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Thursday, January 19, 2012

10 Amazing Wonders of the Natural World



Earth is full of natural beauties and I don’t think that any one can see all of those in life.  From huge forests to marine life, from mountains to deserts the Earth shares its beauty with us.

We had made a list of such amazing wonders, which are less about places and more about formations and events.

1 – Ice Circles


It’s a rare fact that ice circle occur in slow moving water in cold climates. Ice circles are the large ice discs that rotate slowly in the water. It is believed that they form in eddy currents.

Ice circles are mostly observed in Scandinavia and North America, but in January 2009 one was also recorded in Britain.

2 – Red Tides


Red tide is a common name for a observable fact but correctly its known as an algal bloom, the event in which estuarine, marine, or fresh water algae rapid increase in the water column and results in discoloration of the surface water.

That can be seen only in coastal areas where algae are present in high concentrations.

3 – Columnar Basalt


Columnar Basalts are the rock formations that came in to existent from quick cooling of lava flow.

The most famous basalt flow in the world is the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland; on this basalt the vertical joints form polygonal columns from its appearance it seems as it’s built artificially.

4 – Sun Dogs


Sun Dogs are the particular type of ice halo. This is a colored patch of light at left or right of the sun, 22 degrees distant and at the same distance above the horizon as the sun. That is most usually or 2nd most commonly seen of the ice halos.

Anywhere in the world in any seasons sundogs can be seen. In Europe or USA the can be seen once or twice in a week they are seen best when the sun is low.

5 – Moeraki Boulders


The Moeraki Boulders are large and spherical boulders lying Koekohe Beach on the wave cut Otago coast of New Zealand between Moeraki and Hampden. Those boulders are scattered on the stretch of the beach where they have been protected in scientific reserve.

The main aspect of these boulders is that they are unusually in the size and highly spherical in shape.

6 – Penitentes


Penitentes are the snow formation usually found on high altitudes. They look like tall thin blades of hardened snow, positioned closely and blades oriented towards the general direction of the sun.

Height of penitentes can be same as a person’s height. Darwin described them in 1839. When on March 22, 1835 he have to squeeze his way through snowfields covered in penitentes near the Piuquenes Pass, on the way from Santiago de Chile to the Argentinean city of Mendoza.

7 – Light Pillars


Light Pillars a visual occurrence created by the reflection of light from ice crystals with near horizontal parallel planar surfaces. Light pillars usually occur because of sunlight but moonlight and strong artificial light can also form light pillars.

The pillars look like the feather of the light that vertically lay out above or below the light source. When the sun is low on the horizon then most sun pillars can be seen.

8 – Catatumbo lightning


World’s largest single generator of Ozone is Catatumbo lightning in Venezuela. This is a cloud storm which forms a voltaic arc above the height of 5km, during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per day and up to 280 times per hour, over the area where Catatumbo River flows into the Lake Maracaibo.

Catatumbo Lightning can be seen from hundreds of miles away from the lake that is also known as Lighthouse of Maracaibo.

9 – Cave of the Crystals


Cave of Naica Mine is known as the Cave of the crystals. It’s located in Chihuahua, Mexico. This cave contains giant selenite crystals, some these are the largest natural crystals ever found.

The largest crystal in the cave is 26 ft in length, 36 ft in diameter and 55 tons in weight. The cave is about 98 feet in length and 33 ft in width. It’s extremely hot with air temperatures reaching up to 109F with 90 to 100 percent humidity. Without proper protection human can survive only ten minutes in this cave because of extreme temperatures.

10 – Pink and White Terraces


Pink and White Terraces were located in New Zealand but unfortunately they were destroyed by the violent volcanic eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886.

Geothermally heated water with large amounts of siliceous sinter that regularly spouted for two geysers located beside Lake Rotomahana and small waterfall on a hill slope, leaving thick pink and white silica, which formed terraces in the shape of water pools.

The white terraces were more beautiful and were covering a large area about 3 hectares and descending 30 meters, while people went to Pink terraces to bathe.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing



The Chinese Emperor Yongle designed Porcelain Tower of Nanjing. In China it’s called Bao’ensi, which means “Temple of Gratitude”. It’s situated on the south bank of the Yangtze River in Nanjing, China.

The Porcelain Tower in the view European visitors


The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing the European visitors give this name to it and they labeled it as one of the wonders of the world because of its unique structure, which they witnessed.

This exceptional structure was almost destroyed in 19th century warfare and became part of history in other words forgotten part of history.

The people who seen it on firsthand they claims it one of the most exalted structure of a Buddhist pagoda.

