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Wikimedia Commons1 of 10
The centuries-long processes that shape the living rock are as mysterious as they are boring, but once in a great while, geological forces turn out something much more interesting than a geode. Vast but strangely regular rock formations, mysterious pockets of out-of-place biomes, and interestingly shaped pebbles are among the reasons many scientifically-minded people enter the field of earth sciences and why other people blame all sorts of weird geological features on ancient aliens.
Here are ten fascinating geological and environmental phenomena that go a long way towards establishing Earth as a wonderfully weird place to live.
THE GREEN LAKE OF STYRIA, AUSTRIA
During winter and autumn in the Alpine town of Tragoess, the Green Lake is barely deserving of the name, barely deeper than six feet at its lowest point and serving only as a backdrop for a small county-owned park.
During the peak of the Styrian summer however, melting snow from the mountains surrounding the town pour into the lake in such abundance that it doubles in size and depth, flooding the surrounding meadows and parkland with crystal-clear emerald-tinted water.
In this brief period, divers can swim among a lush landscape of typically terrestrial plants, benches, and a remarkably pointless bridge, earning the Green Lake the title of the Austrian Alps' number one SCUBA-diving attraction, which admittedly isn't a hotly contested distinction.
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Wikimedia Commons2 of 10
THE EYE OF THE SAHARA, MAURITANIA
It may sound like something that Indiana Jones might have to punch a lot of Nazis in order to recover, but the Eye of the Sahara is in fact a gigantic series of concentric rock formations covering almost 25 miles of otherwise featureless desert.
While geologists initially believed the Eye to be the result of an asteroid strike, detailed mineral analysis has shown that the strangely orderly series of circles is actuallyt the remnants of a hugely eroded and collapsed rock dome.
Why the dome was itself so symmetrical and orderly is a mystery for another article to investigate (just kidding, it was obviously the work of ancient aliens).
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EISRIESENWELT, AUSTRIA
A limestone ice cave some twenty miles south of Salzburg, Eisriesenwelt ("World of the Ice Giants") was first "discovered" by Austrian naturalist Anton Posselt in 1879, although the local villagers had known of the cave's existence for years and had avoided exploring it for the very good reason that it was obviously the gateway to Hell.
Contrary to everyone's expectations, Posselt returned from the cave without being eaten or damned by demonic frost giants and officially published his findings, which were largely forgotten until just after the First World War, when more rigorous research and increased public curiosity turned the frozen caverns into a local tourist attraction.
The caves contain a number of unique and gigantic ice formations open to the public, although only a fifth of their volume is accessible due to the Austrian Forest Commission's understandable desire to keep ice-giant-related fatalities to a minimum.
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PAMUKKALE, TURKEY
The terraced pools of Pamukkale (Turkish for "cotton castle") are the result of thousands of years of limestone erosion, chemical reaction, and shrewd tourist promotions. Pamukkale was the site of the ancient Greek/Roman/Byzantine spa resort of Hierapolis, a city built on top of the "castle" formation itself.
Cities built on or near therapeutic hot springs were nothing new, but Hierapolis had the unique benefit of the world's only naturally-occurring hot tubs: high concentrations of calcium carbonate in the springs led to the formation of travertine, a special form of limestone that tended to build up in rims and walls that formed a multitude of small, shallow pools full of comfortably hot water.
The thousands of years of tourist activity haven't always been kind to Pamukkale's natural and man-made features-in the fifties, several hotels were built right on top of Hierapolis excavation sites, causing irreparable damage to the ancient buildings-but now that the site is under UNESCO World Heritage status, tourists aren't even allowed to wear shoes in the pools for fear of disrupting their unique chemical balance.
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THE GIANTS' CAUSEWAY, IRELAND
No, it's not somebody's high-resolution texture pack for Minecraft, it's Northern Ireland's most popular tourist attraction, the Giant's Causeway.
The traditional explanation for the rock formation reads like a particularly bizarre 60s-era superhero comic: legendary Irish hero Finn MacCool laid down the hexagonal stone pillars to build a bridge to Scotland so he could fight the giant Benandonner.
When Benandonner turned out to be way bigger than MacCool expected, the clever Irishman disguised himself as a huge baby, and when the Scottish giant came calling, MacCool's wife Una told him that said huge baby was Finn's newborn son.
Assuming that anyone who sired such a gigantic and muscular baby must have been a giant of incredible proportions, Benandonner beat cheeks back over the causeway, tearing it up as he went and leaving only the stub of the "bridgehead" in Antrim.
The official scientific explanation is that a period of intense volcanic activity and rapid cooling created the same kind of patterned "cracking" effect in lava that you can often see in patches of dried mud, an explanation that may be technically correct but fails to include any grown men pretending to be babies in order to frighten enormous Scotsmen, meaning that it is an explanation we must reluctantly reject.
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TESSELATED PAVEMENT, TASMANIA
The narrow isthmus known as Eaglehawk Neck that connects the Tasman Peninsula to the mainland hosts a geological formation even weirder and more orderly than the Giant's Causeway, albeit sadly lacking in bizarre folklore.
