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
