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08/12/2023

Is Zagreb home to the world’s most impressive scaffolding? The cathedral’s new scaffolding becomes a captivating attraction, so much so that a petition has been launched to keep it up permanently.

Read more: buff.ly/3IKhBYW

07/12/2023

Amidst the frigid expanse of the North Atlantic Ocean lies a land of fire and ice – Iceland. This island nation sits right over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a divergent plate boundary that extends from the Arctic to the tropics.

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge forms a spectacular underwater mountain range, stretching over 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles). In Iceland, this underwater ridge reaches above sea level, creating an impressive landscape of volcanoes, geothermal springs, and geysers.

Iceland's rift valley, most part of which is hosted in the Thingvellir National Park, is an example of this ongoing geological drama. Visitors can walk along the crest of the rift valley, literally standing on the boundary between two continents.

07/12/2023

This photo is black and white, but that grid tricks your brain into seeing a colour image.

It's called the 'colour assimilation grid illusion'.

See: buff.ly/2YBCj7q

07/12/2023

This is just a short stretch of the Baltic Way.

On 23 August 1989, approximately two million people joined their hands to form a human chain spanning 690 km (430 mi) across the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as a peaceful demonstration against Soviet oppression, and to support the independence movements of the three States and their desire to escape communism.

This protest was one of the earliest and longest unbroken human chains in history. Similar human chains were later organised in many East European countries and regions of the USSR.

07/12/2023

This building in Fatih, Istanbul, Turkey is an excellent example of architectural styles stratification over the centuries.

It shows three distinct periods:

- Roman Byzantine Empire (bottom),
- Ottoman Empire (middle),
- Republic (three upper floors).

05/12/2023

The town of Whittier, Alaska, is known for having nearly the entire population living in a single apartment building.

The building is called Begich Towers, a 14-story apartment complex that houses about 90% of the town's residents (total: 272). This has earned Whittier the nickname of a "town under one roof".

The building, originally constructed as an army barracks, now serves as a cozy condominium featuring a post office, general store, police station, laundromat, health clinic, mayor's office, and a heated indoor pool.

Whittier, Alaska is accessible only by air or through a single-lane tunnel that stretches over two miles through neighboring Maynard Mountain. The town's weather conditions can be harsh during winter, making the Begich Towers a convenient and practical living solution for the residents.

In addition to the Begich Towers, there is a second condo building in the town where the remaining residents live. The town's school and gym are located in a separate structure but are connected to the Begich Towers by a tunnel, allowing for easy access during the winter months.

05/12/2023

The tech has gone viral and received much praise.

An Australian company has developed glow in the dark road markings. This invention has gone viral on social media, has developed by Tarmac Linemarking.

05/12/2023

Mount Fuji as seen from the ISS.

05/12/2023

Fascinating: These unusual bright cyan-blue mushrooms are known as Mycena interrupta (pixie's parasol). They appear in small colonies on rotting, moist wood in rainforests and beech or eucalypt forests

05/12/2023

Argentinosaurus lived on the then-island continent of South America somewhere between 97 and 93.5 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period.

It is among the largest known dinosaurs and this is the size of its leg (human for scale).

05/12/2023

One of the oldest house in France is located in the town of Aveyron and is approximately 550 years old. The house is known as the "Maison de Jeanne" and was built in the 15th century. It is a timber-framed house with a unique design, as the upper floors are larger than the ground floor. This design was likely to minimize the amount of land occupied and thus reduce the taxes paid.

04/12/2023

The coconut crab is the largest terrestrial arthropod in the world 🦀

It has powerful walking legs with pointed tips, which allow it to climb vertical or overhanging surfaces. Human for scale.

📷: Piotr Naskrecki

04/12/2023

Thoughts?

04/12/2023

This tiny fungus photographed in Taiwan is believed to be Mycena Subcyanocephala (近藍蓋小菇). Its blue color only appears in the young stage, making these pictures an extremely precious observation.

📸: Eric Cho / cho_fungi

04/12/2023

Bison are the only animal that turn into a snowstorm rather than away from it because they instinctively know that walking into the storm will get them out of the weather quicker. There may be a life lesson for humans in this. It also makes for some epic pictures.

03/12/2023

This is the cockpit of one of the most legendary planes ever built, the SR-71 Blackbird.

The Blackbird, created by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division, was a revolutionary aircraft. Described by a former pilot as "107 feet of fire-breathing titanium," the Blackbird's groundbreaking construction made the spy plane unique among aircraft.

03/12/2023

There is an island in the Pacific called Yap that uses circular stones as currency. The stones are too large to move so the ownership of the stones is passed by word of mouth to transact business.

Economists love the tiny island called Yap located in the Pacific Ocean, because it helps answer this really basic question: what is money?

There's no gold or silver on Yap. But hundreds of years ago, explorers from the island found limestone deposits on another island hundreds of miles away. And they carved this limestone into huge stone discs, which they brought back across the sea on their small bamboo boats.

It is not clear if these stones began a currently immediately, but at some point in time the people on Yap realized what most societies realize. They needed something that everyone agrees you can use to pay for stuff.

Like every society, the people of Yap took the thing they considered precious — their version of gold — and decided that was money.

There was just one key thing about this money: it was really heavy. A big piece could weigh more than a car.

They ended up talkimg about the stones themselves not changing hands at all. One person gives it to another person. But the stone doesn't move. It's just that everybody in the village knows the stone now has a new owner.

The stone doesn't even need to be on the island to count as money.

