Amazing Facts Around The World: Nature

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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

How Did Life Arise on Earth?

Was it a magnificent stroke of luck, or was it inevitable?

Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old, and for much of that history it has been home to life in one weird form or another.

Indeed, some scientists think life appeared the moment our planet's environment was stable enough to support it.

The earliest evidence for life on Earth comes from fossilized mats of cyanobacteria called stromatolites in Greenland that are about 3.7 billion years old. Ancient as their origins are, these bacteria (which are still around today) are already biologically complex—they have cell walls protecting their protein-producing DNA, so scientists think life must have begun much earlier. In fact, there are hints of life in even more primeval rocks: 4.1-billion-year-old zircons from Western Australia contain high amounts of a form of carbon typically used in biological processes. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

But despite knowing approximately when life first appeared on Earth, scientists are still far from answering how it appeared.

"Many theories of the origin of life have been proposed, but since it's hard to prove or disprove them, no fully accepted theory exists," said Diana Northup, a cave biologist at the University of New Mexico.

The answer to this question would not only fill one of the largest gaps in scientists' understanding of nature, but also would have important implications for the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe.

Lots of ideas

Today, there are several competing theories for how life arose on Earth. Some question whether life began on Earth at all, asserting instead that it came from a distant world or the heart of a fallen comet or asteroid. Some even say life might have arisen here more than once.

"There may have been several origins," said David Deamer, a biochemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "We usually make 'origins' plural just to indicate that we don't necessarily claim there was just a single origin, but just an origin that didn't happen to get blasted by giant [asteroid] impacts."

Most scientists agree that life went through a period when RNA was the head-honcho molecule, guiding life through its nascent stages. According to this "RNA World" hypothesis, RNA was the crux molecule for primitive life and only took a backseat when DNA and proteins—which perform their jobs much more efficiently than RNA—developed.

"A lot of the most clever and most talented people in my field have accepted that the RNA World was not just possible, but probable," Deamer said.

RNA is very similar to DNA, and today carries out numerous important functions in each of our cells, including acting as a transitional-molecule between DNA and protein synthesis, and functioning as an on-and-off switch for some genes. [Extreme Life on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures]

But the RNA World hypothesis doesn't explain how RNA itself first arose. Like DNA, RNA is a complex molecule made of repeating units of thousands of smaller molecules called nucleotides that link together in very specific, patterned ways. While there are scientists who think RNA could have arisen spontaneously on early Earth, others say the odds of such a thing happening are astronomical.

"The appearance of such a molecule, given the way chemistry functions, is incredibly improbable. It would be a once-in-a-universe long shot," said Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University. "To adopt this [view], you have to believe we were incredibly lucky."

The anthropic principle

But "astronomical" is a relative term. In his book, The God Delusion, biologist Richard Dawkins entertains another possibility, inspired by work in astronomy and physics.

Suppose, Dawkins says, the universe contains a billion billion planets (a conservative estimate, he says), then the chances that life will arise on one of them is not really so remarkable.

Furthermore, if, as some physicists say, our universe is just one of many, and each universe contained a billion billion planets, then it's nearly a certainty that life will arise on at least one of them.

As Dawkins writes, "There may be universes whose skies have no stars: but they also have no inhabitants to notice the lack."

Shapiro doesn't think it's necessary to invoke multiple universes or life-laden comets crashing into ancient Earth. Instead, he thinks life started with molecules that were smaller and less complex than RNA, which performed simple chemical reactions that eventually led to a self-sustaining system involving the formation of more complex molecules.

"If you fall back to a simpler theory, the odds aren't astronomical anymore," Shapiro told Live Science.

Trying to recreate an event that happened billions of years ago is a daunting task, but many scientists believe that, like the emergence of life itself, it is still possible.

"The solution of a mystery of this magnitude is totally unpredictable," said Freeman Dyson, a professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University in New Jersey. "It might happen next week or it might take a thousand years."

Does the Soul Exist?

7:23:00 PM Amazing, Education, Nature,

Many people today believe they possess a soul. While conceptions of the soul differ, many would describe it as an "invisible force that appears to animate us."

It's often believed the soul can survive death and is intimately associated with a person’s memories, passions and values. Some argue the soul has no mass, takes no space and is localised nowhere.

But as a neuroscientist and psychologist, I have no use for the soul. On the contrary, all functions attributable to this kind of soul can be explained by the workings of the brain.

Psychology is the study of behaviour. To carry out their work of modifying behaviour, such as in treating addiction, phobia, anxiety and depression, psychologists do not need to assume people have souls. For the psychologists, it is not so much that souls do not exist, it is that there is no need for them.

It is said psychology lost its soul in the 1930s. By this time, the discipline fully became a science, relying on experimentation and control rather than introspection.

What is the soul?

It is not only religious thinkers who have proposed that we possess a soul. Some of the most notable proponents have been philosophers, such as Plato (424-348 BCE) and René Descartes in the 17th century.

Plato believed we do not learn new things but recall things we knew before birth. For this to be so, he concluded, we must have a soul.

Centuries later, Descartes wrote his thesis Passions of the Soul, where he argued there was a distinction between the mind, which he described as a "thinking substance," and the body, "the extended substance." He wrote:

… because we have no conception of the body as thinking in any way, we have reason to believe that every kind of thought which exists in us belongs to the soul.

One of the many arguments Descartes advanced for the existence of the soul was that the brain, which is a part of the body, is mortal and divisible – meaning it has different parts – and the soul is eternal and indivisible – meaning it is an inseparable whole. Therefore, he concluded they must be different things.

