Wonders of the World

Wonders Of The Natural World

Rare and Phenomenal

WebEcoist and Environmental Oddities

1. Sailing Stones

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The mysterious moving stones of the packed-mud desert ofDeath Valley

have been a center of scientificcontroversy for decades.

Rocks weighing up to hundreds of pounds have been known

to move up to hundreds ofyards at a time.

Some scientists have proposed that a combination of

strong winds and surface ice account for these movements.

However, this theory does not explain evidence of different rocks

starting side by side and moving at different rates and in disparate directions.

Moreover, the physics calculations do not fully support this theory

as wind speeds ofhundreds of miles per hour

would be needed to move some of the stones.

2. Columnar Basalt

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When a thick lava flow cools, it contracts vertically but

cracks perpendicular to its directional flow with remarkable geometric regularity-in most cases forming a regular grid of remarkable

hexagonal extrusionsthat almost appear to be made by man.

One of the most famous such examples is the

Giants Causewayon the coast ofIreland(shown above),

though the largest and most widely recognized

would be Devils Tower inWyoming.

Basalt also forms different but equally fascinating ways

when eruptions are exposed to air or water.

3. Blue Holes

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Blue holes are giant and sudden drops in underwater elevation

that get their name from the dark and foreboding blue tone they exhibit

when viewed from above in relationship to surrounding waters.

They can be hundreds of feet deep and while divers are able to explore some of them they are largely devoid of oxygen that would support sea lifedue to poor water circulation - leaving them eerily empty.

Some blue holes, however, contain ancient fossil remains

that have been discovered, preserved in their depths.

4. Red Tides

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Red tides are also known as algal blooms

sudden influxes of massive amounts of colored single-cell algae

that can convert entire areas of an ocean or beach into a blood red color.

While some of these can be relatively harmless,

others can be harbingers of deadly toxins that

cause the deaths of fish, birds and marine mammals.

In some cases, even humans have been harmed by red tides

though no human exposure are known to have been fatal.

While they can be fatal, the constituent phytoplankton

in red tides are not harmful in small numbers.

5. Ice Circles

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While many see these apparently perfect ice circles as worthy of

conspiracy theorizing, scientists generally accept that

they are formed by eddies in the water that

spin a sizable piece of ice in acircular motion.

As a result of this rotation, other pieces of ice and flotsam

wear relatively evenly at the edges of the ice

until it slowly forms into an essentially ideal circle.

Ice circles have been seen with diameters of over 500 feet and can also

at times be found in clusters and groups of different sizes as shown above.

6.Mammatus Clouds

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True to their ominous appearance, mammatus clouds are often

harbingers of a coming storm or other extreme weather system.

Typically composed primarily of ice, they can

extend for hundreds of miles in each direction and

individual formations can remain visibly static

for ten to fifteen minutes at a time.

While they may appear foreboding they are merely the messengers

- appearing around, before or even after severe weather.

7. Fire Rainbows

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A circumhorizontal fire rainbow arc occurs at a rare confluence of

right time and right place for the sun and certain clouds.

Crystals within the clouds refract light into the various visible waves of

the spectrum but only if they are arrayed correctly relative to the ground below.

Due to the rarity with which all of these events happen in conjunction

with one another, there are relatively few remarkable photos of this phenomenon.

8.Sinkholes

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Sinkholes are one of the worlds scariest natural phenomena.

Over time, water erodes the soil under the planets surface until in some cases, quite suddenly,the land above gives way and collapses into the earth.

Many sinkholes occur naturally while others are the result of human intervention.

Displacing groundwater can open cavities while

broken pipes can erode otherwise stable subterranean sediments.

Urban sinkholes, up to hundreds of feet deep have formed and

consumed parts of city blocks, sidewalks and even entire buildings.

9. Penitentes

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Named after peak-hooded New Mexican monks (lower right above),

penitentes are dazzling naturally-forming ice blades

that stick up at sharp angles toward the sun.

Rarely found except at high altitudes, they can grow up

taller than a human and form in vast fields.

As ice melts in particular patterns, valleys formed

by initial melts leave mountains in their wake.

Strangely, these formations ultimately slow the melting process

as the peaks cast shadows on the deeper surfaces below

and allow for winds to blow over the peaks, cooling them.

10Lenticular Clouds

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Ever wonder the truth about UFOs?

Avoided by traditional pilots but loved by sailplane aviators,

lenticular clouds are masses of cloud with strong internal uplift

that can drive a motorless flyer to high elevations.

Their shape is quite often mistaken for a mysterious

flying object or the artificial cover for one.

Generally, lenticular clouds are formed as wind speeds up

while moving around a large land object such as a mountain.

11.Light Pillars

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Light pillars appear as eerily upright luminous columns in the sky,

beacons cast into the air above without an apparent source.

These are visible when light reflects just right off of ice crystals

from either the sun (as in the two top images above)

or from artificial ground sources such as street or park lights.

Despite their appearance as near-solid columns of light,

the effect is entirely created by our own relative viewpoint.

12. Sundogs

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Like light pillars, sundogs are the product of light passing through crystals.

The particular shape and orientation of the crystals can have

a drastic visual impact for the viewer, producing

a longer tail and changing the range of colors one sees.

The relative height of thesun in the sky

shifts the distance the sundogs appear to be on either side of the sun.

Varying climactic conditions on otherplanets in our solar system

produce halos with up to four sundogs from those planets perspectives.

Sundogs have been speculated about and discussed since ancient times

and written records describing the various attributes of our sun

date back the Egyptians and Greeks.

13. Fire Whirls

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Fire whirls (also known as fire devils or tornadoes)

appear in or around raging fires when

the right combination of climactic conditions is present.

Fire whirls can be spawned by other natural events such as

earthquakes and thunderstorms, and can be incredibly dangerous,

in some cases spinning well out of the zone of a fire itself to cause

devastation and death in a radius not even reached by heat or flame.

Fire whirls have been known to be nearly a mile high,

have wind speeds of over 100 miles per hour

and to last for 20 or more minutes.

14. Orange Moons

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This last phenomena is something most people have seen before

- beautiful orange moon hanging low in the sky.

But what causes this phenomena

- and, for that matter, does the moon have a color at all?

When the moon appears lower on the horizon,rays of light

bouncing off ithave to pass through a great deal more

of our atmosphere which slowly strips away everything but yellows, oranges and reds.

The bottommost image above is true to the hues of the moon

but has enhanced colors to more clearly show the differences in shade

that illustrate the mixed topography and minerology

that tell the story of the moons surface.

Looking at the colors in combination with the craters

one can start to trace the history of impacts and

consequent material movements across the face of our mysterious moon.