A hiker who discovered a mysterious "alien" rotating disc of ice floating below a waterfall has left nature fans in awe.
Dan Brown, 32, was hiking up Beinn Bhuidhe in Argyll, Scotland, with his dad on January 2 when the pair happened to come across a glen, where they spotted the perfect circle of ice slowly spinning around.
"To happen across something so serene and perfectly formed, it felt surreal,” Dan Brown, from Dunoon, told SWNS.
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"We’d taken mountain bikes with us and, for the best part, had been carrying them up a hydro track.
"Visibility wasn’t great but after about an hour-and-a-half, the snow stopped and cloud cover started to clear."
It was then that the pair "noticed the ice disk slowly spinning at the foot of a small waterfall".
"Neither of us had ever seen anything like it – a perfect circle of ice slowly rotating in the water," said Brown, who added he and his father hadn't come across any other hikers during their walk.
He added the phenomenon was even more special as they "felt like we were the only people for miles around".
Nature enthusiasts on social media were equally blown away by the strange phenomenon.
One took to Twitter, writing: "Look at THIS… it's incredible!"
Another simply added: "Aliens!"
Brown initially assumed the bizarre sight was formed by a current at the bottom of the waterfall.
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However, he later discovered the rare sighting was in fact an ice disc.
A 2016 study suggested that "currents likely help such disks form initially but temperature changes are what keep them spinning," according to National Geographic.
"Warm water is less dense than cooler water, so as ice melts and sinks, it creates a vortex under the disk that causes it to rotate. The warmer the water, the faster the disk spins."
The Met Office added ice discs were "a rare phenomenon that tends to occur in very cold oceans and lakes".
The forecaster added: "They are most frequently seen in the Baltic Sea and around Antarctica but also form relatively frequently on the Great Lakes of the United States and Canada," a far cry from the usual climate found in the UK.
The news comes following reports that temperatures are set to plummet in the coming weeks as Britain prepares for a major chill.
WXCharts weather maps outlined the wintry conditions supposedly on their way to the UK, with six inches of snow and temperatures of -8C a possibility by February 10.
A weather warning from the Met Office stated: "Freezing fog will lead to difficult driving conditions and could cause travel delays in some areas."
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