But advances in neuroscience have shown these arguments to be false.

Stripping humans of the soul

In the 1960s, Nobel laureate Roger Sperry showed that the mind and our consciousness are divisible, therefore disproving that aspect of Descartes' theory.

Sperry studied patients whose corpus callosum, the superhighway connecting the right and left hemispheres, had been severed by surgery aiming to control the spread of epileptic seizures. The surgery blocked or reduced the transfer of perceptual, sensory, motor and cognitive information between the two hemispheres.

Sperry showed each hemisphere could be trained to perform a task, but this experience was not available to the untrained hemisphere. That is, each hemisphere could process information outside the awareness of the other. In essence, this meant the operation produced a double consciousness.

Thus, Descartes cannot be correct in his assertion the brain is divisible but the soul, which can be read as the mind or consciousness, is not. In his effort to prove the existence of the soul in humans, Descartes actually provided an argument against it.

Rather than investigating rats with souls, psychologists stripped humans of theirs. In 1949, psychologist D.O. Hebb claimed the mind is the integration of the activity of the brain.

Many neurophilosophers have come to the same conclusion as the psychologists, with Patricia Churchland more recently claiming there is no ghost in the machine.

The brain does it all

If the soul is where emotion and motivation reside, where mental activity occurs, sensations are perceived, memories are stored, reasoning takes place and decisions are taken, then there is no need to hypothesise its existence. There is an organ that already performs these functions: the brain.

This idea goes back to the ancient physician Hippocrates (460-377 BCE) who said:

Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency and lamentations. And by this … we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet and what are unsavoury…

The brain is the organ with a map of our body, the outside world and our experience. Damage to the brain, as in accidents, dementias or congenital malformations, produces a commensurate damage to personality.

Consider one of the functions supposedly – if we listen to Plato – carried out by the soul: memory. A major knock on the head can make you lose your memories of the past several years. If the soul is an immaterial substance separate from our physical being, it should not be injured by the knock. If memory were stored in the soul, it should not have been lost.

The neuronal activity in the brain is responsible for the cognitive and emotional dysfunctions in people with autism; it would be cruel and unethical to blame their hypothetical souls.

Manipulation of the brain is sufficient to alter emotion and mood. The soul is totally superfluous to this process.

The ability of psychotherapeutic drugs to alter mood provides another line of evidence against the presence of the soul. If you produce a chemical imbalance in the brain, such as by depleting dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin with tetrabenazine, you can induce depression in some people.

Correspondingly, many depressed people can be helped by drugs that increase the function of these neurotransmitters in the brain.

The brain is where thinking takes place, love and hatred reside, sensations become perceptions, personality is formed, memories and beliefs are held, and where decisions are made. As D.K. Johnson said: “There is nothing left for the soul to do.”

Where Is the Rest of the Universe?

7:04:00 PM Amazing, Education, Nature, News, Science,

Most of the universe is made up of "stuff" that is invisible, possibly intangible and interacts with other things only via the force of gravity. Oh, yes, and physicists don't know what the stuff is or why it makes up so much of the universe — some four-fifths of its mass.

They call it dark matter.

So where is this mysterious stuff that makes up such a huge chunk of our universe, and when will scientists find it?

First, though, how do we know it's even out there?

Dark matter was first hypothesized in the 1930s when Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky realized that his measurements of the masses of galaxy clusters showed some of the mass in the universe was "missing." Whatever was making galaxies heavier, it didn't give off any light, nor did it interact with anything else except via gravity.

Vera Rubin, in the 1970s, found that the rotation of galaxies was not following the predictions of Newton's laws of motion; the stars in galaxies (notably Andromeda) all seemed to be orbiting the center at the same speed, rather than those farther out moving more slowly as theories of gravity said they should. Clearly, something was adding mass to the outer parts of galaxies, something nobody could see. [Does the Universe Have an Edge?]

Other pieces of evidence came from gravitational lensing, which happens when the gravity of a large object bends the light waves around that object. Per Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity bends space (like a sumo wrestler might deform the mat he is standing on), so light rays bend around massive objects even though light itself is massless. Observations indicated that there wasn't enough visible mass to bend the light by as much as it was bending around certain galaxy clusters — in other words, the galaxies were more massive than they should be.

Then there is the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the "echo" of the Big Bang, and supernovas. "What the CMB tells you is that the universe is spatially flat," said Jason Kumar, a professor of physics at the University of Hawaii. "Spatially flat" means that if you were to draw two lines across the universe, they would never meet, even if those lines were a billion light-years across. In a steeply curved universe, those lines would meet at some point in space.

Researchers then calculated how much matter the universe must have in order to be flat and produce the amount of normal matter (also called baryons) observed in the universe.

"I ask myself, 'Is the amount of matter I have equal to baryonic matter, and it's not," Kumar said.

There's now little dispute among cosmologists and astronomers that dark matter exists. Yet it seems unaffected by light, and it isn't charged like electrons or protons are. So far it has eluded direct detection.

"That's kind of the mystery," Kumar said. There are may ways scientists have tried to "see" dark matter – either via its interactions with normal matter or looking for particles that dark matter might become. "Those experiments are going to keep getting better, and don't seem to have any hiccups so far as they go to better detectors."

