My Science School

Eye of Sahara

Also known as the "Richat structure", it is located in Mauritania, the largest desert in the world today, in the southwest of the Sahara desert in Africa. Its diameter reaches 48 kilometers and is clearly visible in space. At first, the terrain was thought to be formed by the impact of meteorites. At present, geologists think that it may be caused by the rise of geological structure or erosion. The formation of this ring shape is still a mystery.

Ball's Pyramid Island

The pyramid island of Bair is the highest sea erosion pillar in the world, with a height of 562 meters. It is located in the southeast of Lord Howe Island in the Pacific Ocean. It is the remnant of shield volcano, formed about 7 million years ago.

Ice Canyon

Located in Greenland, this ice Valley is eroded by water from melting ice and snow. It looks very beautiful and has a depth of about 150 feet.

Crooked forest Poland

This is a "crooked forest" located outside the Nowe czarnowo area in Western Pomerania, Poland. It can be seen from the picture that the pine branches in this forest are crooked. It is understood that this pine was planted here in 1939, but whether its bending is man-made or natural is still unknown.

Ice methane bubble

The microbes in the lake bottom consume organic matter to produce methane bubbles. In summer, the bubbles rise to the lake surface or flow in the lake. In winter, they are frozen in the lake water, which will produce the picture below. Remember not to smoke while watching.

Calcified lake, Tanzania

Photographer Nick Bronte published a series of gloomy and horrible photos of the lake on the Internet. The photo was taken from the lake of natron in northern Tanzania, Africa. The lake also has a horrible name - Soul breaking lake. Why does it have such a horrible name? It turns out that the animals here will become "stones". Here, the temperature in the lake can reach 60 ° C, and the water is salty. All animals entering the lake end up dead. Many dead birds and bats can be found here, so it has become a death trap for animals. It calcifies any animal trying to enter its waters.

Danish Black Sun

In the spring of Denmark, millions of European starlings gather to form huge and complex shapes in the sky.

It's the ice vortex

In Hokkaido, Japan, there has been a huge ice vortex with a diameter of 30 kilometers. It needs to be photographed by plane or satellite to see the whole picture. It is a rare scene because thousands of small pieces of ice drift with the current vortex.

Volcanic eruption

Volcanic eruption is one of the most important natural disasters on earth. As the name implies, it is a kind of lightning phenomenon caused by volcanic eruption. Such lightning is only about one meter long and lasts for several milliseconds. It is often a flash of lightning. It was not until nearly ten years that human beings confirmed its existence with the aid of instruments.

In recent years, people have observed volcanic lightning, including the eruption of Wisteria volcano in Chile in 2008, the eruption of Icelandic volcano in 2011 and the eruption of Japanese volcano. Photographers record this gorgeous moment through long exposure. In fact, it is impossible to have so many lightning in a moment.

Antelope Canyon

Located in the north of Arizona, Antelope Canyon is one of the top ten geological wonders. It is divided into two parts: the Upper Antelope Canyon and the Lower Antelope Canyon. This peculiar terrain makes the light here beautiful and strange. Some parts of the valley bottom can only be exposed to sunlight at noon.

The canyon used to be the habitat of pronghorn antelope. Antelope often roamed in the valley, so it was named "Antelope Canyon". It is also an Indian reserve. Until now, some old Navajo people still meditate here to complete the communication with the spirit of the earth.

Fire fall

The fire fall refers to the 2000 foot high waterfall with orange light in the setting sun, just like the lava pouring down the cliff, which is one of the most famous natural wonders, "fire fall".

It's an optical effect formed by sunlight at a certain angle on the waterfall. This landscape is only possible to be seen in two weeks at the end of February every year.

Pictures of fire falls are extremely rare, and many photographers often take years to get a picture.

There are two reasons for the difficulty of shooting:

1. The formation of waterfall. The source of the waterfall is the melting water of the snow mountain on the chieftain rock, while the snow on the chieftain rock generally melts in January every year. By the end of February, the waterfall was probably dead.

2. The angle of the sun. The sun must completely cover the waterfall. The sun at this angle only appears in February. Unfortunately, it happens to be the most unpredictable month in Yosemite National Park. If there are clouds in the sky, the "fire waterfall" will become a "water waterfall".

Lake Maracaibo

Lake Maracaibo, the mouth of the katantombo River in Venezuela, has the largest and longest lasting lightning on earth.

There are 260 thunderstorms in a year, which take place 10 hours a day, 280 times an hour, and 1.2 million times a year.

The arc formed by lightning in the night sky is extremely shocking, with a length of 5 kilometers and a strength of 400000 amperes. Therefore, it is also known as lightning storm lake.

Its thunderstorm level is so strong that it can be seen as far as 400 kilometers away. Therefore, in the past hundreds of years, many ships sailing in the local area will regard it as the "Lighthouse" to guide the direction.

