Exploding lake
On August 21, 1986, seventeen hundred people who lived around Lake Nyos in Cameroon suffocated overnight – victims of an extremely rare and silent natural disaster.
There be dragons
The phrase “Here Be Dragons” actually appears only once on a historical map, on the early 16th century Hunt-Lenox Globe. And actual dragons live there.
Blood rainbow
At dusk or dawn, you might someday see an all-red rainbow.
The equation of time
When a day is longer or shorter than 24 hours you need to use the equation of time to bring it back into sync.
The long winter
In Norse mythology Fimbulwinter is the great winter immediately preceding Ragnarök. It may have been inspired by the horrifying real-life events of 536 CE.
The Great Attractor
Somewhere in the sky, obscured from our view by the Milky Way, an unknown anomaly called the Great Attractor pulls a hundred thousand galaxies around.
Black diamond mystery
Where do black diamonds come from? We don’t actually know.
The origins of elements
Where do the elements come from? Nuclear astrophysics proposes several origins, depending on the element: the Big Bang, dying and exploding stars, and cosmic rays.
The darkness between rainbows
When a double rainbow happens there’s a dark shadow between the bows. This is Alexander’s band.
Fire birds
Several bird species have been implicated in the spread of wildfire in Australia.
Runaway stars
Most stars are part of galaxies, but some are hurled out of their usual orbits by supernovae, galactic collisions, and black holes. These are the runaway stars, some of the fastest stars known.
Where the tides turn
How high does the high tide go? In the Bay of Fundy, Canada, the difference between high and low tides is more than 16 metres. But at several points in the world’s oceans, called the tidal nodes, the sea level doesn’t change at all.
Underground town
Many of the world’s opals come from a town where the houses are underground and the umbrellas are upside down.
Central Australian yacht club
Lake Eyre, in the middle of the Australian Outback, is only a lake when it floods. And when that happens, people like to sail yachts on it.
Blood rain
Oh great, it’s raining blood again! I hope it’s just rain dust from the desert and not intercontinental cloud algae.