What we know it isn't

A number of theories have come and gone as to what dark matter is. One of the first was logical enough: The matter was hidden within massive astrophysical compact halo objects, or MACHOs, such as neutron stars, black holes, brown dwarfs and rogue planets. They don't emit light (or they emit only very little), so they are effectively invisible to telescopes. [The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

Yet surveys of galaxies looking for small distortions in the light of background stars produced by a MACHO passing by — called microlensing events — couldn't account for the amount of dark matter around galaxies, or even a significant portion of it. "MACHOs seem as ruled out as ever," said Dan Hooper, an associate scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

Dark matter doesn't appear to be clouds of gas that telescopes wouldn't see, either. Diffuse gas would absorb light from the galaxies that are farther away, and on top of that, ordinary gas would re-emit radiation at longer wavelengths – there'd be a massive radiation of infrared light in the sky. Since that doesn't occur we can rule that out as well, Kumar said.

What it might be

Weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, are some of the strongest contenders to explain dark matter. WIMPs are heavy particles — about 10 to 100 times heavier than a proton — that were produced during the Big Bang, though just small quantities are left today. These particles interact with normal matter via gravity or the weak nuclear force. More massive WIMPs would move more slowly through space, and therefore be "cold" dark-matter candidates, while lighter ones would move faster, and be "warm" dark matter. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

One way to find them is in "direct detection" experiments, such as the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment, which is a container of liquid xenon in a South Dakota mine. If a xenon nucleus seems to "bounce" with no explanation, that would be a candidate for getting hit with a dark-matter particle. The magnitude of the bounce would give an idea of the new particle's mass. But Hooper said that LUX hasn't seen anything yet.

Another way to see the WIMPs might be particle accelerators. Inside accelerators, atomic nuclei smash into each at near the speed of light, and in the process that energy of the collision gets turned into other particles, some new to science. So far, though, particle accelerators haven't detected anything that looks like a dark matter candidate, either.

Results from both direct detection and particle accelerators, however, have placed limits on the size and mass of this hypothetical dark-matter particle, Kumar said. The sensitivity of LUX is down to 200 MeV, or about a fifth of a proton's mass, and it could theoretically see particles as heavy as 1 TeV, which is comparable to some types of quarks. Since LUX saw nothing so far, that could well mean that dark matter isn't in that range.

Kumar said that it's possible that WIMPs are really heavy, and because they are so massive there just aren't that many of them, meaning the chance they'll hit a xenon atom is small.

Another possibility: axions. These subatomic particles could be detected indirectly by the kinds of radiation they emit as they annihilate or as they decay into other kinds of particles, or appear in particle accelerators. Yet there hasn't been any direct evidence of axions, either.

Since detecting heavy, slow-moving "cold" particles, like WIMPs or axions, hasn't yielded results yet, some scientists are looking at the possibility of lighter, faster-moving particles, which they call "warm" dark matter. There has been a renewed interest in such a dark-matter model after scientists found evidence of an unknown particle, using the Chandra X-ray Observatory, in the Perseus cluster, a group of galaxies about 250 million light-years from Earth. The known ions in that cluster produce certain X-ray emission lines, and in 2014, scientists saw a new "line" that may correspond to an unknown lightweight particle, Nicola Menci, an astrophysicist at Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), told Live Science in an email.

If dark-matter particles are light, scientists are going to have a difficult time detecting them directly, said Tracy Slatyer, a physicist at MIT. Slatyer has proposed new kinds of particles that might make up dark matter.

"Dark matter with [a] mass below about 1 GeV is really hard to detect with conventional direct detection experiments, because they work by looking for the unexplained recoils of atomic nuclei… but when the dark matter is much lighter than the atomic nucleus, the recoil energy is very small," Slatyer said. Protons — a hydrogen nucleus — can't be any lighter than about 938 MeV, so a particle that weighs in the keV range would be 1,000 times lighter. "Think bouncing a ping-pong ball off a bowling ball; the bowling ball doesn't move very much," she said.

Slatyer said there is a lot of research being done on how to find dark-matter particles if current methods fail. Using "superfluid" liquid helium, semiconductors and even breaking of chemical bonds in crystals, are among the ideas being floated.

Kumar said one reason dark matter is so mysterious is precisely that physicists feel that they understand, to a point, how the Big Bang nucleosynthesis ― the origins of matter ― worked. The Standard Model, which predicted the Higgs boson, has been very successful so far, so unless they've all been really wrong about something fundamental it's odd that nobody has managed to detect a dark-matter particle yet.

If, for example, dark-matter particles are very different from what many current models predict, it's possible that particle accelerators wouldn't have seen it. Accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider are better at seeing things that interact with the strong nuclear force, which decay into other particles.

"If that's the way your dark matter works it's a great machine to find it," he said. "But if there isn't a heavier particle like that it's harder."

How Hot Is Lightning?

6:58:00 PM Amazing, Education, Nature, Science,

Lightning is one of the most destructive forces in nature. But for all the folklore and legends amassed over human history on lightning, we know surprisingly little about the inner workings of this powerful phenomenon, including something as simple as how the current that flows through a thunder-inducing flash is related to the temperature of the strike.

Lightening

"The basic physics of lightning, such as lightning initiation and lightning propagation, is not fully understood at this point," said Robert Moore, a lightning researcher from University of Florida in Gainesville.

"We know the basics, but not the details. So when anybody makes headway, it is major news."

Lightning causes more than $5 billion in damages every year in the U.S., as well as more fatalities than hurricanes.

"A direct hit from a lightning strike can melt a power cable or start a forest fire, where the amount of heat from the lightning plays a major role," said Xiangchao Li, a scientist from China who specializes in lightning research. Li and his team discovered a mathematical relationship between the current intensity and the temperature inside lightning. Their result was published last month in the journal Scientific Reports.