A French mathematician who visited China in early 19th century describes it as the best-contrived and noblest structure of the entire East.

Structure Description


Its construction was started in the 15th century. It was having octagonal base of 97 feet in diameter. The tower was nine stories rose pyramidally with a height of about 260 feet.

An American missionary who visited Nanjing in 1852 according to his information the original plan for tower was of 13 stories with a total height of 330 feet.

Anyhow the smaller though made a little difference but it was not the size that made it a memorable structure for the visitors. The thing made it memorable was the structure’s elegance and beauty.

The white showy white porcelain bricks of the tower made it unforgettable. In daytime the bricks glitters in sunshine and in night those were light up with 140 lamps hanging around the exterior of the pagoda.

The porcelain panels were having the colorful work of stoneware tiles with green, yellow, white, and brown glazes along images if animals, landscapes, flowers, and bamboo.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus



This ancient Wonder was not listed as wonder because of its size it got place as Wonder because of its beauty though this also a burial place of a king, it fascinated its visitors for years. Being a burial place of a King haven’t mean that it got place in list of Wonders and neither it got that because of the size like pyramid. It became famous because of its astonishing beauty. It’s situated in the southwest Turkey’s city Bodrum on the Aegean Sea.

The ancient Persian kingdom was expanded to Mesopotamia, Northern India, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor because of such vast empire the king failed to have control over it, and it became hard to keep control on all those captured lands. From 377 to 353 BC King Mausollos of Caria and he moved his capital to Halicarnassus. There is nothing that we can found about Maussollos life except construction of his tomb. The idea about this project was conceived by his wife and sister Artemisia and its believed that construction of tomb was started in King’s life.

The Mausoleum was completed around 350 BC, it was completed 3 years after the death of the Maussollos.


It was having rectangular structure, with base dimensions of about 40m X 30m. The total height of Mausoleum was 45m (140 ft). Its height descended almost 20m (60 ft) for the stepped podium, 12 m (38 ft) for the colonnade, 7m (22ft) for the pyramid and 6 m (20ft) for the chariot at the top.

For almost 16 centuries The Mausoleum remained in good condition until it was struck by earthquake that damaged its roof and colonnade. The Knights of St. John of Malta invaded in early 15th century and there they decided to build a massive crusader castle and it is said that blocks and stones of Mausoleum was used in that castle’s construction. Today that massive castle still stands in Bodrum, and the stones and blocks of Mausoleum can be seen in walls of the castle. On the site of Mausoleum only its foundations remain.

Monday, January 9, 2012

The Colosseum



The most famous monument of Ancient Rome is the Colosseum. Its real name is Flavian Amphitheatre. The Emperor Vespasian started it between 70 and 76 AD and his son Titus in 80AD completed it. Titus dedicated the Colosseum to the Vespasian death year after. It was having a grand opening by holding 100days worth of games there. The site where it was built there Nero was having a huge villa for himself. While Vespasian wanted to build something for people rather than for himself. It was given name the Colosseum because it was built near that place where Nero erected a huge statue of colossus of himself. That statue was 100 feet high and was the largest gilded bronze statue of its time depicting him as god of the sun. It was moved away latterly and it taken 24 elephants to move it from there.
The Colosseum was the great source of recreation and entertainment for all Roman Empire people enjoys to go to theater to watch plays and concerts, and stadium the chariot races and the amphitheater to watch the bloody sports. There were so many types of furious fights were held in the Colosseum like gladiatorial combats, fights with beasts and individual fights. The Colosseum was having capacity of having 50,000 people. Sometimes people spend whole day in the Colosseum watching sports.

The games were really wild and bloody and for almost 4 centuries men died for that only to provide entertainment to crowd. There were the training schools for the gladiators; most of those gladiators were the criminals and slaves.

At first there were fights to the death between wild animals such bear against buffalo, buffalo against elephant, and elephant against rhinoceros. There were fights between men and beasts also such fights were called venations.

The Amphitheater building from outside is built of travertine and interior haves tufa and bricks. Its outside was decorated with the Greek columns but that don’t support the architecture. The enclosing boundary of the Colosseum is of 527m and its height was 50m. It was having 80 entrances and all were having numbers except the 4 main entrances that were wider than other others were reserved for the Emperor. The Colosseum entrances were designed in such way that crowd could get out in five minutes. Its interior was divided into three parts: the arena, the podium, and the cavea.

Presently the two third of the original building had been removed and so many rows of seats in the cavea are missing. Though its structure was similar to other amphitheaters but in size it was lot bigger.