Uranus Rains Diamonds [This article is the third in a series on Uranus. Read Part I: The Tilting of Uranus and Part 2: Uranus Stinks to make sure you’re fully up to date with Uranus.] We have certainly learned over the years that Uranus is a weird place. Uranus tilts and Uranus stinks, but, as we […]
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Poseidon’s Ribbon Weed: The World’s Largest Plant On the western flank of Australia, 500 miles north of Perth, the ocean meets the continent in a jagged puzzle piece that resembles two disembodied legs. This spot is known as Shark Bay. UNESCO declared Shark Bay a World Heritage Site in 1991. They cited the bay’s enormous
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Arcus Clouds The second full week of June produced some extreme weather across the United States. Yellowstone National Park endured a 200-500 year flooding event that swept away homes in the overfull rivers and might keep the area closed to visitors for months. A heat dome covered much of the country, producing triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures. And that heat
Beyond the Pale Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted Myrtle-walk — John Harrington, The History of Polindor and Flostella I look upon you, sir, as a man who has placed himself beyond the pale of society, by his most audacious, disgraceful, and abominable public conduct. — Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers We
The Three-Country Cairn Today, let’s travel to a triply intriguing geographic location. Connotatively, we use the term Scandanavia to refer to the Nordic countries. This collection can include Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. Sometimes we even toss in Iceland, Faroe Islands, and Aland, an autonomous region of Finland. However, the strictest definition of Scandanavia includes
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Taum Sauk Mountain – Missouri’s High Point We do not often associate Missouri with altitude, but we learned the Saint Francois Mountains – a subset of the Ozarks – are an ancient chain of true, geological mountains. The highest point in these old crags is Taum Sauk Mountain. Rising 1,772 feet above sea level,
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Saint Francois Mountains Previously, we took a broad look at the physiographic region known as the U.S. Interior Highlands, specifically the Ozarks. Even though we sometimes call the region the Ozark Mountains, it’s actually a dissected plateau. Tectonic activity uplifted the Ozarks as a slab and, over the eons, rivers cut through the rock, forming
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Cheese Cave During our previous investigation, we explored the Cheese Caves, vast underground networks of old limestone quarries that today store, amongst various other things, billions of pounds of cheese. The notion of a “cheese cave” significantly predates these storage spaces. Humans began crafting cheese long before the advent of recorded history. Some historians believe
The Cheese Caves Every so often, a story spreads around the internet about the government, cheese, and caves. The claim regards billions of pounds of government cheese being stored in vast underground networks. While this tale has roots in reality, only portions of it are correct. People of a certain age will recall “government cheese,”
Killdeer Lurings Near my home lies an abandoned tract of farmland. When I moved to the area, the acreage still produced crops, but anyone who passed could see this operation would not last forever. Surrounding all sides of the land were marks of modern urban expansion. A stone’s throw to the north runs a