Amusing Planet

Grass Covered Tram Tracks in Europe

2013-06-20T00:42:00.001-07:00

Tram tracks on many European cities are lined with grass, a practice that probably started in the 1980’s to bring greenery back to city space and at the same time, provide habitable zone for numerous insects and invertebrates. These swaths of green provide a host of benefits to any urban area, like reduce urban heat island effect, provide a permeable surface for storm water to infiltrate, reduce pollution and absorb noise generated by the grinding of metal wheels on metal tracks. Not to mention, they look incredibly good in comparison to concrete or asphalt.

Green tracks have become increasingly popular in Europe and can be seen in pretty much every major European cities from Barcelona to Frankfurt, Milan, St-Etienne and Strasbourg.

Also see: Grass Roofs of Norway

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Flatirons of Green Mountain, Colorado

2013-06-19T23:30:00.001-07:00

The Flatirons are a series of steeply sloping wedge-shaped rock formations near Boulder, Colorado. There are five large, Flatirons ranging from north to south along the east slope of Green Mountain, and numbered from First through Fifth, respectively. Flatirons are created by differential erosion of the rock layer which is inclined in the same direction as, but at a steeper angle than the exposed mountain slope. The ones near Boulder, Colorado, are a notable example of this landform and a ubiquitous symbols of the city of Boulder. Other well developed flatirons are found in the eastern Uinta Mountains in northwestern Colorado and on the flanks of the Marathon Uplift in west Texas.

The name flatiron was derived from the resemblance to an upended household flatiron – those flat, metal irons used to press clothes.

The rocks comprising of the Flatirons are some 290 to 296 million years old. They were lifted and tilted into their present orientation between 35 and 80 million years ago, during the Laramide Orogeny. They were subsequently exposed by erosion that gave them the rugged appearance. They are popular destinations for hikers and rock climbers.

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The Sand Dunes of Rub al Khali

2013-06-18T04:55:00.001-07:00

Rubʿ al-Khali, (literally “Empty Quarter” in Arabic), also spelled Al-Rabʿ al-Khali, is a vast desert in the southern Arabian Peninsula, covering about 250,000 square miles (650,000 square km) in a structural basin that takes in a substantial portions of Saudi Arabia, as well as parts of Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates. It is the largest area of continuous sand in the world. It holds roughly half as much sand as the Sahara, which is 15 times the Empty Quarter's size but composed mostly of graveled plains and rocky outcrops.

The desert is 1,000 kilometres long, and about 500 kilometres, and its topography is varied. In the west the elevation is as high as 2,000 feet (610 metres) and the sand is fine and soft, while in the east the elevation drops to 600 feet (183 metres) with sand dunes, salt flats, and sand sheets. The terrain is covered with sand dunes with heights up to 250 metres (820 ft), interspersed with gravel and gypsum plains.

Aerial image of the sand dunes of Rub' al Khali. Photo credit

Blue Lake, Nelson, New Zealand - The Clearest Lake in the World

2013-06-18T00:25:00.001-07:00

Blue Lake (Rotomairewhenua in Māori) is a small fresh water lake in Nelson Lakes National Park, in the northern reaches of New Zealand's Southern Alps. In a study conducted in 2011, researchers of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) have found that the lake has extreme visual clarity of up to 80 meters, which is considered almost as "optically clear" as distilled water. The visibility of Blue Lake even surpasses that of the renowned Te Waikoropupu Springs in Golden Bay which has a visibility of 63 meters.

Blue Lake is characterized by blue-violet hues seen only in the very clearest natural waters. The lake is spring fed from the neighboring glacial Lake Constance, but the water passes through landslide debris that forms a dam between the two lakes. The natural dam filters out nearly all the particles suspended in the water giving the lake the most intense natural blue-violet colour.

