![]() ![]() A fleeting flow of fire-like light emits for just a few minutes when the alignment of the sun, the waterfall, and the viewer are just right. ![]() Yosemite’s Firefall (Photo: Liao Pan/China News Service/Getty)įor just a few weeks in mid-February, thousands flock to Yosemite National Park to view this optical illusion on Horsetail Fall, a small waterfall on the famed rock face of El Capitan. IPBio Betary Reserve, a protected reserve used for research and conservation in the Atlantic Forest, offers guided night tours to see the bioluminescent mushrooms. Scientists only recently discovered why this happens: the fungi produce light to attract insects and spiders that will then help spread their spores throughout the forest. By day you wouldn’t take a second glance at these tiny mushrooms, but at night these fungi glow due to a chemical reaction between them and the decaying wood on which they grow. These mushrooms flourish in the humidity and grow on tree bark or on tree trunks and fallen branches that line the forest floor. But did you know there are glow-in-the-dark mushrooms? Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, teeming with biodiversity as impressive and unique as its larger Amazon rainforest, contains about 20 species of bioluminescent fungi. You may have already been lucky enough to see ocean water sparkling at night with millions of glowing phytoplankton-a phenomenon called bioluminescence, in which living organisms emit a cold visible light. Brazil’s Bioluminescent Mushrooms (Photo: G. That’s how eery red water ends up flowing out of the icy white glacier. The iron turns red when it reacts with the oxygen at the surface, and its high salt content prevents it from freezing, according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Glaciology. The buried saltwater lake is not actually red-nor is it full of red algae, as once believed-but it is super salty and rich in iron. This dramatic piercing on the white continent oozes five stories high at the end of Taylor Glacier, where an ancient saltwater reservoir trapped beneath the glacier flows to the surface and into Lake Bonney. It sounds like the next Netflix thriller and might look as ghastly, but East Antarctica’s Blood Falls is only gushing saltwater. ![]() Antarctica’s Blood Falls (Photo: National Science Foundation/Peter Rejcek/Public Domain) Meteorologists have found that this is most likely to occur when three conditions are met: the surface of the lake is frozen with a thin, clear layer of ice and no snow the air temperature is below 5 degrees and there’s no wind. The ice crystal patches are piled in layers and form delicate patterns, looking like real flower petals. When the mist in the air freezes and hits the ice, it gets crystallized. These beautiful blooms on the lake’s surface, known as frost flowers, sprout when the temperature drops quickly, causing a drastic difference between the cold air and the warmer ice surface. ![]() In winter on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, even as temperatures in Akan-Mashu National Park drop to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, Lake Akan is seemingly abloom with life in the form of an endless ethereal meadow of ice flowers. Hokkaido’s Frost Flowers (Photo: Lea Scaddan/Getty) You’ve probably heard of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, and bioluminescent bays, but what about sailing stones and glow-in-the-dark mushrooms?įrom Antarctica’s mysterious Blood Falls to Yosemite’s fleeting Firefall, here are some particularly unique natural phenomena that you can’t find just anywhere. Some phenomena are more well-known than others, though, and some are harder to catch. In all cases, natural phenomena are a reminder that science has the power to leave us more in awe than any sci-fi show possibly could. Maybe you waited your whole life to witness a total solar eclipse, or perhaps on your last mountain trek you stumbled upon a radial rainbow cloud with your own shadow as the star. Most of Mother Nature’s most spectacular shows are all about being at the right place at the right time. ![]()
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