Underwater waterfall

Located not far from the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the underwater waterfall is hidden below the sea level and almost invisible to the naked eye. Its huge drop can reach 3500 meters, 4 times higher than the world's largest waterfall, anhel waterfall, which is a real underwater wonder.

Here, 5 billion liters of sea water pour down from the cliff every second, which is equivalent to pouring 25 Amazon Rivers into the sea in one second, forming a waterfall about 200 meters wide. Scientists used to sink here to measure the current meter. Obviously, the current meter was damaged by the huge amount of water, but it is precisely because of this that people found the existence of the underwater waterfall.

Izhen volcano

Izhen volcano in Indonesia, the lava it erupts is all blue! Imagine a 5-meter-high flame flickering in the night sky. It's so cool.

There is a lot of sulfur in the gas emitted by the volcano. Under high pressure, sulfur and air ignite, and the flame generated is blue. That's why Yizhen volcano emits blue lava.

The death ice column

The death ice column is a kind of natural phenomenon in the sea area of the north and south pole of the earth. Because of the low temperature, the salt in the sea water is separated out, the sea water is frozen and spreads to the sea bottom in the shape of a column, and the creatures everywhere are frozen to death. In short: the cold sea is frozen!

The death icicle is extremely rare. It was first discovered by human beings in the 1960s, but limited to photographic equipment and technology, there is no image data to record the situation at that time. Until 2013, the BBC recorded the whole process of the formation of the death icicle for the first time.

Flying saucer clouds

Flying saucer clouds, known as lenticular clouds, often appear when humid air passes over mountains, because they look like flying saucers and are often misunderstood as aliens visiting the earth.

Lenticular clouds are very rare. They usually only form at a height of more than 7000 meters. At the same time, mountains are an indispensable factor. On earth, there are only a few mountains of this height. In 2015, podlike clouds appeared over the UK.

Falling ice crystal

When the weather is very cold and the sun just rises or sets, the falling ice crystal will reflect the sunlight and produce a rare light column, generally lasting only about 1 minute.

A little hard to understand? In human words, ice crystals in the air reflect sunlight, forming a light column, which is the sun column.

The formation process is as follows:

When ice falls from clouds at high levels, it sometimes forms a flat plate, shaped like some ice crystals. (it's actually a mirror in the sky)

Air resistance makes these ice crystals almost horizontal when they fall to the ground (the mirror falls to the ground).

Sunlight reflected by ice crystals is therefore almost entirely vertical, resulting in a heliospheric effect (mirrors on the ground reflect sunlight to form a log).

This kind of phenomenon usually occurs around - 20 ?.

Mars tide

Mars tide is a kind of fluorescence beach, which is a phenomenon caused by the luminescent microorganisms in the sea water washed into Shanghai beach. The common fluorescence beach includes green and blue. Most of the luminescent microorganisms produce fluorescence, which will glow when hit by the waves.

Its formation is due to a kind of bioluminescence phenomenon. It is mainly formed by dinoflagellate - Noctiluca, which is small in size and hard to be detected by the naked eye. Noctiluca also has a romantic nickname - blue tears. When disturbed, they emit a very bright blue light to attract senior predators such as fish, thus expelling their direct predators.

 

Credit : Quora

Picture Credit : Google

Here are 17 coolest facts about the Universe.

1. Time concept is within the Universe. Time doesn't exist, clock does. Time is just an illusion. If you think time is constant throughout the Universe then you're probably wrong. It varies according to gravity and speed.

2. Universe wasn't forever. It originated from a singularity.

3. According to NO BOUNDARY THEORY, no one has created the universe and no one directs are fate. Why? Since, everything needs time to be exited in, but time is within the Universe. Where and when would the creator live in?

4. The biggest black hole in the observable universe is TON 618.

5. The biggest star in the observable universe is UY SCUTY.

6. Black holes are actually not holes, they are collapsed and dead stars which leave a residue in the form of black holes whose gravity and mass is much more than the star itself and infinite density.

7. Spacetime tells matter how to move, matter tells spacetime how to curve.

8. There are more stars in a galaxy than the grains of sand on earth but there are more atoms in a grain of sand than the number of stars in a galaxy.

9. The sun has enough heat to enlighten the atmosphere for about 4 billion years from today.

10. If you leave earth at the age of 15 with the speed of light and return after 5 years, you'll find all your friends are 65 y/o now. This is due to time dilation. Remember point 1? Time is an illusion.

11. In a way, we represent energy. And also energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. The energy we have within us is as old as the universe is i.e. 13.4 billion years old. Sounds like holy shit!

12. Whenever you look up in the sky, you see into the past in an encrypted way.

13. As the universe keeps expanding, in the beginning of the universe, it is said to have a size smaller than a proton.

14. If universe was forever, there would have been no life. Because all the stars in the universe are continuously heating up the universe. In this way, even sun would do the same work and the planets like earth would have no life due to extreme heat.

