phenomenal phenomena

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend! It was 2,000 degrees here, so yeah... But Davy's band rocked a performance that was so amazing I thought they were going to IGNITE! So we had a terrific weekend :)

I also wanted to *thank you* for your lovely comments about my Sandpoint post - stay tuned for more photos!

Today you're going to get an amazing science lesson, courtesy of my cousin Bill, who sent all of this to me in a recent e-mail. You may roll your eyes and say "who doesn't already know this!?" but I was completely fascinated! I had heard of maybe 2 of these amazing natural phenomena. My only sadness is that there were no information or photo sources to give credit to, which I try to be very diligent about. Aside from that, I hope you enjoy your science lesson! It never ceases to amaze me what an incredible (and sometimes scary!) place this earth is!

(ABOVE PHOTO)

~ SAILING STONES ~

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

have been a center of scientific controversy for decades. 

Rocks weighing up to hundreds of pounds have been 

known to move up to hundreds of yards 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 

of hundreds of miles per hour would be needed to move some of the stones.

~ COLUMNAR BASALT ~

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 extrusions that almost appear to be made by man. 

One of the most famous such examples is the Giant's Causeway 

on the coast of Ireland (shown above), though the largest and most widely recognized 

would be Devil's Tower in Wyoming . 

Basalt also forms different but equally fascinating ways when eruptions are exposed to air or water.

~ BLUE HOLES ~

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 life
due to poor water circulation - leaving them eerily empty. 

Some blue holes, however, contain ancient fossil remains that have been discovered, preserved in their depths.

~ RED TIDES ~

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 ride tides are not harmful in small numbers.

~ ICE CIRCLES ~

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 a circular 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.

~ MAMMATUS CLOUDS ~

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.

~ FIRE RAINBOWS ~

A circumhorizontal fire rainbow arc occurs at a rare confluence 

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

Crystals within t he 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 phenomena.

~ SINKHOLES ~

Sinkholes are one of the world's scariest natural phenomena. 

Over time, water erodes the soil under the planet's 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.

~ PENITENTES ~

Named after peak-hooded New Mexican monks (lower right pic 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.

~ LENTICULAR CLOUDS ~

 
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.

~ LIGHT PILLARS ~

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.

~ SUNDOGS ~

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

Varying climactic conditions on other planets 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.

~ FIRE WHIRLS ~

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.

~ ORANGE MOONS ~

This last phenomena is something most people have seen before - 

a 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 it 

have 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 moon's 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.

I say that's enough studying - now it's finally time to enjoy summer! :D