Levitate a Frog Go to your refrigerator and grab a magnet. Now try to stick it to your body. Of course, the magnet falls to the ground because our bodies are not magnetic. Right? Colloquially, yes. Technically, the answer is more complex (though you obviously still won’t find magnetism in your vaccines; I can’t […]
Light Pillars, 22° Halos, Tangent Arcs, Bottlinger’s rings, Parry Arcs, and Circumzenithal Arcs, and More! In our two previous articles, we discovered diamond dust and sun dogs. While these phenomena are righteous on their own, they are singular manifestations of a larger class of optical splendors. They both arise thanks to ice crystals in the
Sun Dogs “two mock suns rose with the sun and followed it all through the day until sunset.” – Aristotle, Meteorology In our previous examination, we learned how it’s possible for snowfall to occur on cloudless days in the form of diamond dust. This precipitation transpires when water vapor turns into ice crystals near the
Diamond Dust Have you ever found yourself outside on a cold, clear, still day and noticed a snowfall? No clouds above to produce the precipitation; no gusts to blow up fallen snow. If so, you might have experienced a phenomenon known as diamond dust. If you’ve never seen this strange happening, you’re not alone. Diamond
Xiaohaituo Mountain and the Beauty of Snow The 2022 Olympic Winter Games are underway in Beijing, China. The cold iteration of the Olympics evokes the natural world a bit more to my imagination than the summer version. Mountains, snow, ice, skiing. If you’re familiar with the skyline of Beijing, you know the horizon is not
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Heartstrings of the Galaxy The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory spent three years pointing the MeerKAT radio telescope at the core of our galaxy. The result is a disarming, gorgeous mosaic image of the heart of the Milky Way: MeerKAT image of the Galactic centre region – SARAO Most of the stars in the Milky
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Song of Dunes …when travellers are on the move by night, and one of them chances to lag behind or to fall asleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company again he will hear spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his comrades. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name;
The Ripening of the Banana You’re in a supermarket. As you sashay through the produce department, you decide to procure some fresh fruit. Pondering which sweet foodstuff to take home, the yellow catches your eye. Ah, yes. Bananas. You love bananas. They’re just the right amount of ripe, too. Mostly yellow with a hint of
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Second Anniversary Issue The mountains are out there, will you answer the call?There are things to explore from the big to the small. The mountains are ringing, will you answer the call?I promise there’s magic for one and for all! We climb to the peaks of the crags, of course,To feel the fury of
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Spruce Knob – West Virginia’s High Point If the state of West Virginia had not presciently decided to move away from the wickedness of slavery during the Civil War, its High Point would be about 250 miles south-southwest at Mount Rogers, near the Virginia tripoint with North Carolina and Tennessee. Instead, the good citizens
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