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The Crooked Forest of Gryfino, Poland

2013-06-17T23:30:00.001-07:00

In a tiny corner in north-west Poland near Gryfino, is a forest of about 400 pine trees that grow with a 90 degree bend at the base of their trunks, before rising vertically again. This collection of curved trees has been named the "Crooked Forest". The way the trunks are curved and all bent towards the same direction – northward – the cause of the curvature appear to be man made as opposed to natural. It is estimated that the trees were allowed to grow for seven or ten years before being held down for a purpose unknown.

The most intriguing explanation suggests that a group of farmers manipulated the trees after planting them in 1930. Apparently, the farmers hoped to make furniture from the bent shapes and intervene when the trees were only 10 years old. However, before they could be harvested, the outbreak of the Second World War interrupted the plans of whoever was growing and tending the grove, leaving their plans a mystery.

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‘Ring of Life’: A 515 Feet Ring of Steel in Fushun, China

2013-06-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

A new landmark is taking shape in the north-eastern city of Fushun in Liaoning province in China. A gigantic steel loop dubbed the ‘Ring of Life’. The structure stands 515 foot tall and is made of a whopping 3,000 tonnes of steel. At night, it will glow with a phenomenal 12,000 LED lights. The project is estimated to cost $16M US dollars

According to Fushun Municipal Government's officials, this titanic structure has been built simply to serve as an viewing platform. The developer originally planned to add a platform for visitors to bungee jump off. However, the idea was abandoned because the ring is too high for bungee jumpers.

A local construction bureau official told the Shenyang Evening News that Fushun wanted to have an office tower on the spot of the ring but the town was too small to support it. The Ring of Life came to fruition after the developer scrapped three other plans.

Winners of Amateur Underwater Photography Contest

2013-06-13T09:05:00.001-07:00

Each spring, the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science organizes an underwater photography contest open to amateur photographers who earn no more than 20 percent of their income from photography. Started in 2005, the contest has grown in popularity drawing entrants from across the globe. This year over 700 entries were submitted from participants located in 23 countries.

Photographs are judged in five separate categories: Fish or Marine Animal Portrait, Macro, Wide Angle, Student, and Best Overall. The winning images are announced at one of the Rosenstiel School’s Sea Secrets lectures and are displayed in a traveling exhibit throughout the South Florida community.

The following photo by Kyle McBurnie, from California, own this year’s contest. The beautiful beastie is a harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) in a kelp forest at Cortes Bank, about 100 miles west of San Diego, California.

Intriguing Biodiversity at El Angel Ecological Reserve in Ecuador

2013-06-11T08:57:00.001-07:00

El Angel is a small village located in the province of Carchi, in Ecuador, approximately 170 km north of Quito and situated on the border with Colombia. The village is located in a unique type of high altitude, humid moorland called “paramo” characteristically found in the Andes of northern Ecuador and southern Colombia. The El Angel Ecological Reserve lies at nearly 12,000 to 15,600 feet above sea level and covers an area of 15,700 hectares of the paramo. A diverse range of plants grow in this region, 60% of which are found nowhere else in the world. The most notable among them is frailejones (Espeletia pychnophyla) a giant member of the daisy family, endemic to the area. The frailejon is a treelike shrub with broad, gray-white, hairy leaves and yellow flowers, which may reach a height of up to six feet over the course of its lifetime. They cover 85% of the reserve, lending the paramo of El Angel its striking appearance and gray-green color.

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Giant Pinks Slugs of Mount Kaputar

2013-06-11T08:48:00.001-07:00

I have particularly strong distaste towards anything slimy, and these giant snails of Mount Kaputar, in northern New South Wales, Australia, are large enough to send shivers down my spine.

Located in the alpine forest of the isolated mountaintop, the giant, fluorescent pink slugs grow up to 20 centimeters long and crawl out of their hiding only during rainy nights to feed off the mould and moss on the trees. But plants aren’t the only thing they feed on. The Triboniophorus aff. graeffei, as it is scientifically called, is a carnivorous, cannibal land snail that roam the mountaintop in search of other vegetarian snails.

