Everything else about the pig was normal, the meat, blood, etc. The only weird part was the blue fat throughout the body.’

Burton alerted the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which confirmed the pig had ingested diphacinone, a slow-acting poison.

Diphacinone is used by farmers to keep squirrel, rat and mice populations in check, placed in bait stations for the critters to eat.

When consumed, the ‘extremely toxic’ chemical stops blood from clotting, causing heavy internal bleeding, fever and back pain, according to a government fact-sheet.

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Pest control companies dye the coffee bean-shaped substance blue to make it clear to humans that it’s a rodenticide.

But pigs can’t read warning labels – state wildlife officials found the poison in a pig’s stomach and liver, suggesting the hogs have been eating diphacinone out of bait stations.

Wild pigs, a cross between domestic pigs and wild boars, are omnivores, so they may be eating both the poisoned rodents as well as the bait.

The surreal blue hue of the pig meat isn’t because of the rodent control itself but rather the dye, which leaks into the animal’s muscles and fat.

This bizarre side-effect happens when an animal consumes a large quantity of diphacinone, meaning that even if a pig appears juicy and red inside, it may still have ingested some of the poison.

People and predators who eat meat painted blue by the poison can suffer ‘secondary exposure’ because the substance can remain in the animal’s system for weeks, studies have found.

Cooking the discoloured meat does little to decrease the concentration of the poison.

Burton said that he found the blue pigs had been eating from squirrel bait stations.

Given that it takes days for the poison to take effect on small animals, let alone 91kg pigs, he said that may be why the swine appeared perfectly fine.

Diphacinone has been mostly prohibited across California since 2024, usable only by certified pest control staff, government officials or at farms.

Wildlife officials are now warning hunters, trappers and anyone who eats wild pig to stay away from blue coloured meat.

Anyone who comes into contact with blue hogs is urged to report it to the agency.

No other blue-tinged animals have been reported in Monterey County since March.

Researchers in 2018 found that nearly one in 10 wild pigs living near human-controlled areas was contaminated with rodenticide.

CDFW pesticide investigations coordinator Dr Ryan Bourbour said in a statement: ‘Hunters should be aware that the meat of game animals, such as wild pig, deer, bear and geese, might be contaminated if that game animal has been exposed to rodenticides.

‘Rodenticide exposure can be a concern for non-target wildlife in areas where applications occur in close proximity to wildlife habitat.’

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One of the largest nuclear power plants in Europe was forced to shut down after some unusual visitors.

Gravelines nuclear power plant in northern France was fully shut down on Monday after a ‘massive and unpredictable’ swarm of jellyfish entered the plant’s pumping stations.

The power station, located between the cities of Dunkirk and Calais, is connected to the North Sea via a canal, which pumps in sea water to cool its reactors.

Its six units produce 900megawatts of power each – but four of them were forced to halt production over the jellyfish invasion.

Data from EDF, which runs the power plant, showed the other two units were already offline for planned maintenance.

The power company said it did not know what species of jellyfish was involved in the shutdown, but that its staff are working to restart the reactor safely.

Reactors 2-4 stopped automatically just before midnight when the filter drums of the pumping stations became packed with the swarm, with reactor 6 going offline several hours later.

EDF said the event did not affect the safety of the facilities, staff or the environment.

It’s understood the filter pumps haven’t been damaged, and that they simply need to be cleaned and the jellyfish removed before the reactors can restart.

This isn’t the first time the Gravelines area has seen swarms of jellyfish, with swarms washing up on beaches there several times in recent years.

The increase is likely due to water temperatures rising thanks to global warming, as well as the introduction of invasive species.

Derek Wright, marine biology consultant with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, explained: ‘Jellyfish breed faster when water is warmer, and because areas like the North Sea are becoming warmer, the reproductive window is getting wider and wider.

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‘Jellyfish can also hitch rides on tanker ships, entering the ships’ ballast tank in one port and often getting pumped out into waters halfway across the globe.

‘Everyone talks about nuclear being clean, but we don’t think about the unintended consequences of heat pollution.’

While it’s not known what species of jellyfish was sucked into the Gravelines cooling system, one invasive species known as the Asian Moon jellyfish was first spotted in the North Sea in 2020.

The species, native to the Pacific Northwest, has caused similar problems at nuclear plants in China, Japan and India.

Asian Moon jellyfish are not considered dangerous as their sting is incredibly mild and causes very little harm to humans.

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