15. The light of sun you observe is the light sun radiated 8.20 minutes ago.

16. If there is an intelligent life other than us then they must be very very far away from us otherwise they would have visited us by now.

17. The most dangerous thing we can find on any other planet would be humans.

Adding some more:

18. There is no sound in space. Space is unbelievably silent. Sound has no medium to travel in space. Space travelers use technology to communicate in the space.

19. 700 million light years away from Earth, there is böotes void, one of the largest known voids of the observable universe with a diameter of 300 million light years and has approximately 50–60 galaxies only!

20. A year on Venus is 224 Earth days i.e. time of revolution and a day on Venus i.e. time of rotation is 243 Earth days. A year on Venus is longer than its day.

21. Don't cry in space, your years won't fall.

22. Imagine if alien females go through menstrual cycle, where would their blood flow on zero gravity?

25. When you look at the person in front of you, you look 0.0003 nanoseconds in the past.

26. If Andromeda galaxy was visible to us with naked eyes, it'd seem to be 6 times bigger than the moon.

27. A spacesuit costs US$ 12 million.

28. The observable universe, 93 billion light years, it just made of 103 folds of a paper. Seems unbelievable because it is impossible to fold a paper more than 8 times but this is proven by scientists. If you had a paper large enough that you can fold it as many times you want then the entire observable universe would fit in 103 folds!

29. Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar. The 13.7 billion year lifetime of the universe mapped onto a single year. At this scale the Big Bang takes place on January 1 at midnight, the current time is December 31 at midnight, with Beyoncé in it. Each second is 434 years.

30. If you look outside from a black hole, you could look at the entire universe just as the size of your T.V.

 

Credit : Quora

Picture Credit : Google

After just one day, the entire planet would be plunged into darkness.

Most fossil fuel power stations would shut down, causing cascading blackouts worldwide, once they ran out of fuel. Solar panels and wind turbines would still be able to generate electricity in some areas of the planet, but eventually, they would stop working after a few months or a couple of years.

Nuclear power plants around the world would shut down and enter an automatic safe mode so as to prevent a possible meltdown of the nuclear reactor, without people to use the energy that these power plants make.

Also, no power means that water pumps in subway systems would stop working. The tunnels in subway systems would fill with water.

Domestic animals, would either starve to death, or escape their houses, and start scavenging for food.

Pets still trapped inside their houses would be able to eat food in kitchens, but eventually their food supply would run out, and their only choice would be to escape and look for food elsewhere.

But the truth is that a lot of animals would not be able to survive. Many dog and cat breeds would be simply unfit for this new environment and they would be hunted down by animals like wolves.

Animals like rats and cockroaches would thrive off of the remaining food supply, but once their supply ran out, their populations would plummet.

Some animals would actually go extinct in the absence of humans. Such as head lice.

Head lice have evolved to feed exclusively on human blood. If we disappeared, head lice would join us.

Food everywhere would be rotting. Without power, there would be no refrigeration, and with no refrigeration, our food supply would start to decay.

Dairy products would begin to spoil within a few hours. The fruit would start to decay. As the fruit decays, it releases a gas called ethylene, which causes the other fruits to decay at a faster pace. Meat would also start rotting, and it would be eaten by flies, maggots and rats.

After more than a week, due to the heat coming from the fuel rods, spent fuel pools inside nuclear power plants would begin to boil away. The fuel rods themselves catch fire and burn.

The equivalent of 20 cores worth of radiation would be released into the environment, and nothing would be safe for miles in each direction. This would also cause some nuclear reactors to explode violently.

After several months, without people to keep them at bay, wild animals would start returning to the urban landscape.

Animals such as coyotes, bobcats, among others, would be the first new residents, followed by animals like bears, cougars, etc.

Animals trapped inside zoos would succumb to starvation. Other animals would be able to escape, then they would start roaming around, scavenging for food, trying to survive. You could see animals like apes, elephants, bears, wolves, all in the same place.

After one year, plant vegetation would start taking over. Weeds and grass would start growing in cracks in roads and highways.

Buildings would start getting overrun by plants and ivy. Plants would start to take root in stone and masonry work, and they would start to damage the foundations of buildings.

A lot of animal species would also flourish in our absence. Animals like the giant panda, the Asian elephant, among others, had to put up with humans destroying their habitats, and hunting them down for various reasons. If humans were to disappear, these animals would be extremely happy. Granted, they still would have things to worry about, but without humans, one of their biggest threats would be gone forever.

Certain species of birds would also be pretty happy. Without people, some species of birds would not have to worry about being shot by a hunter’s firearm, and they would also be able to fly without the fear of dying by flying into an airplane’s engine.

In the absence of humans, wildfires will go unchecked. A lightning strike has the possibility to start a fire in the countryside, or in a certain building in a city. Without firefighters to keep these fires at bay, they will spread quickly and raze entire cities to the ground.

 

Picture Credit : Google