Triboniophorus aff. graeffei is actually just one of three cannibal snails that live on Mount Kaputar. These voracious little fellows hunt around on the forest floor to pick up the slime trail of another snail, then hunt it down and gobble it up.

Houtong Cat Village, Taiwan

2013-06-09T01:03:00.001-07:00

Houtong is a small mining town located in Rueifang District of Taiwan, a district renowned for its rich, well-preserved railway culture with the old Yilan Line which was built during the Japanese colonial period for transporting resources out of northern Taiwan. Houtong was a train stop on the Yilan Line and one of Taiwan’s biggest coal-mining sites up until the 1970s. During its most prosperous years, Houtong’s mines produced some 220,000 tons of coal, the largest amount of coal yielded in a single area in Taiwan. This attracted many residents to migrate to Houtong, and the town grew to as many as 900 households and population of more than 6,000.

As the coal mining industry began to fall into decline in 1990, development in Houtong became progressively worse. Young residents started to move out of town to look for other opportunities, and only a few hundred residents remained. The once prosperous mining industry fell into ruins and was lying so for decades.

Things took an unexpected turn sometime around 2008, when a cat lover organized a team of volunteers to give the neighborhood’s abandoned cats a better living environment. They posted the cats’ pictures on the web and received an overwhelming response from other cat lovers. Visitors' raves on local blogs drew more cat lovers to this place who came to photograph the cats or fondle and frolic with them. Soon Houtong became a hotbed for cat lovers and amateur photographers. Today, the dilapidated mining town and the 100-odd felines that roam the streets are drawing thousands of tourists during weekends.

Star-Shaped Fort Bourtange in Netherlands

2013-06-07T03:25:00.001-07:00

In the 15th century, during the age of gunpowder when the cannon came to dominate the battlefield, a new style of fortification evolved in Europe. Roughly resembling the shape of a star, these fortifications had many triangular bastions, specifically designed to cover each other, and a wide ditch. In order to counteract the cannon balls, defensive walls were made lower and thicker and were protected by gently sloping banks of earth called glacis in front of ditches so that the walls were almost totally hidden from horizontal artillery fire. The new fortification became so popular that the design was swiftly adopted by other nations as far as India and Japan.

Fort Bourtange is such a star fort located in the village of Bourtange, Groningen, Netherlands. It was built in 1593 under the orders of William the I of Orange, to control the only road between Germany and the city of Groningen, which was controlled by the Spaniards during the time of the Eighty Years' War.

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Pearl River Tower: The Most Energy Efficient Skyscraper

2013-06-05T08:24:00.001-07:00

While many buildings claim to being green by incorporating a single eco-friendly technology into their design, the Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou City, China, is one that architects call the most energy-efficient skyscrapers in the world. Designed by Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the design team’s original goal was to construct a “net zero-energy” building that would sell its excess power to the local electrical grid. But SOM’s high dreams remained unattainable. The completed structure still consume energy, but nearly 60% less than a traditional building of similar size.

Pearl River Tower’s reduced energy demand is achieved through its 309-meter high sculpted faces, which redirect wind to four openings at its mechanical floors. Here, the wind is drawn through the building’s body and into a series of turbines, which generate electricity for the offices within. In addition to driving turbines, the wind that is pulled in is also routed throughout the tower’s ventilation system. The building uses double wall with mechanized blinds on the northern and southern facades, and triply glazed facades on the eastern and western sides of the structure that keeps heat out, thereby reducing cooling requirements.

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The Kissing Dinosaurs of Erenhot, China

2013-06-04T22:02:00.001-07:00

In the far north of China on the Sino-Mongolian border, near the town of Erenhot (also known as Erlian), you will find the statues of two towering Brontosauruses. The two dinosaurs are located on either side of the main highway, their long necks stretching to the other, until the two dinosaur's mouth meet as if to share a kiss. Each dinosaur statue is 34 meters wide and 19 meters high. The span of the two together reaches 80 meters. The ground near the kissing couple is littered with many dozen smaller statues of dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes.