Although there are approximately 100,000 lightning strikes on Earth every single day, the randomness of the occurrences makes it difficult for scientists to study them in an effective or systematic way. So until Thor, the Norse god of lightning as well as other meteorological events, joins a lightning research team, scientists are left to their own devices.

Luckily such a device does exist. Known as an impulse current generator system, the device can create artificial lightning with currents up to tens of thousands of amperes. For perspective, a household or automotive fuse is usually rated well below a hundred amperes, and an electric current of just a few amperes can easily kill you. A natural lightning strike typically carries around 20-30,000 amperes of current. Certainly there are other factors such as size and setting of natural lightning that cannot be replicated in a laboratory, but just in terms of sheer current output, the lightning generated by the device can really give Thor a run for his money.

By using their artificial lightning system, Li and his team were able to dial up lightning strikes at will, with currents between 5,000 to 50,000 amperes. This resulted in artificial lightning strikes with temperatures as high as 17,000 F, twice as hot as the surface of the Sun.

This creates a new problem — at such high temperatures, a normal thermometer would explode. And even if it didn't, it wouldn't react quickly enough to register the temperature of the lightning strike. Fortunately, there is "light" in "lightning." Li and his team were able to record the lightning's temperature within a millisecond by measuring the intensity of the light at various wavelengths.

After striking lightning at the same place over and over again, they concluded that the relationship between the current and temperature of lightning is a highly logarithmic one, meaning that the temperature difference between lightning strikes with 1,000 and 10,000 amperes is similar to those with 10,000 and 100,000 amperes. This result provides solid evidence for previous theoretical predictions that lacked the support of data.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Poisonous Plant – No Touching,Only See!!!

11:40:00 PM Nature,

Plants are essential for any ecosystem.There are a lot of living things that have been classified as poisonous and violent and you would like to keep on numerous feet left from these living beings when you come across to them.
Can you ever imagined having same creepy feeling when thinking about plants? Yes, there be present numerous plants who are poisonous as much as necessary to turn into a dreadful. I have collected some poisonous plant in this post. Have a look…

Ricinus communism

The castor oil plant, Ricinus communis, is a species of flowering plant in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. It belongs to a monotypic genus, Ricinus, and subtribe, Ricininae. The evolution of castor and its relation to other species are currently being studied.
Its seed is the castor bean which, despite its name, is not a true bean. Castor is indigenous to the southeastern Mediterranean Basin, Eastern Africa, and India, but is widespread throughout tropical regions (and widely grown elsewhere as an ornamental plant).
The castor oil plant can vary greatly in its growth habit and appearance. The variability has been increased by breeders who have selected a range of cultivars for leaf and flower colors, and for oil production. It is a fast-growing, suckering perennial shrub which can reach the size of a small tree (around 12 metres / 39 feet), but it is not cold hardy.

Cnidoscolus stimulosus

Spurge nettle (Cnidoscolus stimulosus), also known as bull nettle, Tread-softly and Finger Rot, is a perennial herb covered with stinging hairs, native to southeastern North America. A member of the family Euphorbiaceae (spurge family), it is not a true nettle. It prefers sandy, well-drained soil and mostly exists in pine/blackjack oak forests on sandhills, rims of Carolina bays, dunes, dry pastures, fields and roadsides.
The green leaves of this plant are alternate, consisting of three to five untoothed lobes. The large, white flowers have five petals. Male and female flowers are on different plants. Flowers occur throughout the spring and summer followed by a small capsule that produces three large seeds. The entire plant above ground including the flower petals are covered with stinging hairs. The tap root can be used as an excellent potato substitute, tasting like pasta.
As the common names imply, the urticating hairs on this plant contain a caustic irritant that inflicts a painful sting to those who contact it with bare skin. It can cause a painful, irritating rash and can cause more serious reactions with some people.

Angel Trumpet

Brugmansia is a genus of seven species of flowering plants in the family Solanaceae native to tropical South America. Their large, fragrant flowers give them their common name of Angel’s Trumpets, a name sometimes used for the closely related genus Datura.
Brugmansia are large shrubs or small trees, with semi-woody, often many-branched trunks. They can reach heights of 3–11 m (10–36 ft).
The leaves are alternately arranged along the stems, generally large, 10–30 cm (4–12 in) long and 4–18 cm (2–7 in) across, with an entire or coarsely toothed margin, and are often covered with fine hairs.
The name Angel’s Trumpet refers to the large, pendulous, trumpet-shaped flowers, 14–50 cm (6–20 in) long and 10–35 cm (4–14 in) across at the opening. They come in shades of white, yellow, pink, orange, green, or red. Most have a strong, pleasing fragrance that is most noticeable in the evening. Flowers may be single, double, or more.
Brugmansia are woody trees or bushes, with pendulous, not erect, flowers, that have no spines on their fruit. Datura species are herbaceous bushes with erect (not pendulous) flowers, and most have spines on their fruit.

