Amazing
Animals
Animals
The alpine swift can spend six months doing this nonstop.
What is flying?
This is a video, photo, or audio recording that seems real but has been manipulated using artificial intelligence.
What is a deepfake?
This reef system along Australia’s northeast coast is the largest coral reef on Earth and can be seen from outer space.
What is The Great Barrier Reef?
These dynamic displays of green, pink or purple radiant light often appear as dancing ribbons or curtains in the sky and occur when charged particles from the sun collide with gases in Earth's upper atmosphere.
What is the aurora borealis?
This endangered towering tree, found in California, can live for more than 3,000 years and is famously resistant to decay, with one log specimen giving a radio-carbon 14 date of 10,000 years.
What is the giant sequoia?
The shoebill --
a 5-ft. tall bird that is known for its massive, shoe-shaped bill, its statue-like stillness, and its dinosaur-like stare --
is native to this continent.
What is Africa?
This 2015 online viral phenomenon, dubbed by The Washington Post as "[the] drama that divided a planet," became the subject of scientific investigations into neuroscience and vision science.
What is The Dress?
This natural wonder offers one of the most visible examples of a worldwide geological phenomenon known as the Great Unconformity, in which 250 million-year-old rock strata lie back-to-back with 1.2 billion-year-old rocks.
What is the Grand Canyon?
Just before and after this cosmic event, a sequence of sparkling bright dots — caused by sunlight shining through valleys along the Moon’s irregular edge — can resemble a string of lights or a glowing necklace around a dark disk.
What is a total or annular solar eclipse?
These photosynthetic microorganisms account for about half of global photosynthetic activity and at least half of the oxygen production, despite amounting to only about 1% of the global plant biomass.
What are phytoplankton?
The resilience of the microscopic
eight-legged tardigrade has been demonstrated by its rare ability to survive exposure to this extreme environment.
What is outer space?
The mathematical artworks of this 20th century Dutchman feature impossible objects, explorations of infinity, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations.
Who was M.C. Escher?
Iguazu Falls, which, with roughly 275 separate falls, comprises the largest waterfall system in the world, is found on the border between Brazil and this South American country.
What is Argentina?
This bluish plasma glow, named for the patron saint of sailors, can appear on ship masts, church spires, or aircraft wingtips when the air becomes highly electrically charged during storms.
What is St. Elmo's Fire?
This parasitic plant, native to the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, produces the largest individual flower on Earth (which opens with a hissing sound) and has a strong unpleasant odor akin to that of rotting flesh.
What is the corpse flower? (aka giant padma)
The remarkable ability of the axolotl to regenerate body parts, including portions of its eye, heart, brain and spinal cord, has been attributed to the absence of this from its healing process.
What is scarring?
This technique was originally innovated by Renaissance artists, and it was later adapted by Cubists and Surrealists to intentionally distort space for dramatic or emotional effect.
What is perspective?
This colorful phenomenon occurs transiently at the horizon around the moment of sunset or sunrise, due to the atmosphere acting like a prism that separates sunlight into colors.
What is the green flash?
The Malheur National Forest in this U.S. state is home to a giant fungus that covers over 3.4 square miles underground and is considered one of the largest living organisms by area.
What is Oregon?
This phenomenon, in which thousands of starlings simultaneously swarm in synchronized, shape-shifting patterns across the sky, is named for the similarity of the sound it makes to a low, soft, or indistinct vocalization.
What is murmuration?
These phenomena come in three different types: literal (where images look different from what they are), physiological (caused by too much stimulation of the eyes), and cognitive (which happen because of how our brain understands the world).
What are optical illusions?
Pele's hair, named after the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, results when cooled lava from fountains, cascades, or other vigorous lava flows is stretched into delicate, hairlike fibers of this substance.
What is glass?
Nicknamed “The Trembling Giant,” a massive clonal colony of this tree in Utah covers over 100 acres, weighs an estimated 6,000 tons, and is considered one of the oldest and heaviest living organisms on Earth.
What is the quaking aspen?