Erenhot is located in the Gobi Desert, in the Xilin Gol league of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The city was established as the only train trade route between Inner and Outer Mongolia back in the 1950's, but the area has been gaining international attention since the 1920's with the discovery of dinosaur fossils in the Erlian Basin.

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Hyper Realistic Wood Sculptures by Tom Eckert

2013-06-04T03:24:00.001-07:00

Arizona-based artist Tom Eckert creates incredibly lifelike sculptures entirely out of wood, and then painted. Working primarily with basswood, linden and limewood, Eckert use traditional processes to carve, construct, laminate and paint his pieces. His most mind-boggling sculptures feature flowing fabric forms, some of which appear translucent. Eckert says about his work:

Since childhood, I have been curious about and amused by mistaken impressions of reality presented as part of my visual experiences. One of my earliest recollections, on a car trip, was my perception of the wet, slick highway ahead that turned out to be an illusion, a mirage. The revelation that I was fooled, visually and intellectually tricked, stuck with me. This visual deception is now the basis for my creative direction. “Cloth” carved of wood has much different structural qualities than real cloth. When this idea is applied to my compositions (floating book, floating cards, floating rock) a sense of the impossible happens - for me, magic.

Also see the woodworks of Randall Rosenthal

LOLCats From Yesteryears: Photographs by Harry Whittier Frees

2013-06-03T23:51:00.001-07:00

LOLcats, for those uninitiated, is an Internet meme of funny cat pictures accompanied with an amusing caption, often idiosyncratic and grammatically incorrect, as a cat would say could it speak. LOLcat is a combination of two words – LOL which means “laughing out loud” and cat. While the term is believed to have originated in 2006, the concept of lolcats originated much earlier. These photographs were taken by American photographer Harry Whittier Frees (1879–1953), who dressed his cats, Rags and Fluff, as well as the pets of his friends and neighbors, and posed them in human situations with props, often with captions.

Pancake Ice

2013-06-01T00:04:00.001-07:00

Exploring Tom Gill’s mesmerizing pictures of frozen icy world led me to discover a peculiar kind of ice today. Pancake Ice is circular in shape, and can range from 30 centimeters to 3 meters in diameter, and up to 10 centimeters in thickness. Pancake Ice is formed when temperatures hover right around zero degrees with at least moderate wave activity. Usually, it starts with a thin film of slush on the top of agitated water (sometimes called grease ice) that breaks up into circular sections. Collisions as they float about lead to the raised rims, either from the edges getting bashed up from bonking into each other, or from the slush that gets splashed onto the edges and freezes to gradually form a rim. Sometimes pancake ice forms at some depth, at an interface between water bodies of different physical characteristics, from where it floats to the surface; its appearance may rapidly cover wide areas of water.

See other strange ice formations: Penitentes and Snow Roller

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Frozen Lighthouses of Lake Michigan

2013-05-31T22:52:00.001-07:00

Environmental and landscape photographer Tom Gill has been documenting the natural and man made wonders of the southeastern portion of Lake Michigan, particularly lighthouses, for several years. During winter these lighthouses become barely recognizable as spectacular frozen ice formations turn them into incredible sculptural forms.

Gill’s favorite lighthouse is the 35-foot St. Joseph that was first built in 1844. The lighthouse would often receive a thick layer of ice during winter storms when freezing waves up to 6 meters tall crash into the piers. The air temperature drops 20 degrees below zero.

The outer light is over 100 feet from the inner light, and there is only about a two or three foot wide path between the lighthouse and the frigid lake. In winter, that path is often very slippery.

“This year, many people ventured to the outer light, but not many dared go around to the windward side of the outer light. While I've seen hundreds of photos from the shore and the pier, I've only come across a couple of photographers who braved it and ventured out around the tower - me, my son Chris and another person who posted his image on Flickr”, says the photographer.