White Snakeroot

White Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima), also known as White Sanicle or Tall Boneset, is a poisonous perennial herb in the family Asteraceae, native to eastern North America. An older binomial name for this species was Eupatorium rugosum, but the genus Eupatorium has undergone taxonomic revision by botanists and a number of the species once included there have been moved to other genera.
Plants are upright or sometimes ascending, growing to 1.5 meters tall, producing single or multi-stemmed clumps. They are found in woods and brush thickets where they bloom mid to late summer or fall. The flowers are a clean white color and after blooming, small seeds with fluffy white tails are released to blow in the wind.
This species is adaptive to different growing conditions and can be found in open shady areas with open bare ground; it can be weedy in shady landscapes and in hedgerows. There are two different varieties Ageratina altissima var. angustata and Ageratina altissima var. roanensis (Appalachian white snakeroot); they differ in the length of the flower phyllaries and shape of the apices.

Common Bladderwort

Utricularia macrorhiza, the common bladderwort,is a large, perennial suspended aquatic carnivorous plant that belongs to the genus Utricularia. U. macrorhiza is native to North America and eastern temperate Asia.
Common Bladderwort has lacy leaves, quarter to two inches-long; subdivided into segments of unequal length, having thread-like segments. Carnivorous bladders are attached at regular intervals along the linear leaf segments that trap and digest tiny water invertebrates. Its Bladders are small, dispirited, pear-shaped pouches.
They open suddenly when trigger hairs are disturbed, sucking in water and any unfortunate water creature responsible for setting off the trap. Digestive enzymes and bacteria found in the bladder digest the victim for the nutritional use of the plant; a process takes 15 minutes to 2 hours, for complete digestion. Its special cells extract the nutrient-rich water from the bladder into the stem, thus reinstating the vacuum and resetting the trap for its next victim.

7 Weirdest Natural Landscapes around the Earth

10:58:00 PM Nature,

Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as (ice-capped) mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings and structures, and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions.Combining both their physical origins and the cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, landscapes reflect the living synthesis of people and place vital to local and national identity. Landscapes, their character and quality, help define the self image of a region, its sense of place that differentiates it from other regions. It is the dynamic backdrop to people’s lives.
The Earth has a vast range of landscapes including the icy landscapes of polar regions, mountainous landscapes, vast arid desert landscapes, islands and coastal landscapes, densely forested or wooded landscapes including past boreal forests and tropical rainforests, and agricultural landscapes of temperate and tropical regions.
Generally Nature can be sometime pretty boring: a hill here, a tree grove there, the occasional berry patch. Every once in a while the natural processes at work can meet at weird angles, forming landscapes that puzzle and fascinate —Nature’s believe it or not. Sometimes, outings are remembered for experiencing something a little out of the usual.
Urban landscapes and busy metropolises offer an interesting insight into a country’s way of life, but probe a little deeper and you may just find out a side of the country seen by very few. With no additional discussion, I have shared with you 7 weirdest natural landscapes around the earth.
Antelope Canyon ,USA

Antelope Canyon, USA

Antelope Canyon is the most-visited and most-photographed slot canyon in the American Southwest.It is located on Navajo land near Page, Arizona. Antelope Canyon includes two separate, photogenic slot canyon sections, referred to individually as Upper Antelope Canyon or The Crack; and Lower Antelope Canyon or The Corkscrew.
The Navajo name for Upper Antelope Canyon is Tsé bighánílíní, which means “the place where water runs through rocks.” Lower Antelope Canyon is Hazdistazí or “spiral rock arches.” Both are located within the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo Nation.
Antelope Canyon was formed by erosion of Navajo Sandstone,primarily due to flash flooding and secondarily due to other sub-aerial processes. Rainwater, especially during monsoon season, runs into the extensive basin above the slot canyon sections, picking up speed and sand as it rushes into the narrow passageways. Over time the passageways are eroded away, making the corridors deeper and smoothing hard edges in such a way as to form characteristic ‘flowing’ shapes in the rock.
Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand

Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand

The Moeraki Boulders are unusually large and spherical boulders lying along a stretch of Koekohe Beach on the wave cut Otago coast of New Zealand between Moeraki and Hampden. They occur scattered either as isolated or clusters of boulders within a stretch of beach where they have been protected in a scientific reserve.
The erosion by wave action of mudstone, comprising local bedrock and landslides, frequently exposes embedded isolated boulders. These boulders are grey-colored septarian concretions, which have been exhumed from the mudstone enclosing them and concentrated on the beach by coastal erosion.
Local Māori legends explained the boulders as the remains of eel baskets, calabashes, and kumara washed ashore from the wreck of an Arai-te-uru, a large sailing canoe. This legend tells of the rocky shoals that extend seaward from Shag Point as being the petrified hull of this wreck and a nearby rocky promontory as being the body of the canoe’s captain.
In 1848 W.B.D. Mantell sketched the beach and its boulders, more numerous than now. The picture is now in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. The boulders were described in 1850 colonial reports and numerous popular articles since that time. In more recent times they have become a popular tourist attraction, often described and pictured in numerous web pages and tourist guides.
Stone Forests, China

Stone Forests, China

The Stone Forest or Shilin is a notable set of limestone formations located in Shilin Yi Autonomous County, Yunnan Province, People’s Republic of China, near Shilin approximately 120 kilometres (75 mi) from the provincial capital Kunming.
The tall rocks seem to emanate from the ground in the manner of stalagmites, with many looking like petrified trees thereby creating the illusion of a forest made of stone. Since 2007, two parts of the site, the Naigu Stone Forest and Suogeyi Village, have been UNESCO World Heritage Sites as part of the South China Karst.
The site is classified as a AAAAA-class tourist site. The stone forests of Shilin are considered superlative natural phenomena and a world reference with a wider range of pinnacle shapes than other karst landscapes with pinnacles, and a higher diversity of shapes and changing colors.
Göreme National Park, Turkey

