Incredible natural phenomena
Sink holes
 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.
 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.
 Lenticular clouds
Ever wonder the truth about UFOs? 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.
 Orange moons
This last phenomena is something most people have seen before –
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 atmosophere 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 mysterios moon.
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.
- webecoist.com
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