NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) started releasing amazing photos of the sun — something we have not seen before. The pictures were produced using x-ray and ultraviolet waves.

Lovely image composites of the sun indeed!

Image credits: NASA

Who would ever thought that snowflakes could look too wonderful when magnified hundreds of times? They look to have been designed in symmetry and sculpted in heaven.

See what I mean.

[thanks: akirathedon.com]

It is almost the Spring season and everyone is dreaming of traveling somewhere to enjoy a day looking at millions of flowers on the field. Do you know which places are best to visit for Spring flowers?

Tulips: Holland’s Keukenhof Gardens – Keukenhof Gardens is the largest tulip garden in the world with roughly 4.5 million Dutch tulips covering 80 acres.


Bluebonnets: Texas

Poppies: Mojave Desert, California

Poppies: Umbria, Italy — Italy’s hilly Umbria region is also known for its sweeping fields of darker orange poppies. Spectacular hiking opportunities abound around the town of Assisi, throughout the region, and in neighboring Tuscany.

Daffodils: Cotswolds, England — Head to The Cotswolds in the United Kingdom to witness sweeping rows of butter-yellow daffodils.

Cherry Blossoms: Washington, D.C.
When to Go: Late March to early April

Cherry Blossoms: Tokyo, Japan

Here is a list of the best coral reefs in the world.

Tubbataha Reef Marine Park – Philippines: The Tubbataha Reef Marine Park covers 33,200 ha, including the North and South Reefs. It is a unique example of an atoll reef with a very high density of marine species; the North Islet serveing as a nesting site for birds and marine turtles.


The Great Barrier Reef is a site of remarkable variety and beauty on the north-east coast of Australia. It contains the world’s largest collection of coral reefs, with 400 types of coral, 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of mollusk.

East Rennell Coral Reef makes up the southern third of Rennell Island, the southernmost island in the Solomon Island group in the western Pacific. Rennell, 86 km long x 15 km wide, is the largest raised coral atoll in the world. The site includes approximately 37,000 ha and a marine area extending 3 nautical miles to sea. A major feature of the island is Lake Tegano, which was the former lagoon on the atoll.

Brazilian Atlantic Islands: Fernando de Noronha and Atol das Rocas Reserves – Peaks of the Southern Atlantic submarine ridge form the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago and Rocas Atoll off the coast of Brazil. They represent a large proportion of the island surface of the South Atlantic and their rich waters are extremely important for the breeding and feeding of tuna, shark, turtle and marine mammals. The islands are home to the largest concentration of tropical seabirds in the Western Atlantic.

Komodo National Park – These volcanic islands are inhabited by a population of around 5,700 giant lizards, whose appearance and aggressive behaviour have led to them being called ‘Komodo dragons’. They exist nowhere else in the world and are of great interest to scientists studying the theory of evolution. The rugged hillsides of dry savannah and pockets of thorny green vegetation contrast starkly with the brilliant white sandy beaches and the blue waters surging over coral.

Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System – The coastal area of Belize is an outstanding natural system consisting of the largest barrier reef in the northern hemisphere, offshore atolls, several hundred sand cays, mangrove forests, coastal lagoons and estuaries.

[source]

In 1995, the Guinness Book of World records listed the Carabao mango variety in the Philippines as the sweetest fruit in the world, specifically the Guimaras mango. Guimaras Island is located in the Western Visayas region in the Philippines.

Here are some more sweetest fruits in the world:

Deglet Noor dates are the chewy “bread date” familiar to most.

The fig is the small, sweet edible fruit of the fig tree grown in warm climates.

A persimmon, like the tomato, it is not considered a “common berry”, but is in fact a “true berry” by definition.

The lychee is native to low elevations of the provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien in Southern China.

Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil.

Rachel Sussman shows photographs of the world’s oldest continuously living organisms — from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago’s coast to an “underground forest” in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture.

This is an amazing project from Rachel Sussman. See the pictures below of the oldest living things in the world.

La Llareta (Up to 3,000 years old; Atacama Desert, Chile) – The extraordinary 3,000-year-old relative of parsley that looks like moss but is a shrub grows in the Atacama desert in the high Andes at an altitude of 15,000ft. Measuring 8-10ft across, it inhabits the surface of smooth, round boulders. It is a dense mass of thousands of tiny branches, each ending in a bud with tiny green leaves, and is so tough you can stand on top of it.


Welwitschia Mirabilis (2,000 years old; Namib Naukluft Desert, Namibia) – Welwitschia mirabilis is the only member in the family Welwitschiaceae and is one of the more bizarre plants on the planet.

