The Wave is a sandstone rock formation located in North Coyote Buttes of the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument on the Arizona and Utah borders.
The swirling stone waves combine water and wind eroded sandstone dunes, calcified vertically and horizontally, and fossilized over 190 million years. The rich red-vermilion rocks get their colors from iron oxide pigments.
Only 20 people can visit The Wave in Vermilion Cliffs daily, reachable exclusively by foot through a challenging 6.5 mil round-trip terrain. The distinct rock formation rests 3,000 feet above the benchland below.
The scene offers some of the best photography of public lands in the United States.
Lake Hillier located off the south coast of Western Australia (Middle Island) is an iconic lake known for its vivid pink color.
Scientists postulate that the lake’s solid bubblegum color results from the intermixing of Halobacteria and a salt-tolerant algae species called Dunaliella Salina.
When mixed with salt-tolerant microalgae, the bacteria produce red pigments that create a stunning strawberry milkshake color. The chemical reactions between the salt and the microorganisms also make the lake ten times saltier than the ocean nearby. But the lake is still safe to swim in.
There are 29 other pink lakes in the world. But unlike other pink lakes that morph into different colors, Lake Hillier — 2,000 feet long and 660 feet wide — retains its pink hue all year round. The contrast between the bright pink and dark blue ocean water is stunning.
Mount Bromo is an active volcano located in the Tengger mountain range of East Java, Indonesia. It is also one of the most visited tourist attractions in the rugged Indonesian province.
The views from atop the mountain are extraordinary, as one can see well into the crater and the beautiful countryside surrounding it.
There’s also a 700-year-old Ganesh shrine at the edge of Mt. Bromo 7600 feet up made of lava stones. The locals believe that the idol God has been protecting them from a massive eruption for hundreds of years. The word “Bromo” comes from the Javanese pronunciation of Brahma, the Hindu god of creation.
The Somma volcano last experienced a significant eruption in March 2019 when it spewed both ash and sand rather than hot lava. The crater is known to incur irregular eruptions on the bottom of the caldera daily.
More than a hundred years ago, the father of modern neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal demonstrated that information is the output of messy internal wiring provided by the brain’s chemical synchronicity.
Cajal was an artist trapped in a laboratory. He used his trained skills as an artist to draw masterful sketches of the brain. In doing so, he illustrated the neuron doctrine.
But where the Renaissance master goes sensual, macro, and dynamic, the Spaniard zeros in, mapping the miraculously microscopic using new methods of staining slide tissues that isolated single cells under the microscope. In this way, Cajal drew the newly visible synaptic networks of the brain and discovered a breakthrough that proved that neurons are in touch without touching. These results changed neuroscience. His work is still widely used as a teaching device.
He called the connection between the neural impulses synapses, the gaps between the neurons that allowed them to talk to each other. However, he couldn’t identify the synapses under the microscope like we can with 200X magnification today.
You can still walk across an invisible bridge even if you can’t physically see it there. All you need to know is that the magic is working.
The ever-so-beautiful Vestrahorn mountain in southeast Iceland is a sight to behold.
Nicknamed “Batman Mountain” for its dark and ominous appearance – it looks like the iconic Bat-signal from afar — the 1,490-foot tall scree mountain looks down at the flat black sand of Stokksnes Beach below.
Vestrahorn is composed of gabbro and granophyre rocks, which help give it the appearance of sharp spikes resembling bull horns.
The mountain is located on private property. So to access the photogenic landscape of the beach, you’ll need to make a small payment first.
The experience is worth every penny—especially if you get to see Vestrahorn mountain on a clear night under the Northern Lights.
Put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care.
What looks like a dubstep rave of little ghost people is actually styrofoam dancing to sound waves in a massive plexiglass pipe known as a Kundt’s tube.
In 1866 German physicist August Kundt constructed the experimental acoustical apparatus to measure the speed of sound in a gas or a solid rod. Said Kundt, “A physicist must be able to saw with a file and to file with a saw.”
The faux mosh pit is the result of a process called “sound looking” which demonstrates what audible vibrations or acoustical forces may actually look like.
No one can doubt that life moves to fascinating rhythms & vibrations.
