They seem to materialize between one weather report and the next: dark green patches on a hillside that looked bare last week, saplings bursting through ash, a corridor of shade where sun beat down all summer. The story sounds supernatural, but the explanation is both older and more astonishing than myth. Ecologists have learned ...
It sounds like a trick of light: a lake that fills like a bowl in spring, then quietly pulls its waters underground as the heat arrives. Yet this seasonal vanishing act is a real, measurable feature of Earth’s hydrology, written into rock, soil, and sky. In a year of extremes, these pulse-and-pause waters are ...
Picture this: you wake up one morning and the river outside your window is flowing in the opposite direction. What was once rushing eastward toward the ocean now flows westward toward the mountains. It sounds impossible, yet this extraordinary phenomenon has shaped our planet more than you might imagine. Throughout Earth’s history, rivers have defied ...
Imagine walking through seemingly normal terrain when suddenly the earth beneath your feet rises and falls in a slow, rhythmic motion, releasing wisps of steam and gas into the air. Around the world, scattered locations harbor this extraordinary phenomenon where geothermal gases create ground that literally appears to breathe, with heat flows exceeding 100 ...
Picture this: you’re standing at the edge of what looks like a massive strawberry milkshake stretching to the horizon. A pink lake is a lake that has a red or pink colour. “I didn’t believe that it could be that pink, but it’s like a Pepto Bismol pink,” one visitor describes. This isn’t some chemical ...
We’re living through one of the most fascinating mysteries in Earth science right now. Scientists suggest that another reversal may be underway, potentially starting within 500 to 1,000 years, and the last reversal occurred 780,000 years ago. Meanwhile, our planet’s magnetic north pole is racing toward Siberia at unprecedented speeds, moving at speeds that ...
On certain hot, windless afternoons in the American desert, the ground itself seems to hold a note. Hikers pause on a steep dune slope, a sheet of sand shivers downward, and a low, velvety tone swells from the hillside like a distant pipe organ. The sound is startling because it feels alive – steady, rich, ...
When Arctic air slams into water that’s still holding autumn’s leftover warmth, the surface starts to smoke – except it’s not smoke at all. It’s sea smoke, a fleeting veil of vapor that rises in ragged wisps, then blooms into ghostly plumes. Photographers chase it, mariners respect it, and physicists love it because the recipe ...
You might think waterfalls are always crystal clear and unchanging, but nature has some spectacular surprises in store. Across America, certain waterfalls transform their appearance dramatically throughout the year, shifting from brilliant turquoise to deep chocolate brown, from emerald green to fiery orange. These color-changing phenomena aren’t magical tricks, but fascinating results of mineral deposits, ...
On some coastlines, the night surf looks like it swallowed the stars and decided to spit them back out as electric blue fire. You lift a paddle, a fish darts, a wave folds – and the water flashes, startles, then fades like a secret. The mystery isn’t magic; it’s biology, chemistry, and a little bit ...
Leander McCabe Maritz, BA (Law) English & Philosophy