Bristlecone Pine (Up to 5,000 years old; White Mountains, CA) – Read other world’s oldest trees here.

Siberian Actinobacteria (400,000 – 600,000 years old; Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen) – This specimen had been gathered from the permafrost and was being kept in Copenhagen, where she photographed it. “The Siberian actinobacteria are half a million years old and live in the permafrost. If the permafrost isn’t permanent, the oldest living things on the planet will die,” she says.

Jomon Sugi, Japanese Cedar (2,180 to 7,000 years old; Yaku Shima, Japan)

Spruce Gran Picea (9,550 years old; Fulufjället, Sweden) – Read other world’s oldest trees here.

Lichen R. Geographicum (≈ 3,000 years old; Alanngorsuaq, Greenland)

Creosote Bush (12,000 years old; Mojave Desert, CA)

Sagole Baobab (2,000 years old; Limpopo Province, South Africa) – Read other world’s oldest trees here.

Pando, Clonal Colony of Quaking Aspens (80,000 years old; Fish Lake, UT)

Underground Forest (13,000 years old; Pretoria, South Africa) – Botanists believe the 13,000-year-old underground forest in Pretoria evolved to survive forest fires. All that is visible are the tips of the branches poking out of the soil. But beneath the ground is a mass of branches and roots.

Brain Coral (2,000 years old; Speyside, Tobago) – This 18ft-wide brain coral off the shore of Speyside on the east coast of Tobago in the Caribbean is 2,000 years old. To take the shot, Sussman had to overcome her fear of open water, take diving lessons and learn how to use her camera underwater.

Mojave Yucca (12,000 + years old; Mojave Desert, California)

Photo credits go to Rachel Sussman. Note: Rachel Sussman is on a quest to celebrate the resilience of life by identifying and photographing continuous-living organisms that are 2,000 years or older, all around the world.

If you have time to visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Houston Texas, visit the Lois the Corpse Flower. Finally, the stinky flower has opened and now ready for public viewing. Only 28 of these flowers have ever bloomed in the United States. Lois the Corpse Flower is one of the largest and rarest flowers in the world to bloom.

Here are few pictures of the Corpse Flower:

After the sinkhole pictures from Guatemala City have been released showing a big hole that swallowed a 3 story building, interests of sinkholes have resurfaced. A sinkhole, also known as a sink, shake hole, swallow hole, swallet, doline or cenote, is a natural depression or hole in the surface topography caused by the removal of soil or bedrock, often both, by water.

Here are some pictures of sinkholes that had occurred around the world. First is the Guatemala City sinkhole.


A blue hole is a submarine cave or sinkhole or vertical caves. There are many different Blue Holes located around the world, such as in the Bahamas and in Belize.

A cenote is a sinkhole with exposed rocky edges containing groundwater. Here is one located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Yucatán state, present-day Mexico.

Pipe Creek Sinkhole near Swayzee in Grant County, Indiana.

Quebec home falls in sinkhole. The old-style country house, described as the loveliest in the lush farming community beside the Yamaska River, was suddenly sucked into the earth.

Sima Humboldt (Sima Major) is enormous sinkhole located on the summit of plateau of Sarisariñama tepui, in Bolívar (state), Venezuela.

[source:wiki]

Have you already seen one weird shaped vegetable? I have seen many in my grandpa’s farm before. But I was still young that time that I did not even care to take pictures. Here are few weird, unusual vegetable shapes I found online.

Potato


Sweet Potato

Eggplant

Parsnip

These are photos of the world’s oldest trees listed by age. Sweden claims that it has the oldest tree, about 10,000-year-old spruce. It is located in the Dalarna province.

Methuselah tree – 4,789 years old, is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California.

Sarv-e-Abarkooh Tree – One of the oldest tree in the world that dates back to 4500 years ago located in Abarkouh, Yazd province, center of Iran.

Llangernyw Tree – 4,000 years old tree located in a rural village in Conwy county borough, north Wales.

Alishan Sacred Tree – 3,000 years old, located in the mountains of Chiayi County in Taiwan.

Chestnut Tree of One Hundred Horses – believed to be 2,000 to 4,000 years old. It is the largest and oldest known chestnut tree in the world located on the eastern slope of Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy.

Bodhi Tree – 2,300 years old. The tree is a large and very old Sacred Fig tree located in Bodh Gaya about 100 km (62 mi) from Patna in the Indian state of Bihar.

Jomon Sugi Tree – 2,170 – 7,200 years old — a large cryptomeria tree located on Yakushima, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Japan.