Weird Science? | Awesome!

• Officials in Midway, Arkansas, still don't know what caused flames to shoot out of a hole in the ground on Sept. 17. Volunteer fire chief Donald Tucker was summoned to private property at the edge of town where the flames were shooting up to 12 feet high, reported the Springfield News-Leader. Tucker inspected the site after the fire subsided and said the 2-foot-diameter hole was about 3 feet deep and made a 45-degree turn at the bottom. "I took a temperature reading of it and it showed 780 degrees inside the hole," he added, but he couldn't identify the source of the flames. There are no gas lines nearby, and there was no smell of gas before or during the fire. He also ruled out a meteor strike or flaming space junk. Geologists from the Arkansas Geological Survey inspected the hole and concluded it had been dug by an animal, but they took soil samples for testing. County judge Mickey Pendergrass said Satan had also been ruled out. [Springfield News-Leader, 9/19/2018]

• Kotaku.com reported on Oct. 3 that gamer Xopher credits the arcade game "Dance Dance Revolution" with restoring his health. Xopher grew up in Arkansas and loved playing DDR at arcades. But when his cardiologist told him he'd have to trim down from his 325 pounds or risk needing a heart transplant, Xopher got serious about the game. He found an "excellently priced" DDR machine on eBay and restored it, starting with just three games a night. Between 2014 and 2018 he got to under 200 pounds: "I've gone from a blood pressure of 140/80 to 112/65. ... I was healthy for the first time in my life." He also said he's now playing DDR competitively. [Kotaku.com, 10/3/2018]