One time, according to the island's oral tradition, a crew was bringing a stone coin back to Yap on a boat. Due to a storm, the stone sank. The crew made it back to Yap and told everybody what happened.

And everybody decided that the piece of stone at the bottom of the ocean was still good.

This system, in the end, feels really familiar. If you go online to pay your electric bill, what's the difference with the stones?

03/12/2023

An astronaut on the International Space Station took this photograph during a rare clear day over Ireland and Great Britain. The wide view captures the contrasting colors of various land cover types present across the two islands.

Read more: buff.ly/3ZDTCkT

03/12/2023

Ocean Farm 1 was the first offshore fish farm. It can contain 250,000 m³ in volume and withstand magnitude 12 earthquakes.

About 20,000 sensors allow the marine site to achieve complete automation to mature up to 1.5 million fish in 14 months.

03/12/2023

The blue-footed b***y (Sula nebouxii) is a marine bird native to subtropical and tropical regions of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

It is easily recognizable by its distinctive bright blue feet, coming from carotenoid pigments from its diet of fresh fish.

03/12/2023

A map of the Atlantic Ocean floor published in 1968 based on a large number of deep ocean soundings compiled by Bruce Heezen and Marie Tharpfor National Geographic Magazine.

Courtesy of Ken Field, International Cartographic Association

24/11/2023

Just outside the city of Klevan in Ukraine, a nearly two-mile stretch of private railway has turned the surrounding trees into an enchanting natural tunnel. It's called the Tunnel of Love.

Read more: buff.ly/2t29nEy

22/11/2023

The Red Planet has reached solar conjunction as its orbit takes it to the far side of the sun and out of sight. NASA's Mars robots are on their own until Nov. 25.

Mars disappeared from the sky over Earth on Saturday (Nov. 18) when the Red Planet was apparently swallowed by the sun. Don’t panic, this disappearance may look dramatic but it is actually the result of Mars passing to the opposite side of the sun to Earth during an event that astronomers call sol...

10/11/2023

This close up picture clearly shows where a snake's venom comes from.

The fangs of a rattlesnake (left) and a Gaboon viper (right).

📷: Juan Alvarez

10/11/2023

Analysis of the DNA inside the hyena p**p revealed a bunch of hyena DNA alongside the DNA of the European woolly rhino

Read more: https://rb.gy/10g7hj

10/11/2023

Interesting fact: If you drilled a tunnel straight through the Earth and jumped in, it would take you 42 minutes to get to the other side.

09/11/2023

‘The thinner tree was cut years ago and the big one has been holding and feeding it since then. They "wake up" together in the spring and "go to sleep" together in the autumn’

Inosculation is a natural phenomenon in which parts of two different trees, commonly but not exclusively the same species, grow together, self grafting and sharing nutrients

The term emanates from latin- ōsculārī, to kiss

09/11/2023

This lock can be opened with 1 lock: no matter which one. It's a real life example of a brunnian link, a nontrivial link that becomes a set of trivial unlinked circles if any one component is removed.

09/11/2023

Last month was the hottest October on record globally, Europe's climate monitor said Wednesday, as months of exceptional heat are likely to make 2023 the warmest year in history: https://rb.gy/aivmya

04/11/2023

When two particles, such as a pair of photons or electrons, become entangled, they remain connected even when separated by vast distances. It's a bizarre, counterintuitive phenomenon that explains how two subatomic particles can be intimately linked to each other even if separated by billions of light-years of space. Despite their vast separation, a change induced in one will affect the other.

04/11/2023

Faking the moon landing in 1969 would have been harder than actually going to the moon. It would also take the efforts of more than 400,000 conspirators to keep it a secret.

04/11/2023

NASA's Lucy mission has just snagged a celestially good deal: two asteroids for the price of one flyby. While flying past a small main-belt asteroid called Dinkinesh the spacecraft found an even smaller “moon” orbiting it. The two form a binary asteroid pair.

Read more: https://rb.gy/l5bsy1

03/11/2023

The observable universe is 93 billion light years across. That's big. Alan Guth made a calculation about inflation in the early universe that says the entire universe could be 150 sextillion times larger than that. That's 150 with 21 zeroes after it, times 93 billion.

Astronomers found that the universe is at least 250 times larger than the observable universe, or at least 7 trillion light-years across. "That's big, but actually more tightly constrained that many other models," according to MIT report.

📷: Pablo Carlos Budassi

03/11/2023

Saturn has the lowest density of any planet, 687 kg/m³, which is less than that of water. Saturn is of such low density that it would float in a (gigantic) bathtub 🪐

📷: NASA JPL-Caltech

02/11/2023

Platymma tweediei, the rarest snails in the world, often called the (Malaysian) fire snail, is the largest land snail in Peninsular Malaysia, living exclusively in the mountainous forests there. It is the only species in the genus Platymma. It is characterized by its black shell and orange to bright red foot 🐌

02/11/2023

One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a … pea 🤯

📷: NASA JPL-Caltech

02/11/2023

"A number of these very high priced art things are tax evasion and money laundering."

~ Elon Musk

01/11/2023

Where the desert and the sea meet in Skeleton coast, Namibia.

📸: Sergey Gorshkov

01/11/2023

The Great Pyramid of Giza used to look very different from the way it does now.

When it was first completed, its external walls of limestone were sanded smooth to shine bright white and it had a golden cap, called pyramidion.

01/11/2023

Every single point of light is actually a distant galaxy in the deep space imaged by ESA.