Researcher Grows Microscopic Flowers by Controlling Crystallization

2013-05-31T05:32:00.001-07:00

Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have found a way to shape microscopic crystals into complex and beautiful structures. Project leader Wim L. Noorduin and his colleagues were able to modify the growth of the crystals through tiny chemical alterations of a fluid containing water, liquid glass, and the salt barium chloride. Carbon dioxide from the air dissolved into the solution set off a reaction that caused barium carbonate crystals to form. This caused the pH of the water surrounding the crystals to get lower, which in turn caused the dissolved sodium silicate to form into a layer of silica on them, thus extending their growth process.

Noorduin found that as the crystals self-assembled, he could control their shape, size and direction of growth by altering the temperature, the amount of carbon dioxide allowed into the reaction and the acidity of the water. Increasing the carbon dioxide levels creates the broad, flat leaves of those mineral flowers, for example. Fluctuating the acidity level creates the ruffled wave in the petals.

These electron microscope images have been artificially colored to accentuate the complexity of the structures. In reality the images are black and white.

Aiguille du Midi, France

2013-05-30T11:45:00.001-07:00

The Aiguille du Midi is a 3,842 meter tall mountain in the Mont Blanc massif in the French Alps. The name "Aiguille du Midi" translates literally to "Needle of the Noon" or "Needle of the Mid-day". The mountain gets its name from the fact that it lies to the south when viewed from in front of the church in Chamonix.

A cable car runs to the summit where there is a viewing platform, a café and a gift shop. The cable car was built in 1955 and held the title of the world's highest cable car for about two decades. It still holds the record as the highest vertical ascent cable car in the world, from 1,035 m to 3842 m.

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Psychotria Elata or Hooker’s Lips: The Most Kissable Plant

2013-05-30T08:26:00.001-07:00

These gorgeous pair of red, luscious lips belong to a plant known as Psychotria elata, a tropical tree found in the rain forests of Central and South American countries like Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador. Affectionately, Psychotria elata is called Hooker’s Lips or the Hot Lips Plants. The plant has apparently evolved into its current shape to attract pollinators including hummingbirds and butterflies. According to Oddity Central, the bracts are only kissable for a short while, before they spread open to reveal the plant’s flowers.

Farming Algae in Hutt Lagoon, Western Australia

2013-05-30T05:33:00.001-07:00

Hutt Lagoon is a salt water lake near the coast, just north of the mouth of the Hutt River, in Western Australia. The water of the lake is bring pink in color due to the presence of two types of algae that produces a reddish-orange organic pigment called Beta-Carotene, that is used commercially as a coloring pigment in food and medicines. Hutt Lagoon is the world’s largest system of algae farms dedicated to the production of this pigment.

The 14 km long by 2 km wide lagoon is separated from the Indian Ocean by a beach barrier ridge and barrier dune system. Hutt Lagoon is fed by marine waters seeping through the barrier ridge, but high evaporation rates barely balances the net influx of salt, resulting in high levels of salinity that is constant throughout the year. During the summer about 95% of the surface is a dry salt flat.

At present, about 450 hectares of Hutt Lagoon’s approximately 2,500 hectares is being used to cultivate algae from which Beta-Carotene is extracted. Beta-carotene is used as a natural dye in food and is also a rich supply of Vitamin A. Naturally, it can be found in found in various fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

SMART Tunnel in Kuala Lumpur: A Storm Water Tunnel With Built-in Motorway

2013-05-29T11:23:00.001-07:00

Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur is regularly subjected to flash floods after heavy rains that remain for three to six hours, flooding the city center. After a series of devastating flash floods washed the heart of Kuala Lumpur city center and accumulated losses rose to billions of ringgit, the government approved a never-before-attempted concept to tackle the crippling floods and snarling traffic jams that plaque the Southern Gateway of the city – a SMART tunnel.

SMART stands for Stormwater Management and Road Tunnel. The 13.2m diameter tunnel consists of a 9.7km storm water bypass tunnel, with a 4km dual-deck motorway within the storm water tunnel. The main purpose of SMART is to solve the problem of flash flooding in Kuala Lumpur from the Sungai Klang and Kerayong rivers and also to reduce traffic jams during the daily rush hour.

