10 OF THE COOLEST AND MOST SURREAL

NATURAL PHENOMENA ON EARTH

It's easy to get lost in cars and offices and grocery stores and forget that there's a
bigger, more beautiful world we don't always get to see. But there's stunning stuff
happening every day, in some cases right outside your door.
So let's take a whirl through some of the most incredible, sometimes mind-boggling
phenomena the Earth has to offer — along with a little of the science behind them.
1. Desert roses

the paleobear/Flickr
Sting wasn't making it up: There really is such a thing as a desert rose.
It's a special form of the mineral gypsum that can develop in dry sandy places that
occasionally flood. The switching between wet and dry lets gypsum crystals
form between grains of sand, trapping them.
2. Giant permafrost explosions

REUTERS/Vladimir Pushkarev/Russian Centre of Arctic Exploration

As the climate is changing, new phenomena are developing — none quite so
explosively as this one.
It turns out that if you heat frozen methane trapped in the Siberian permafrost
enough, it turns into a gas, eventually building up so much pressure that the ground
explodes. The loud boom and giant hole these bursts create were first reported in
2013.

3. Rainbow eucalyptus

Forest and Kim Starr/Flickr

Hailing from the Philippines and Indonesia, the rainbow eucalyptus, also known as
the rainbow gum, is probably the most colorful tree on Earth. Its striped look is caused
by bark turning colors and peeling away as it ages.
The youngest bark is bright green because it contains chlorophyll (usually found in
leaves), then turns first purple then red then brown as it gets older, loses chlorophyll,
and picks up tannins (also found in wine).
In an ironic twist, huge amounts of rainbow eucalyptus wood pulp is turned into white
paper every year.

4. Eye of the Sahara

Flickr/Daniel Oines
Formally known as the "Richtat structure," the Eye of the Sahara is inMauritania.
Scientists are still trying to confirm how it was formed, but they think it's the eroded
remains of a giant dome of rock. If so, it would have originally formed when magma
pushing up towards the surface of the Earth created a bulge, like a pimple.
Each band of the ring is made of a different type of rock that erodes at a different
speed. It's also the "almost home" signal for astronauts landing in Florida. In
fact, astronauts are mostly responsible for teaching us there's something there in the
first place, since the formation is difficult to recognize when you walk over it.
5. Giant snake orgies

Fred Greenslade/Reuters
Maybe you don't really like snakes, but how do you feel about tens of thousands of
harmless snakes waiting out the winter in underground limestone dens? That's a real
thing in Manitoba, Canada, home of the highest concentration of snakes in the
world, according to National Geographic.
In May, they slither out of their nests to mate, with dozens of smaller male snakes
lurking, waiting to ambush larger females.
"Imagine trying to find a slightly bigger piece of spaghetti in a colander of spaghetti,
and it's moving," Bob Mason, a scientist at Oregon State University, told The New York
Times this spring.
6. Bright red Lake Natron

NASA/Wikimedia Commons
Lake Natron, in Tanzania, can hit 140 degrees Fahrenheit and, thanks to a nearby
volcano, alkalinity at the level of pure ammonia.
That means it's almost deserted, except for a particularly hardy fish, the microbes that
make it look red, and lesser flamingoes. (The birdsactually use the lake as their only
breeding ground — not just because they're color coordinated, but because there
aren't very many predators around to eat the chicks.)
But animals that do die in the lake end up so coated in baking soda and similar
chemicals that they look like they've been turned to stone.

7. Waterspouts

A waterspout near Singapore. Neil Anderson /Reuters

Waterspouts look like liquid tornadoes, but while they can form during storms, they
can also develop on calm, open ocean— swirling towers of wind climbing up from the
water to the sky.
They are most common in the Florida Keys, although they've also been spotted on the
Great Lakes.
8. Clonal tree groves

J. Zapell/Wikimedia Commons
That looks like a forest, right? All those trees you could walk between? Wrong. It's all
one tree.
Underneath the soil, a dense network of roots connects all the shoots that look
like 47,000 trees from above.
Called the quaking aspen for its fluttery leaves, it usually grows into groves of identical
clones, although it can reproduce sexually on special occasions.
This grove, nicknamed Pando, is one of the oldest and largest organisms in the world,
although the original stem is long dead by now.
9. Lake Maracaibo, lightning capital of the world

Reuters
Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela sees more lightning strikes than anywhere else on Earth:
In fact, there are thunderstorms here 300 days out of the year, according to a recent
NASA study.
The area is so stormy because cool mountain breezes and warm, moist air clash over
the lake, creating electricity.

10. Eternal flame falls

Kim Carpenter/Flickr
In upstate New York, near the Canadian border, there is a small waterfall hiding a big
surprise: a shoot of fire about eight inches tall.
Behind the waterfall is a natural gas seep that feeds the flame.
It's sheltered enough by the waterfall to stay lit pretty reliably, although hikers do re-
light it if they see it's been blown out. (We should note that it's not 100% natural —
but too cool to skip.)
These burning gas seeps are actually fairly common, but this one ismore interesting
and younger than most — and very photogenic.