Norway
You could be forgiven for thinking that the otherworldly rock formations in these pictures come from another planet, or from a sci-fi movie perhaps. But they’re actually called sand tufas and they come from right here on earth.
A tufa is a peculiar form of calcium carbonate, and they’re created when calcium-bearing freshwater springs well up through alkaline lake water (which is rich in carbonates). The carbonate and calcium combine and, over centuries, these elements form unusual spires, towering columns, and strange cauliflower-shaped mounds which can reach heights of up to nine metres (30ft). Tufas can only form underwater, and they’re only exposed when lakes are drained or dry out over many years. Check out this collection of pictures compiled by Bored Panda to see these curious formations for yourself.
Via + image credits
Dallas Stars @ Vancouver Canucks || 16 March 2017
Tyler Seguin nearly loses his head during warm-up.
“A mysterious wooden idol found in a Russian peat bog has been dated to 11,000 years ago - and contains a code no one can decipher.
The Shigir Idol is twice as old as the Pyramids and Stonehenge - and is by far the oldest wooden structure in the world. Even more mysteriously, it is covered in what experts describe as ‘encrypted code’ - a message from a lost civilisation. Professor Mikhail Zhilin of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology said: ‘The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.’ Russian experts think that the strange carvings may contain a belief system, the equivalent of the Bible’s Genesis. The statue had been dated as being 9,500 years old, after its discovery in a peat bog 125 years ago. But new research in Mannheim, Germany used Accelerated Mass Spectrometry n small fragments of the sculpture, and found it is at least 11,000 years old. That means the sculpture dates from the very beginning of the Holocene epoch - the era when man rose to dominate the world.’
Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/mysterious-russian-statue-is-11-000-years-old—twice-as-old-as-the-pyramids-170632897.html#4zrWvRH
Dallas Stars @ Vancouver Canucks || 16 March 2017
Bo Horvat, incoming.
TODAY IN HISTORY: The rings of Saturn, August 17, 1981, in an enhanced view from the Voyager 2 space probe, assembled from clear, orange and ultraviolet frames taken at a distance of 8.9 million km (5.5 million miles).
(NASA)