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When a huge tornado funnel cloud touched down in Orchard, Iowa, Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:04 p.m, Lori Mehmen took a life-a-time opportunity to capture this amazing photo from outside her front door. The funnel cloud which caused tree and crop damage came near the ground and then went back up into the clouds. Source: Chinadaily
Picture source: Xinhuanet
The State of Israel finally has its national bird. The Hoopoe [wiki] (Duchifat--דוכיפת --in Hebrew), listed in the Old Testament as unclean and forbidden food for Jews, was selected as Israel's first national bird. Shimon Perez, the country's President, announced on Thursday. The pink, black and white-crested bird, among other candidates such as bulbul and red falcon etc. won a nationwide election held by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel since November. A total of 155,000 Israeli people participated in the voting, with 35% of them choosing Hoopoe as their national bird. Source: Ynet & Reuters
The massive Daisetta sinkhole believed to be as long as two football fields and up to 100 feet deep has swallowed vehicles and oil field equipment. It is still developing. Daisetta, a town of 1000 population, is a once booming oil town. The ground might have caved in because of the collapse of an old salt dome where oil brine and natural gas are stored underground. Link
In a new book titled The Thinkers Of The Jungle which will be published by Ullmann Publishing in UK on May 5, there is a world exclusive, extraordinary image--a male orangutan in Borneo on the island of Kaja photographed hunting fish with the spear! It is the first time the animal has been seen using a tool to hunt, demonstrating our long-armed cousins do indeed have a remarkable ability to mimic human being's behaviour. This unique orangutan who could catch fish already trapped in the fishing lines learned his hunting skills from the locals they usually fished with spears on the Gohong River, Indonesia. Source: Dailymail
Using the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope in Chile, astronomer Stephane Udry and his colleagues discovered that a planet about five times as massive as Earth is the smallest and potentially most Earth-like planet outside the solar system. It orbits a small, dim "red dwarf" star called Gliese 581 which lies 20.5 light years away every 13 days. The planet is believed to be habitable because the astronomers calculated that it has a pleasant right-for-liquid-water-existence surface temperature of about 0 to 40° C. Link
A video grab released by Malaysian WWF on April 24, 2007 shows a rare two-horned Borneo rhino in the Malaysian jungle of Sabah, Borneo. One of the world's rarest rhinos has been caught on film for the first time on Borneo island, wildlife officials said on Tuesday as they showed footage of the animal eating, walking about and sniffing the camera.
Malaysian officials of global conservation organisation WWF said the two-minute video, recorded in February by a camera hidden in the jungle, was the first to capture the behaviour of the elusive two-horned Borneo rhino in the wild.
There are only between 25 and 50 of the rhinos left alive in the dense jungles deep in the heart of the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo, and the animals are so secretive that the first still picture of one was only taken last year, the WWF said.
Borneo Rhino, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis harrissoni, is a subspecies of the Sumatran rhino and the smallest and hairiest of all the rhinos. It can weigh from 600 to 800kg (1,300 to 1,800 lb).
Scientists found a new mineral matching nothing known previously to science but the unique chemistry of kryptonite that robs the superhero of his powers in the film Superman Returns. It will be officially named as Jadarite.The large green crystals of kryptonite have a devasting affect on the superhero. However, unlike its famous counterpart, the new mineral is white, powdery and not radioactive. And, rather than coming from outer space, the real kryptonite was found in Serbia.Link
'Towards the end of my research,' says Dr Stanley [at the Natural History Museum], 'I searched the web using the mineral's chemical formula, sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide, and was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns'.
'The new mineral does not contain fluorine and is white rather than green, but in all other respects the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite. We will have to be careful with it - we wouldn't want to deprive Earth of its most famous superhero!'
The mineral could be used as a source of lithium , which has many uses including in batteries, or as a source of borate, which is used for cleaning, also known as borax.
Waterfalls in Plitvicka Jezera National Park of Croatia are believed as one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world. This amazing photo was taken by the landscape photographer Jack Brauer. To get to this vantagepoint directly facing these waterfalls, he had to bushwack down a slope and downclimb a sketchy cliff. With lucky timing, clouds covered the sun and the photographer was able to take some longer exposures to get the soft waterfall effect. Link to TrekEarth via Digg
The possible very very bad side effect of handsets we are using nowadays!The alarm [of mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees] was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.[Colony Collapse Disorder] CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".
On 14 April, a large number of families' houses, rice fields, mosques, factories and roads were seen being buried by mudflow in Sidoarjo of Indonesia's East Java. Since last May, an awry natural gas drilling project of Lapindo Brantas Inc. has brought endless thick muck to the district and affected 15,000 victims from 2500 families. Link to Xinhua & the Age
Morning Glory Pool is the most beautiful springl in Yellowstone National Park. But, maybe some more years later, we can't see such a beautiful pool any more. Phillip Colla introduces on his website:Morning Glory Pool, one of the most popular and beautiful pools in Yellowstone National Park, earned its name in the 1880's due to its deep blue coloration and likeness to the Morning Glory flower. Over the years visitors tossed coins, trash, sticks and rocks into the pool, causing its vent to clog and the flow of water to decrease. This prompted the temperature in the pool to lessen, causing the pool's deep blue color to fade and allowing the red and yellow algae that formerly only survived at the fringe of the pool to grow toward the center.
Around eight o'clock in the evening of April 2, a mysterious luminary was seen in the skies of northeast China's Changchun city. The moving object appeared over Jilin University of the city and was pictured by a Ph. D candidate using his handphone camera. Whether it is a UFO or just astronomic phenomenon is still not clear. Link
It's the first time since 1877 that New York City saw a November and December without snow.Cherry trees are already in full blossom. Meadows are ever green. People in T-shirts, pants and sandals do more outdoor activities.
Temperatures in New York have hovered around 10 Celsius degrees this week and soared to 21.7 degrees on Saturday, breaking the previous record high of 17.2 degrees set in 1950.
The 2o-meter-drop ice waterfall recently formed at the foot of Flame Mountain in Turufan of China's Northwestern Xinjiang. It's fantastic! When I was only 6-year-old, I once travelled with my parents who then worked at Urumuqi, Xinjiang to Turufan. Other than the grapes, I could't have any memories there now.
All the constructions of Mount Washington Observatory which is dubbed as "Home of the world's worst weather" are seen being covered by frost on January 3.
As you can see from the photographs this hungry mantis captured and killed a hummingbird not much smaller than itself. The mantis used its spiny left foreleg to impale the hummingbird through the chest while leaving his right leg free.
We surmised that the mantis ran the hummer through and dangled its full weight on its foreleg while he consumed the flesh of the hummingbird from the abdomen. After he had his fill, the mantis gave his foreleg several swift jerks and freed his leg.
Look, what kind of thing is this? Over there ... What is it, what is it, what is it ... Isn't it a plane?