Göreme National Park, Turkey

Göreme located among the “fairy chimney” rock formations, is a town in Cappadocia, a historical region of Turkey. It is in the Nevşehir Province in Central Anatolia and has a population of around 2,500 people.
Former names of the town have been Korama, Matiana, Maccan or Machan, and Avcilar. When Göreme Valley nearby was designated an important tourist destination, a “center” for all tourism in Cappadocia, the name of the town was changed to Göreme for practical reasons.
The Göreme National Park (Göreme Milli Parklar in Turkish) was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985.
The location of Göreme was first settled back in the Roman period. Christianity was then the prevailing religion in the region, which is evident from many rock churches that can still be seen today.
Among Göreme’s historically important sites are Ortahane, Durmus Kadir, Yusuf Koc and Bezirhane churches, in addition to the richly decorated Tokali Kilise, the Apple Church, and a number of homes and pigeon houses carved straight into the rock formations in the town.
Rio Tinto, Spain

Rio Tinto, Spain

The Río Tinto is a river in southwestern Spain that originates in the Sierra Morena mountains of Andalusia. It flows generally south-southwest, reaching the Gulf of Cádiz at Huelva.
Since ancient times, a site along the river has been mined for copper, silver, gold, and other minerals. In approximately 3,000 BCE, Iberians and Tartessians began mining the site, followed by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, and Moors.
After a period of abandonment, the mines were rediscovered in 1556 and the Spanish government began operating them once again in 1724.As a result of the mining, Río Tinto is notable for being very acidic (pH 2) and its deep reddish hue is due to iron dissolved in the water.
Acid mine drainage from the mines leads to severe environmental problems due to the heavy metal concentrations in the river. In 1873, the multinational Rio Tinto Company was formed to operate the mines; by the end of the 20th century it had become one of the world’s largest mining companies, although it no longer controls the Rio Tinto mines; these are now owned by EMED Mining plc.
Chocolate Hills, Philippines

Chocolate Hills, Philippines

The Chocolate Hills is an unusual geological formation in Bohol province, Philippines.There are at least 1,260 hills but there may be as many as 1,776 hills spread over an area of more than 50 square kilometres (20 sq mi). They are covered in green grass that turns brown during the dry season, hence the name.
The Chocolate Hills is a famous tourist attraction of Bohol. They are featured in the provincial flag and seal to symbolize the abundance of natural attractions in the province.They are in the Philippine Tourism Authority’s list of tourist destinations in the Philippines; they have been declared the country’s third National Geological Monument and proposed for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Socotra Island, Yemen

Socotra Island, Yemen

Socotra also spelled Soqotra, is a small archipelago of four islands in the Indian Ocean. The largest island, also called Socotra, is about 95% of the landmass of the archipelago.
It lies some 240 kilometres (150 mi) east of the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres (240 mi) south of the Arabian Peninsula. The island is very isolated and through the process of speciation, a third of its plant life is found nowhere else on the planet. It has been described as the most alien-looking place on Earth. The island measures 132 kilometres (82 mi) in length and 49.7 kilometres (30.9 mi) in width.
Socotra is part of the Republic of Yemen. It had long been a part of the ‘Adan Governorate. In 2004, it became attached to the Hadhramaut Governorate, which is much closer to the island than ‘Adan (although the nearest governorate is Al Mahrah). There is a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean that has been described as the world’s most alien-looking place.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Most Terrifying Locations On Earth

7:31:00 PM Nature,

Every Abandoned place has a story behind it, their are number of location on earth which are considered as the most terrifying places where something has happened in the past. Today in Dheerazz's Blog we have brought such location which are haunted in their own way.
The stories behind may or may not be real but these areas are certainly considered as horrifying due to some reason. Let’s see which places have a name tag of haunted and terrifying places on earth.

Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery

Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery is a small, abandoned cemetery in Chicago. It is well-known for its haunted stories and ghost sightings. There are countless reports of glowing balls, apparitions, squeaks, moans, groans and unexplained noises. According to a legend black magic and occult rituals were practiced in and around the graveyard, hence it is believed that the ghostly powers are severe here.

Monte Cristo

Monte Cristo is a property located in the town of Junee, New South Wales. Built in 1885, this double story late Victorian manor is claimed to be Australia’s most haunted house, with reports of ghostly figures, strange lights, automatic turning on and off lights, invisible force fields, phantom sounds and animal mutilations. These are attributed to several tragic incidents in the property.

Bhangarh Fort

Bhangarh Fort is known for its ruins where nobody dares to go after dark. Archaeological Survey of India has put up a signboard here stating, “Entering Bhangarh before sunrise and after sunset is strictly prohibited.” It is regarded as the most haunted place in India and people who visit this place experience anxiety and restlessness. The legend says, a tantrik cursed the palace that everybody would die in the palace and their souls will stay there for centuries without rebirth.

The Screaming Bridge

At least 36 people were reported dead on or around the Maud Hughes Road Bridge. Ghostly figures, mists, and lights have been seen, as well as black hooded figures and a phantom train. According to the legend, a man and woman were held up on top of the bridge while travelling on a car. At first the man got out to get help to save the woman but she died, later the man also died. Another story says a woman threw her baby off the bridge and then hanged herself.

