Saturday, February 20, 2016

Introduction

Have you ever wonder how beautiful yet mysterious world we lived? Feling curious?

Earth never stops surprising us. Every corner of the planet offers some sort of natural peculiarity with an explanation. This places keep natural scientists searching for answers and the rest of us astounded by the secrets and mysteries the world continues to reveal.

Here are the TOP 10 Mysterious Places on Earth

#1 Blood Falls, Antarctica

 Photo: National Science Foundation


Most people won't see Blood Falls in person, but even in photographs, the sight is arresting: a blood-red waterfall staining the snow-white face of Taylor Glacier. Glaciologists and microbiologists have sought to determine what causes the mysterious red flow. They've concluded that the source is a subterranean lake rich in the iron that gives the water its red hue. Stranger still, recent research has revealed microorganisms living 1,300 feet beneath the ice, sustained by the iron and sulfur in the water.

#2 Magnetic Hill, Moncton, New Brunswick

 Photo: Parks Canada Agency


What could possibly cause an automobile to roll backward uphill without power? A magnetic force from within the Earth? Something even more fantastic? Since the 1930s, when the phenomenon of Magnetic Hill was discovered (and almost immediately promoted as a tourist attraction), people have been trying to figure out its riddle.

#3 Surtsey, Iceland

Photo: Getty Images / Gerard Gery

When people try to convince you there's nothing new under the sun, direct them to the Icelandic island of Surtsey. Before 1963, it didn't exist. Then, an underwater volcano in the Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar) erupted, and when the activity settled down in 1967, what remained was an island where no island had been before.


#4 Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand

Photo: Karsten Sperling
Large spherical boulders -- some measuring 12 feet in circumference -- are scattered on Koekohe Beach on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. They formed millions of years ago on the ancient sea floor, collecting and hardening sediment and minerals around a core such as a fossil or a shell similar to the way oysters form pearls.


They're not the world's only examples of what geologists call septarian concretions. You can also visit the Koutu Boulders near Hokianga Harbour on the northwestern coast of New Zealand's North Island, for example. Yet the Moeraki Boulders are some of the world's largest. The particulars of their origin and what caused the distinctive cracks inside them are still being studied.

#5 Longyearbyen, Norway


Photo: Chris Jackson / Getty Images


From April 20 to August 23, the sun never sets over Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago that lies north of Greenland in the Arctic Sea. The phenomenon plays havoc with everyone's body clocks. Is it noon? Is it midnight? After a day or two, it's hard to tell.

#6 Pamukkale, Turkey


Photo: Getty Images
What appears to be a Doctor Zhivago-style snowy landscape in southwestern Turkey is actually the result of calcium carbonate deposits from 17 natural hot springs accumulating over thousands of years. Beginning in the late second century B.C., this area near present-day Denizli was a destination for those who sought the therapeutic benefits of the mineral-rich water whose temperature reaches upward of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.


Today, you can see remnants of the baths at the ancient holy city of Hierapolis, but it's the stunning terraces, cliffs and petrified white waterfalls of Pamukkale -- Turkish for "Cotton Palace" -- that give it remarkable natural beauty.