Yet another 10 obscure natural wonders and phenomenon!

Yes here's a third and likely final list of lesser-known wonders and phenomenon. It was very interesting making this list as it was making the other two. I hope you like it.


1. Russian Wetlands

The Russian Wetlands are an area that differ from what you might expect from a Russian landscape, and these wetlands are quite a unique looking place.

2. Majils Al Jinn Cave

[Note the people at the bottom of the light shafts, for a sense of scale]

Located in Oman, in a remote area of the Selma Plateau, this is the second largest known underground chamber in the world, said to be big enough to fit the great pyramid of Giza into. It's fantastic in the way that it's formed unlike some caves (which tend to have openings that are similar in diameter to the interior entrance cave), so that you get this smaller opening which comes out into this huge space. And the way that the light floods in as you can see is truly amazing.

3. Fantastic Pit

You got that right! This is the deepest known pit in the continental United States at 586ft, and it looks awesome. You can find out more about the pit here

4. Sótano de Las Golondrinas (Cave of Swallows)

I know what you’re thinking (or probably not), hey isn’t that the Venezuelan cave from that episode of Planet Earth? Well no it isn’t, this cave is in Mexico. It’s called the cave of swallows because birds live in the caves walls. These birds are known to be White-collared Swifts, called vencejos in Spanish, and Green Parakeets, locally known as the periquillo quila. To free themselves from the cave, the birds fly in circles around the cave, gradually flying upwards until they are able to reach the surface. The birds do this each morning, and the exodus has become part of the tourist attraction.

It’s the deepest shaft cave in the world at around 300 metres deep, and it’s popular among base jumpers (apparently someone also navigated a hot air balloon into it, but that story seems a bit farfetched).

5. Fogbow formation

After extensive looking (nah just kidding, thanks NASA archives) I've found out that a fogbow is created by a reflection of sunlight by small water droplets in a similar way to how you see rainbows, except these are without colour (or without much colour generally), which is why they are also referred to as 'Whitebows'. The reason you see no colour is because the water droplets are so small that the quantum mechanical wavelength of light smears out the colours.

6. Wave Rock

I can’t imagine why it got the name, anywho this is a tourist attraction located in Austrailia (somewhere), and I think you’ll agree that it is very cool. Don’t try to surf on it though, it probably won’t work so well.

7. Triple sunrise illusion

Pretty cool eh, and yes there is a third sun if you look hard enough. I’m not sure how exactly it is created but this illusion can be seen by the unaided eye, and does happen in places around the world. This photo was taken in Gdansk Bay, Poland.

8. Anticrepuscular Rays

What you’re seeing here is basically god rays but with some great cloud and sun placement to give the effect shown in the photo.

9. Lunar Corona formation

‘Lunar coronae are much more familiar than those around the sun. They are seen when the clouds are thin enough that each single corona light ray reaching the eye is scattered or diffracted by only one droplet. Of course, the whole corona is made by a great many droplets individually scattering the moonlight.

Sometimes as clouds pass over the moon the corona shrinks and swells as different sized droplets mould it. Small droplets make the largest coronae with aureoles a few moon diameters across.’

I once saw a moon halo but this is, wow.

10. Moonbow

‘Just as there are rainbows during the day, there can be moonbows at night. It must be raining opposite the moon and the moon must be nearly full and it can't be any higher than 42 degrees in the sky. It also has to be dark. All those factors combined together make for this atmospheric phenomenon to be fairly rare.’ (thanks random website).


Bonus items

-This place:

I hate to say it but I know nothing about this area, so I’m putting it here.

-Also, another picture of a cloud formation (Morning Glory Clouds) from a previous list. I thought this was a really good photo of it so I’m putting it here as well

Another 10 obscure natural wonders/phenomenon

1. The Great Dune of Pyla


This dune holds the title as Europes biggest sand du- wait, Europe? Look at it, it’s like someone went to the least likely place for a sand dune and dumped a ton of sand there to make one.

2. Sound travels further in cold weather

I hope this is applicable, I reckon some of you may know it, but others may not have noticed it. But yes, sound travels further in cold weather, here’s an explanation I found on it: ‘Usually energy in the form of sound waves travels upward and is dispersed. That’s why we don’t hear sounds more than about six miles away. (By the way, this is also why we don’t hear thunder from far away lightning.) On cold winter nights there is often a temperature inversion, with a layer of warm air above and cold air trapped near the ground. That inversion also traps the sound waves near the ground and allows them to travel horizontally much farther than usual. That’s why you hear the train better on a cold night!’ (source – 5th one from the bottom)

I found out about it when reading about the coldest places on earth this one time. Interesting effect.

3. Red tides

I actually found this one whilst looking for something else entirely, I couldn’t just not include it! It’s one I’ve seen before, reminds me of Bioluminescent organisms found in some waters which glow blue when disturbed (but that's less obscure). But here in the red tides you have algal blooms, which have been known to be harmful to sea life in the area and also humans (but not so much in small numbers).