Changi Beach

People complain that they hear strange crying and screaming in the area. Sometimes, the heads of the Chinese dead bodies are seen flying and headless bodies walk around the beach. The scariest thing is that the ghosts leave blood stains. During nights people observed dug holes that appear as if they were used for burying bodies. Changi Beach in reality served as a killing ground as a part of the Sook Ching massacre by the Japanese during the World War II.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

The 7 Most Terrifyingly Huge Things in the History of Nature

8:07:00 PM Nature,

We may be the undisputed kings of the food chain, but when it comes to being pant-soilingly huge, we come up a bit short. We can hang out with tiny dogs and house cats until we feel like the T-Rex of our home -- but in the back of our mind, we know. Nature has produced terrifyingly huge and horrific organisms that could kill us without noticing, either by stepping on us, accidentally swallowing us the way we might swallow a fly or simply stopping our heart with sheer terror.

#7.

A Crab as Big as Your Car

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Via Wikimedia Commons
In this case, almost all of them are some variation of AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Japanese spider crabs, in what we can only assume is a cruel joke from God, possess all the most terrifying qualities of each of its namesakes. Lets just make a list, shall we? From spiders it has:

Long spindly legs to help it creep through your nightmares.
A terrifyingly disproportionate body just to freak you out.
The ability to trigger the primal arachnophobe inside us all.

Via NHM

And from crabs it has:

A hammer-proof body.
Claws perfectly shaped for attacking soft human limbs.
Years of pent up anger from seeing its family served with lemon butter.

These things can grow to sizes of just under 13 feet, or if you prefer, the size of a family car.

Via BBC
"For me? Awww, Tim Burton -- you shouldn't have!"

Luckily though they are only found in Japan and even then you have to go pretty deep underwater to find one. If you ever do venture that deep, you're on the crabs' home turf, but at least you could prepare properly -- those underwater flamethrower modifications are bound to work. And then you've got crab legs for the rest of the year, baby!

Via Dailymail

#6.

The Prehistoric Whale With 14-Inch Teeth

For being the biggest animals in the ocean, whales are usually nothing more than floating islands, filter-feeding on tiny shrimp. But set your time machine back far enough, and you'll find the waters full of insanity:

Via destylou-historia
That thing could eat humans by the handful like popcorn.

Yep, Moby Dick had nothing on Livyatan Melvilli. If you haven't guessed, this thing was named after Herman Melville, and a giant sea monster from the Bible.

Via Dino Rider
That's not the whole animal. That's just its freaking skull.

This thing was the same size and shape of a modern sperm whale (that is, four times as long as the largest great white sharks), with a head built like a battering ram and a tail as big as a small car. Only with one major difference: while the sperm whale's mouth is built for gently swallowing animals with no skeleton, Livyatan had teeth up to 14-inches long.

Via Dino Rider
Those are individual teeth. Holy. Shit.

What could a katana-toothed sperm whale eat, though? Whatever the hell it wanted to.

Via Dino Rider
Artist's rendition of evolution just flipping the hell out.

The Livyatan lived in a time when the ocean's whale species were growing larger and diversifying, which means Moby Monster feasted mainly on other whales. It was a hypercarnivore, which means it got 70 percent of its sustenance from meat, which puts it in the same category as big cats, eagles and sharks. Though we prefer to think "hypercarnivore" means it hunted like Gary Busey with a pound of stimulants and a mouthful of steak knives.

Via Discover Magazine
Honestly, it doesn't even need the teeth. It could just swallow you like a pill.

It shared the same oceans as another giant thank-God-for-extinction-events horror, the Megalodon. So if you decide to go swimming during your time travel adventure, your fate will either be "eaten by giant shark" or "eaten by murderous sperm whale," and in both cases, it'd probably happen because the monster accidentally devoured you while trying to eat the comparatively smaller creature that was in the process of eating you.

#5.

The Dinosaur that Makes Other Dinosaurs Look Like Lap Dogs

Picture the biggest of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (specifically, the Brachiosaurus, aka the gigantic dinosaur with the long neck). Now let's use it to give you some sense of scale as to just how huge theAmphicoelias Fragillimus was. Here's Dr. Ian Malcolm, naked, standing next to a Brachiosaurus ...

Via Matt Martyniuk
Yeah, that's pretty big.

... which was apparently just this bigger dinosaur's pet:

Via Matt Martyniuk
Never mind.

This giant was the single largest land-based life form -- never mind dinosaur -- on record.

Via Ultrazionale
The femur alone is estimated to be bigger than a grown man.

Although paleontologists have nothing to work with other than a drawing of one bone from this monster, it was large enough to give us a rough idea of the obscene size of it. Do you remember this scene from King Kong?

Via Moviemobsters.com
The one where Kong's fully erect penis crushes that woman?

Amphicoelias Fragillimus was not only taller than King Kong or that 'rex, it was tall enough to havewalked over them. This beast was big enough to have eaten you out of a six-story window. It stretched roughly 30-feet longer than Godzilla was tall, which according to Homeland Security, registers it as a class-G movie monster.

Via Blameitonthevoices.com
Dude was taller than a Rancor with King Kong on its shoulders.

#4.

The Thousand-Pound Cat

Via Hkandy

But why are we looking to the distant past and Japan for monstrous creatures that can bite you in half? They didn't all go extinct, you know. Some of them are just being invented. Like the liger.

Via Wikimedia Commons

A liger, as Napoleon Dynamite fans know, is what happens when a lion and a tiger end up in the same cage and they make the ultimate choice. When the offspring stands on its hind legs, it's twice as tall as a man:

Via Pawsonline
And considers women on stepladders to be "meat-fruit."