Ol Doinyo Lengai: The Coolest Volcano in the World

2013-05-28T23:30:00.001-07:00

Ol Doinyo Lengai is an active volcano located in Arusha Region, Tanzania, rising majestically from the East African Rift Valley depression to a summit of 2890 meters. To the indigenous Maasai people, it is the "The Mountain of God”.

The lava produced at Ol Doinyo Lengai is unlike any other lava on earth. Most volcanoes produce basaltic lava, but Ol Doinyo Lengai is the only one in the world that produces natrocarbonatite lava - a type of lava rich in the rare sodium and potassium carbonate minerals - nyerereite and gregoryite. These minerals are quite uncommon in the geologic record, and even less common at the surface as a liquid. Due to this unusual composition, the lava is erupted at relatively low temperatures - approximately 500-600 °C, which is half the temperature of typical glowing basaltic lava you see in pictures of volcanoes. This temperature is so low that the molten lava appears black in sunlight, rather than having the red glow common to most lavas. The sodium and potassium carbonate minerals contained in the lava of Ol Doinyo Lengai are anhydrous and react very rapidly when they come into contact with moisture in the atmosphere. The black or dark brown lava and ash begins to turn white within a few hours of eruption as the minerals absorb water. After about six months, with the help of the elements, the lava decomposes to yellow-brown sand. The resulting volcanic landscape is quite different from any other in the world.

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A Pile of Nuclear Waste Now a Tourist Attraction in Weldon Springs, Missouri

2013-05-28T05:37:00.001-07:00

In Saint Charles County, Missouri, near Weldon Spring, adjacent to Highway 40, lies an enormous mound of rocks, rising out of the ground like an ancient burial tomb. Underneath it lies tons of hazardous waste produced by a chemical plant that once stood in its place. Today, Weldon Spring draws thousands of curious visitors each year. They climb to the top of the 75-foot tall dome to read the placards that tell the story of the sad history of communities that disappeared in 1940 to make way for the world’s largest explosives factory.

Between 1940 and 1941, the US Army purchased over 17,000 acres of land in Saint Charles County, just outside of St. Louis On those land happened to sit three pretty towns with rolling wooded hills - Hamburg, Howell, and Toonerville. They were immediately evacuated. Hundreds of homes, businesses, churches, schools and any other buildings in the area were either demolished or burned and within a few months the three towns ceased to exist. A massive factory was erected to manufacture TNT and DNT in order to supply Allied troops in the Word War II. The Weldon Spring Ordnance Works, operated by Atlas Powder Company, employed more than 5,000 people and contained more than 1,000 buildings. By the time the plant ceased production on Aug. 15, 1945, the day the Japanese surrendered, it had produced more than 700 million pounds of TNT.

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Food Cut in Half: Photography by Beth Galton

2013-05-27T23:41:00.001-07:00

New York-based food photographer Beth Galton, together with food stylist Charlotte Omnès, took these amazing photographs of different dishes including noodles, corn dogs and even a cup of coffee cut in half. Galton refrains from digitally combining multiple images into one, instead relying on strobes to freeze action.

The photos series was inspired by an assignment in which the duo were asked to cut a burrito in half for a client. “Normally for a job, we photograph the surface of food, occasionally taking a bite or a piece out but rarely the cross section of a finished dish,” said Beth Galton. Charlotte Omnès, and Galton thought it would be interesting to explore the interiors of various foods particularly items commonplace to our everyday life.

“Some items were straight forward and looked great being cut in half without any manipulation,” said Galton. “The donuts and ice cream were examples of this. Other items required food styling tricks such as using gelatin to solidify liquid in the soup cans and Kitchen Bouquet to color the bits of food in the noodle shot. Daniel Hurlburt, our digital tech/retoucher, was greatly involved and helped images that needed some adjusting and assembling all the elements we shot for the coffee pouring.”