Here are a few of the strangest things that actually happen!
9 - Glowing Sand Vacationers in destinations such as the Maldives
are sometimes treated to a natural phenomenon that turns the night-time ocean into a field
of glowing stars.
As much as that sounds like an exaggeration, it’s really not!
If waves break on the shore or bare feet step into the wet sand, a bright green-blue glow
appears.
This really cool looking effect is caused by bioluminescent plankton that often appears
in warm coastal waters.
Scientists have only recently discovered that this type of plankton glows when they’re
moved because of stress, which is sorta unfortunate when you consider how relaxing the sight of
the shimmering waves are when it’s completely dark out.
Bioluminescence is used as a defense mechanism to draw predators towards the whatever it
is trying eat the plankton.
The tiny flashes of light also disorientate and surprise the predator.
The plankton produce light using a chemical called luciferin.
The process of creating a bioluminescent light, which is simply light produced within a living
creature, differs between organisms.
Some need a particular food or another creature for the effect to happen.
But this type of plankton produces luciferin on its own.
The light the tiny plankton emit is called ‘cold light’, because less than 20% of
the light actually generates heat.
Huge areas of the ocean can become populated by glowing plankton but the effect is especially
common in warm-water lagoons that have narrow openings to the sea.
8 - Surreal Spider Webs If you hate spiders, you probably wanna skip
forward for the next couple minutes.
You’re about to hear about the silent army on the move in flooded New South Wales.
At first glance, it looks like the fields have been blanketed with snow - but this ghostly
white landscape in Australia is the work of MILLIONS of spiders!
As flood waters raced past the town of Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales, the spiders were
forced to clamber up trees and bushes, spinning their webs as they climbed.
The result was this amazing panorama - glistening sheets of web covering just about everything
in sight.
Most of the branches were cocooned in the sticky webs, while the tall grasses looked
as if they were covered in silk.
When the residents of Wagga Wagga returned to their evacuated homes, they were obviously
extremely surprised to find the fields surrounding their houses transformed, with their green
grass covered in webs.
So how’d the spiders do it?
This is how the process actually goes: They throw out a thread of spider web from their
body, they extend it into the air, the wind catches it and they take off and use it as
a parachute.
So the spiders literally floating on a parachute of their own body silk.
The spiders then just jump off the web and go onto the ground and hide, so they use their
web as a way of migrating.
7 - Underwater Crop Circles They’ve been called the crop circles of
the ocean floor—seven-foot diameter patterned circles that were first spotted in 1995 off
the coast of southern Japan.
But their origin was a mystery, and local divers just basically called them “mystery
circles.”
The mystery persisted until 2011 when the artist finally emerged.
A male pufferfish just five inches long, was finally caught in the act.
So why do male pufferfish actually do this?!
Apparently, female puffer fish are attracted by the grooves and ridges.
After the male pufferfish make these circles for their ladies, they get down to business
and then she lays her eggs in the center of these undersea circles.
The research team observed a total of 10 construction events carried out by somewhere between 4
and 8 males.
Hmmm, is it just me or is it pretty fitting that it was Japanese people that discovered
this?!
Males spent seven to nine days building their circles by repeatedly swimming in and out
of the circle, using their fins to dig valleys in the sandy bottom.
Aesthetics were clearly important.
The spirograph pattern was meticulously created and males were observed decorating the peaks
with shells and coral fragments.
But the design had a practical purpose as well: the male’s swimming patterns stirred
up fine sand particles and pushed them toward the middle of the circle, which served as
the actual nest.
Hey, whatever you gotta do!
6 - Brinicles These icy underwater tentacles are often referred
to as “sea stalactites” because of their bizarre appearance, but their readily nature
has earned them another nickname: “icicles of breath.”
When salt-rich water leaks out of sea ice, it sinks into the sea and can occasionally
create an eerie finger of ice called a brinicle.
New research explains how these strange fingers of ice form and how the salty water within
sea ice could have been a prime environment in which life may have evolved.
The brinicle-forming process goes like this: When sea ice freezes in the Arctic and Antarctic,
the salt and other ions in the water is excluded from the water crystals.
This salt-heavy brine accumulates in fractures and compartments within the sea ice.
Inevitably however, sea ice cracks and the brine leaks out.
The brine itself is colder than the freezing point of seawater since salt-rich water freezes
at lower temperatures . Since the concentration of water in the brine is lower than that in
the ocean — and water moves from high to low concentrations, via osmosis — water
is attracted to the brine.
But the brine is so cold that the water freezes, forming a descending tube of ice.
Definitely sounds dangerous, but gotta, pretty cool!
5 - Frost Flowers A frost flower is created in autumn or early
winter mornings when ice in extremely thin layers is pushed out from the stems of plants
or occasionally wood.
This extrusion creates cool looking patterns which curl and fold into gorgeous frozen petioles
giving this phenomenon both its name and its appearance.
Conditions have to be just right for frost flowers to form.
Early winter and late autumn are the optimum time to come across frost flowers, although
the weather conditions have to be just right.