Ligers are like the Blade of the big cat world; they possess all of the strengths of both parent animals and have none of their weaknesses. And "big cat" is an understatement: It's a half-ton, 12-foot-long snarling mass of muscle capable of fitting your entire screaming head in its mouth. Oh, and it moves as fast as your car goes on the highway.

That's right; it's reportedly capable of running 60 miles per hour. Can you run that fast? Just imagine being hit by half a ton traveling at that speed, then remember it has this attached to the end.

Via Virgin Media
Not pictured: screaming.

This one is called Hercules:

Via Dailymail
Which is Roman for, "OH MY DEAR GOD, IT'S GOT MY LEG!"

Look at the scale there. Compare the lady's head with the liger's mouth.

Via Telegraph

Hercules happened as a result of a lion and tiger getting their freak on because scientists accidentally let them breed (sure ... "accidentally"). In just three short years Hercules already massively outgrew both of his parents, presumably right before eating them.

#3.

Antlers Twice the Size of a Man

If there existed an award for "Most Underrated Badass" in the animal kingdom, the winner would probably be deer. We always think of Bambi when we see one, but these guys charge their way through adolescence in a blood orgy of hormone-fueled, antler-clashing mayhem. But even the most badass trophy bucks of modern times pale in comparison to the beasts our ancient brethren tangled with:

Via Kilburn Social Club
One of many reasons why man invented the cannon.

You see, back in the day, deer were essentially bears with what can only be called "antlers" in the Crocodile Dundee School of Zoology -- meaning that if you think deer today have massive antlers, well ...

Via IPCC
"These are antlers."

Say hello to Megaloceros Giganteus: the Irish elk. This enormous Eurasian monster is the largest deer we know about, and it was easily recognized by the two insane war-axes growing out of its skull. Why did their antlers get so big? Why else? To get laid.

Via BBC
If women aren't impressed by them, there's something wrong with the women.

While it is believed that the Irish elk already had large antlers to begin with, it should come as no surprise that only elks sporting the largest weaponry were able to win enough primeval brawls to pump out a few heirs. By modern standards, this would be like bringing an AT-AT to a knife-fight, and to the winner went Bambi's mother.

Via Treknature
Wanna bone?

Imagine hitting one of those beasts with your Acura, never mind having one jump inside your home,place of business or kids' elementary school.

Of course, our ancestors didn't come across any of them within the confines of a car. So now picture crossing paths with one of these maulers during mating season, armed with nothing but a sharpened stick. See how well you match up against proto-Bambi.

Via Licornenoir
All of a sudden, getting shot off-screen doesn't sound so bad.

#2.

Sperm 20 Times the Size of the Creature it Comes From

Wait, why is a fruit fly on this list? We have giant predators ripped from the terror center of the brain, and we're including the little bastards you have to shoo away from your bananas? Well, it's not the fruit fly that's terrifyingly huge. Let's just say the fly is packing some serious heat in the downstairs region.

Via Scienceagogo
Ew.

We really can't figure out a way to make it sound less weird so we'll just say it: It has giant sperm. This next image is in no way edited or Photoshopped -- it's a scale picture. Fly in the center, its sperm looped around it:

Via Animalpicturesarchive.com
That's not a sperm, that's a freaking bullwhip.

Now the fact that somewhere out there is a creature that has to force out a sperm many times as long as its body is terrifying in itself. But we're just scratching the surface.

After all, you figure that surely the female must be a huge hulking example of the species to even be able to fit a sperm longer than the freaking male of the species inside of ... oh we can't even finish this sentence it's just too weird. Show the damn picture.

Via Theboxmove
There is no god.

Just what -- that ... holy crap, how does that even ... wait ... it's longer than the female too so that must mean... the female of the species has an equally as long and terrifying reproductive tract. So all you guys and ladies reading this, just imagine being a fruit fly and consider that a six-foot-tall male would have a sperm 120-feet long. If your brain has rightly prevented that image from entering your mind, take a look here.

Via rueschmachine.com
Guys, imagine this crane flying out of your Johnson. Ladies, imagine if being courted meant that it chased you through the streets.

#1.

A Fungus the Size of a Small Airport

Picture a fungus. Maybe you have some growing in your basement.

Photos.com
Awww, it's so cute!

Now picture Central Park in New York.

Via Wikimedia Commons
Awww, it's so cute!

Now imagine a single fungus as big as three Central Parks.

It totally exists.

Now, this is somewhat difficult to wrap your head around, since we typically think of a living thing as being a single entity, like a dog or a burrito. And since not everyone is a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan and thus doesn't have the Borg to fall back on when the word "collective" is thrown around, we'll explain.

When you see mushrooms, you're not seeing the whole organism. The fungus spreads underground, sending out roots that grow up into mushrooms here and there.

Photos.com

So, scientists discovered that honey mushrooms growing in a forest in eastern Oregon were genetically identical. Once they began probing around they discovered that the mycelia -- the roots of the fungus, which also make up most for the actual living fungus -- was spread over an area covering 2,200 acres, or about 3.5 square miles. It's a single living thing, but it'd take you more than half an hour to walk from one end of it to the other.

That's enough to cover most of this section of New York City.

And that's actually not the strangest thing about it.

The fungus is believed to be about 2,400-years old. Yep. It has outlasted the Romans and was devouring dead rodents before Jesus was said to be turning bread into fish.

Though there may be one life form more impressive than that: the Pando tree grove. It's one tree, sprouting out multiple trunks all connected by the same mass of roots. But it covers 107 acres and fills an astonishing 6,615 tons of mass.