Dallol - The World’s Weirdest Volcanic Crater:
In the North East of Ethiopia lies the Danokil Desert. At its heart is a volcanic crater, Dallol, little known and seldom visited but quite extraordinary.
Surrounding the volcano are acidic hot springs, mountains of sulphur, pillars of salt, small gas geysers and pools of acid isolated by salt ridges. It makes for one of the most bizarre landscapes on planet Earth.
(via literaryreference)
A Meadow of Frost Flowers
Just before dawn broke one morning over the Arctic Ocean, the temperature dropped and University of Washington graduate student Jeff Bowman spotted something otherworldly from his ship—little icy flowers, blooming up from the frozen sea. They were like snowflakes, delicately protruding up from the thin ice “like a meadow spreading off in all directions,” Bowman recalls. “Every available surface was covered with them.” These are called frost flowers, though they’re not really flowers—they’re natural ice sculptures that form when the air is colder and dryer than the thin layer of ice covering the sea. The air teases up moisture from imperfections in the ice, which becomes supersaturated and condenses back into ice, creating frosty, feathery spikes that blossom like flowers. The flowers are about three times saltier than the ocean below, yet each one houses around a million bacteria. This is rare for such incredibly salty, brutally cold conditions, but it’s strangely beautiful—each delicate frost flower is essentially a temporary ecosystem, until the sun rises and melts them away again.
(Image Credit: Jeff Bowman)
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for 1877 up, there’s 763 down.
couldn’t click on that thumbs up fast enough.
Hot damn, I’m going to start using this.
(Source: shenaniganations)
Animals with Watermelons
the fucking parrot
I luv u waturmelon
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Francis Alÿs, Nightwatch, 2004.
Surveillance cameras observe a fox exploring the Tudor and Georgian rooms of the National Portrait Gallery at night.
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“Participants did not read how Holmes solved the case.”Out-of-context quotes aside, this is actually a very interesting article.
New Bloodline of Fennec Foxes Born at Taronga Zoo.
Photo Credit: Rick Stevens [flickr] for ZooBorns[h/t: magicalnaturetour]
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okay, that couldn’t be cooler. bravo to the creative team on that one.
(Source: justindanks, via literaryreference)
“In 1921, early suffragettes often donned a bathing suit and ate pizza in large groups to annoy men…it was a custom at the time”
Four for you, ladies.
oh my god
can we bring this back
like I’m not even kidding
slutwalk with pizza
I would be down for that.
Photographs by: Dennis Budko, Marc Szeglat, Michael Zelensky, and xflo:w
“In the far east of Russia, on a peninsula called Kamchatka, are stunningly surreal-looking ice caves that are formed under incredibly interesting conditions. Fire and ice are involved, or volcanoes and glaciers. As EPOD states about one, “It was formed by a stream flowing from the hot springs associated with the Mutnovsky volcano. This stream flows beneath glacial ice on the flanks of Mutnovsky. Because glaciers on Kamchatka volcanoes have been melting in recent years, the roof of this cave is now so thin that sunlight penetrates through it, eerily illuminating the icy structures within.” Kamachatka lies at similar latitudes to Great Britain. It experiences extremely cold winters and is covered in snow from October to late May. The peninsula is also known for a chain of active volcanoes that make up the peninsula’s spine. Interestingly, until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Kamchatka Peninsula was strictly off-limits to foreigners and most Russians. There was a military base on the southern end of the peninsula, which housed submarines that carried nuclear ballistic missiles. Since that time, it has increasingly becoming a popular spot for adrenaline junkies, especially those looking to experience extreme winter sports in a near pristine environment. Photographers have also been discovering all that the Kamchatka Pensinsula has to offer, as you can see here. As photographer Denis Budko states, “These snow caves, are usually hidden from foreign eyes under big thicknesses of snow…”
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