4. Light pillars

‘A light pillar is a visual phenomenon created by the reflection of light from ice crystals with near horizontal parallel planar surfaces. The light can come from the sun (usually at or low to the horizon) in which case the phenomenon is called a sun pillar or solar pillar. It can also come from the moon or from terrestrial sources such as streetlights.’ (Thanks Wikipedia ;D)

I do like strange atmospheric formations, they so often look awesome. The best thing like this I’ve seen though is a ’moon halo’, not quite as amazing, but still pretty cool

5. Chocolate hills in Borneo

I spent ages trying to find this one, I found other items on this list whilst looking for this in fact. Turns out I was typing the wrong place into google, I was searching for strange hill formations in Venezuela instead of Borneo. I just happened to remember it was probably Borneo and not Venezuela where these hills supposedly are. And to make things even more confusing these hills are apparently in the Philippines, but I suspect they are in the Philippines and in Borneo? Anyways when I first saw them in pictures I was amazed, I mean how are they all formed like this. It’s like the Giants Causeway, it doesn’t look like it’s entirely natural but it is!

6. Indonesian coral reefs

It seems silly that people wouldn’t much know about it, they might know of it but when anyone mentions a coral reef they talk about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Which is amazing, yes, but it’s said that the Indonesian Coral Reef is even more varied in its amazing sea life. The Indonesian Coral Reef is not very talked about, but it’s definitely somewhere I wanna go diving someday (without disturbing anything of course).

You can see some more images of this amazing coral reef here on flickr

7. Katydids (and their strange colours)

Looks like a science experiment right? Well actually these are a strange type of grasshopper that come in various different colours, in the picture you can see the normal green one, and the much less common white and pink ones. They can also be brown.

8. Tadpole rain in Japan

Here I link you to this strange article about tadpoles that had been raining down in Japan. This sort of thing has apparently happened before in places with fish, although I know little about that. Still, it’s all very weird…

9. Stratocumulus Clouds (note: the audio is kinda messy on this video)

I just had to include another weird cloud formation, I was gonna have mammatus clouds but you probably know about those.


10. The Stone Forest in China

It’s like points in this place were picked and then the ground was raised like a sudden formation coming up from the earth. I dunno about you but I didn’t know much of this place (despite the image URL), and they don’t talk about it much on MSN travel...

Bonus: This place:



Unfortunately there was no description for this image so I know nothing about it except that it looks awesome, and it’s a mountain top farm of some sort.


Well I hope you liked this second non-gaming related blog here, I hope to do a further 10 amazing (and less well known) wonders/phenomenon list sometime in the future.

Goodbye until next time

10 amazing natural wonders/phenomena that you probably didn’t know about

I'm turning over a new leaf for this blogspot. Sure, I'm starting off with something completely unrelated to gaming this time around, but it's interesting nontheless...

1. Roll Clouds
‘Cool air sinking air from a storm cloud’s downdraft spreads out across the surface with the leading edge called a gust front. This outflow undercuts warm air being drawn into the storm’s updraft. As the cool air lifts the warm moist air water condenses creating cloud, which often rolls with the different winds above and below (wind shear).’

2. The Oarfish (aka a seaserpent!)
'I told you to feed Mr Bond to the Claw Fish! Not the Oarfish! It doesn't even have teeth!'

3. The Okapi
Okay this one is a little more well known, but not that well known. The Okapi has the horn like bits of a giraffe, the pattern of a zebra and some normal brown fur, and the ears of… micky mouse?

4. Fire tornadoes
Two forces of nature combine to haunt your dreams

5. Magnetic hills
These are often said to be optical illusions of the land where a car can appear to roll uphill. I think I once saw one that was quite steep, so they can be pretty extreme. There’s quite a few of them all over the world

6. Atmospheric sprites
I first found out about these when I used to browse the NASA photo archives. They’re trumpet shaped flashes, like lighting, that appear high in the atmosphere and are tens of kilometres in length (I think around 20km generally?). They also vary in colour, I’ve seen purple, blue and red ones around the net

7. Sailing stones

These strange desert rocks seem to move very slowly by themselves. It’s not known how they move and sometimes they may move in non linear lines


8. Neutron Star mass
I’m sure you know what Neutron Stars are but generally I don’t think people know just how powerful their mass is. The video in the link pretty much sums it up, I read somewhere that a small thimbleful piece of a Neutron Star would weigh hundreds of tons!

9. Thor’s Well

I found this whilst looking for reference images for a project. It looks awesome, but unfortunately I don’t know much more then that about it

10. Fire rainbow
Okay I actually don’t know how well known this one generally is (I hear they are more common in the USA), but it was too cool not to include!