The low-lying tidal zones of the "Tesselated Pavement" yield grid patterns so regular and rectilinear that they resemble street maps, but the phenomenon is entirely natural. Subtle stresses created polygonal faults in the flat sedimentary rock formations along the Tasmanian coast, and the steady washing of salt water over these formations created ridges (in the "pan" formations) and cracks (in the "loaf" formations) that organized themselves along existing fault lines that otherwise wouldn't have been detectable without specialized seismographic equipment.
The Eaglehawk Neck formation is remarkable in its size and its regularity, but it's actually just a uniquely visible representation of the forces that are constantly acting on the planet's surface. Still, though, it is probably the work of ancient aliens.
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ROSS ISLAND ICE VOLCANOES, ANTARCTICA
Mount Erebus has long suffered from a sense of inadequacy. While it may be the world's southernmost volcano, it's only the second-largest volcano in Antarctica as long as indie darling Mount Sidley remains almost 500 meters taller.
While it may be Antarctica's most famous peak, it still doesn't have as badass a name as Mount Terror, a dormant volcano on the same island. It's easy to see why Erebus might choose to develop a geographical feature that was uniquely weird among an entire continent of uniquely weird geographical features: the ice fumarole, a side-vent of Erebus' volcanic output that tunnels its way through Antarctica's incredibly thick ice shelf.
In the sub-zero environment of Ross Island, the molten ice and vapor of an emerging volcano re-freezes around the stream of magma with incredible speed, meaning that would-be eruptions tend to result in towering chimneys of steaming, smoking ice re-forming itself around a bubbling stream of molten rock. Jeez, Mt. Erebus, okay, we get it, you're an awesome volcano, but maybe you're trying too hard.
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THE CATATUMBO LIGHTNING STORMS, VENEZUELA
In most cultures, huge lightning storms are rare enough to inspire legends of conquering gods and legendary battles, but to the native people living at the mouth of the Catatumbo River the presence of a gigantic pyrotechnic lightning storm was basically just a typical Tuesday evening.
A singular combination of dry air masses, humid swamplands, and a unique stew of exotic marsh gases created an environment where the shores of Lake Maracaibo were treated to spectacular thunderstorms 160 days out of each year, many of which lasted as long as ten hours.
The Catatumbo Storms have been so reliable that for centuries they were treated as a sort of naturally-occurring beacon for South American sailors, earning it the nickname of "The Lighthouse of Maracaibo," although recent droughts have disrupted the storms' previously reliable schedule.
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tbsmith via Flickr9 of 10
SON DOONG CAVE, VIETNAM
The history of Vietnam is basically a series of lengthy, hideous wars against vastly more powerful empires, so it's actually not that surprising that the fact that Vietnam was home to the world's largest cave system only became public in 2009, after an unusually long stretch of time where Vietnam was not being blown up, chopped apart, or trampled by elephants.
Everything else about the Son Doong cave complex, however, is a fantastic surprise. Individual chambers over two miles in length, a huge and fast-flowing underground river, and thriving miniature forests a quarter-mile below the surface of the Earth are among the fascinating treasures to be found, and considering that the cave has yet to be fully explored, Son Doong may provide even more amazing discoveries in the future.
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Inhabitat10 of 10Next: The Greatest Photos You Will See Today
OKLO REACTOR COMPLEX, GABON
A lot of people like to characterize nuclear power as somehow unnatural, a perversion of the laws of nature that has no place in human society.
Any half-educated student of physics understands why that argument is ridiculous on its face, but without delving into the science of nuclear energy it is quite easy to refute the argument that nuclear power is somehow against natural law by bringing up the strange and wondrous case of the naturally-occurring fission reactors discovered within the Oklo uranium mines of the Republic of Gabon in 1972.
When Gabonese uranium hexafluoride shipments started setting off alarms (literally) in French enrichment plants, France's remarkably robust nuclear regulatory commission immediately launched an investigation based on the assumption that Gabon was siphoning off weapons-grade material for their own nefarious purposes-and France has never tolerated the existence of nefarious purposes that they didn't come up with by themselves.
Thankfully for the citizens of Gabon and the soldiers of France, French scientists discovered a plausible and non-illegal explanation for the existence of radioactive byproducts of fission reactions in an African colonial state that lacked the industrial infrastructure to build a VW Beetle, let alone an atomic bomb.
The theories of Japanese-American physicist Paul Kazuo Kuroda established that there was no reason why a naturally-occurring nuclear reactor couldn't show up somewhere on Earth. The basic ingredients of a reactor existed all over the world but were found in the highest concetrations within the Oklo mines, and analysis of the flow of groundwater found that the liquid formed a natural neutron moderator for these natural reactors in the few seconds before it boiled off.
This cycle of gradually reaching critical mass before boiling away a crucial part of its operating mechanism repeated itself for several hundred thousand years, generating energy pulses of a hundred kilowatts while it was active and sulking quietly in its underground cavern while it allowed its moderator fluid to fill back up.
Gradual changes in Earth's oxygen content and overall climate reduced and finally eliminated the Oklo reactors' ability to function, but it remains true that nuclear power predates mankind's simplest inventions by several million years.
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