As the temperature gets to freezing or below, the sap in the stem of the plants expands.
As it does so, the outer layer of the stem comes under increasing pressure and microscopic
thin cracks, known as linear fissures, begin to form.
These give way under the pressure of the sap and split open.
Water is continuously being drawn up the plant’s stem while the ground remains unfrozen.
It travels up the stem and reaches the split or splits.
As it does so, it oozes slowly out and it freezes, but more water is coming out behind
it.
This new water reaches the cracks and it too freezes, pushing the previous slither of ice
away from the stem.
That’s how the amazing ‘ice petals’ are formed!
4 - Fairy Circles Mysterious bare patches of ground that speckle
a vast landscape in Namibia have puzzled scientists for years.
These vegetation-free disks of varying sizes, coined “fairy circles” are found all over
across an extensive area of arid grassland stretching across southern Angola, western
Namibia, and northern South Africa.
But what exactly causes these things?!
One popular hypothesis suggested that insects such as termites or ants were responsible
for the circles by chewing away at the roots of the grass.
Field research studies demonstrated a correlation between the circles and populations of ants
or termites; however, no one had ever actually SEEN any of these guys nibbling holes into
the grasslands!
Another theory was that leakage of gases such as methane and butane from hydrocarbon deposits
displaced the soil atmosphere near the surface, causing a depletion of oxygen around the roots
of the plants and ultimately causing destruction.
The newest theory suggests that the fairy circles are actually a result of competition
for local resources between plants.
Because some plants are more efficient at taking up water from the soil than other plants,
this is what’s resulting in patches of bare land encircled with lush vegetation.
Maybe one day we’ll find out what it is.
My money is on the illuminati!
Okay, let’s not get carried away, that was a joke.
3 - Rainbow Eucalyptus You guys ever hear about a tree that’s rainbow
in color?
Apparently it’s intense coloring isn’t enough, it’s got a strong smell too that
makes the tree unforgettable.
The rainbow eucalyptus is an interesting tree with a colorful trunk.
So how do the colors actually form?
The trunk periodically sheds a strip of bark, revealing a green layer underneath.
This layer then changes color.
The shedding and color change happen at different times in different parts of the trunk.
In addition, a variety of new colors are produced.
The overall effect is, of course, what gives the tree its "rainbow" name.
The rainbow eucalyptus is pretty popular, and it’s often planted deliberately, as
c’mon, it's an interesting and I’d say pretty impressive tree.
Green, orange, yellow, rusty red, maroon, brown, purple, and blue areas are colors that
all show up on the trunk.
On some trees, the colors are so vibrant and rich that they look artificial.
On others, the colors have a pastel hue.
The colors are generally less intense when the tree is growing outside its native habitat.
2 - Snow Donuts Found mostly in the open prairies of North
America and some remote regions of Northern Europe, snow doughnuts might look like icy
man-made structures, but these tire-shaped piles of snow are entirely natural!
They're actually very rarely seen because weather conditions need to be JUST right in
order for them to form.
This includes wind, temperature, snow, ice, and moisture.
Actually it’s pretty amazing that they form.
Snow doughnuts start out as a thick slab of snow with a surface layer that's super-close
to its melting point.
This means it has to be bright and sunny enough for the surface layer to be wet and loose,
but not so warm that it starts melting away.
The top snow layer becomes a bit sticky, and you then need a fairly strong wind.
The sticky layer can be peeled off the colder and more powdery snow underneath by the wind,
forming a roll.
Depending on how strong the wind is, how smooth the surface of the snow is, and how far it
can to roll, a snow doughnut can range in size from no bigger than a tennis ball to
almost 2 feet tall.
It’s tough for them to get this big, though, because the snow needs to have just the right
amount of elasticity, and due to their hollow shape, a newly formed snow doughnut can be
easily blown away and destroyed if the wind is too strong.
1 - Jelly Rain This strange incident happened back in 1994.
The residents of Oakville, Washington witnessed countless gelatinous blobs falling from the
sky, instead of you know, the usual downpour of just rain!
Supposedly, once the globs fell, almost everyone in Oakville started to develop severe flu-like
symptoms that lasted anywhere from 7 weeks to 3 months.
One woman sent a sample of the blobs for testing after her mother, friend, and herself experienced
bouts of nausea along with the death of of one of their kittens.
What the technicians discovered was shocking – the globs contained human white blood
cells!
The substance was then brought to the State Department of Health of Washington for further
analysis.
However, no one could successfully identify the blob or its origins.
The mystery of the Oakville blobs has been debated for years, and several theories have
been presented to explain them.
Some local residents believe the blobs were related to increased military activity and
testing done in the area.
Other people thought that the the cause of the blobs may have been waste leaked from
an airplane that flew overhead.
While this would tie into the finding of human white blood cells, it’s unlikely because
airline waste is commonly known as blue ice because of its color from the disinfectant!
To this day, this weird incident is still a mystery that probably will never get solved!
Here’s what’s next!