Archaeologists uncovered the body of a wealthy 40-year old man and his young slave in Pompeii, 2,000 years after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Excavations at the suburban villa Civita Giuliana, a suburb outside Pompeii, discovered the bodies covered in a bed of 6.5-foot ash.
Researchers believe that the two men survived the initial eruption from Mount Vesuvius, only to succumb to a massive and more destructive cloud of scorching ash while seeking shelter in a cryptoporticus.
The skeletal remains follow last year’s discovery of another Ancient Roman man crushed by a flying rock during Mount Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 A.D.
Did you know that we shed different types of tears based on our emotions?
Each tear type is composed of unique chemicals — mainly salt, water, and lysozyme — that give them their variable structure.
Emotional tears contain a natural painkiller
According to scientist Claire Phillips, tears of grief contain the neurotransmitter leucine enkephalin which helps relieve the body in times of stress. In such a way, our tear ducts can act as a natural painkiller.
There’s a biological and evolutionary reason we feel better shedding tears after experiencing a traumatic event.
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have snapped the closest pictures ever taken of the sun.
The images, taken nearly 48 million miles away from the sun’s surface by the Solar Orbiter probe (launched February 9), reveal countless tiny flares which scientists have called “campfires.”
Scientists hope that these never-before seen exterior shots will help explain why the sun’s solar corona or atmosphere (over 1 million °C) is 300x hotter than its actual surface.
Earlier this year, the National Solar Observatory (NSO) brought us the sharpest movie of the sun we’ve seen which revealed each plasma cell the size of Texas.
“We didn’t expect such great results so early.” Solar Orbiter sends back its first pictures of our Sun — including the closest images ever taken of our star! 📸☀️👉https://t.co/7JXr0XQvuA
Paleontologists have discovered a 3.8 million-year-old skull in Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia that reveals the face of a male Australopithecus anamensis.
Identified mainly by its projecting cheekbones and canine-esque teeth, the newfound hominin cranium provides new information about our earliest human ancestors.
Previously, the 3.2m-year-old iconic hominin bones of Australopithecus Afarensis, best known as before Lucy, served as the missing link in explaining the human evolutionary tree.
Dale Omori & Liz Russell, Courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Natural History
What the individual Australopithecus anamensis could’ve looked like (Artist reconstruction by Matt Crow, Cleveland Museum of Natural History)
The Australopithecus Anamensis and Australopithecus Afarensis lived together for at least 100,000 years.
The leading scientist of the study, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, describes the unearthed skull a “game changer in our understanding of human evolution.”
The precious discovery of the Australopithecine as reported via Nature now represents the face of our oldest direct ancestor.
via @IFLScience/Facebook
However, when it comes to brains, it’s worth noting that humans evolved a unique and complex neocortex.
While the Neathanderals might have possessed bigger brains, it was the advancement of shared language and artistry that helped advance Homo Sapien’ cognitive and mental skills.
The superior cortex and hyper-connectedness of billions of neurons and synapses in the human brain also helped released humans from the prison of biology.
Did you know that you can blow up soap bubbles and instantly freeze them into ice orbs?
If you’re searching for a fun cold-weather activity, this is worth trying out.
Popular Science explains the science behind bubble freeze, in addition to instructions on how to make one.
There’s some interesting science at play here. Every bubble is made up of three individual layers: a thin layer of water molecules squished between two layers of soap. It might look like the entire surface of the bubble is freezing, but what you’re actually seeing is the innermost layer of water—which freezes at warmer temperatures than soapy water—turning to ice within the film.
As the soapy water turns into ice crystals, the inside of the bubble appears to swirl around to create a beautiful effect of a snowglobe — very photographic!
But the ice bubbles don’t last forever, notes bubble photographer Chris Ratzlaff: “Bubbles are such ephemeral things,” he says. “To be able to literally freeze them in time is such a rare experience.”
MesoSPIMs are open-source light-sheet microscopes for imaging cleared tissue.
The custom-built microscopes enable scientists to look at individual neurons using sheets of light rather than cutting a brain into slices.
The mesoSPIM Initiative paves the way for the future discovery and understanding of the brain’s complex organization. The studies may one day reveal vital information on the neuronal networks that drive mental illnesses and addictions.
A chicken embryo captured under the mesoSPIM microscope
