First the world goes crazy—then Earth does, too. We’re doomed!
A NEW OCEAN?
In 2005 several earthquakes and a volcanic eruption struck an area known as the Afar Depression in northern Ethiopia. Just days later, geologists discovered a crack in the earth near the volcano. It began to grow, and it’s still growing today—it’s now more than 35 miles long, 25 feet wide, and, in some places, 130 feet deep. Geologists tell us that the quakes, eruption, and crack were all caused by the well-known phenomenon of plate tectonics; two of the Earth’s continental plates, which meet under the region, are drifting away from each other. That’s also the same process that formed the oceans—and, according to scientists, we are witnessing the beginning stages of the formation of a new sea. But it’s happening much faster than anyone ever thought possible. “The ferocity of what we saw during this episode stunned everyone,” says Cindy Ebinger of University of Rochester. The crack, she says, will eventually become enormous, and will fill with water from the nearby Red Sea, cutting off the nations of Djibouti, Eritrea, and part of Ethiopia from the African continent and turning the region into an island. (It will take a few million years, geologists say…but they could be wrong.)
Among human populations, there are natural boundaries—mountain ranges or rivers, for example—and political boundaries, which are arbitrary lines drawn on a map, but are unrelated to physical barriers. But a 2009 study at the University of Haifa in Israel found that political boundaries sometimes affect not just people, but also animals. Along the southern section of the Israel-Jordan border, the boundary was drawn over desert. It’s virtually the same on each side, but the Jordanian desert boasts a higher variety of reptile species. And UH scientists also found that Israeli gerbils behave differently—to be exact, they appear to be far more cautious—than Jordanian gerbils. Studies conducted in Europe had similar findings. For instance, many of the red deer who live near the border between Germany and the Czech Republic will not cross from one country into the other. Reason: During the Cold War, an electric fence separated the countries. The fence was torn down in 1989, and even though the deer living there now weren’t even alive 20 years ago, the memory of the boundary has been passed down through the generations.
At New York’s Library of Natural Sounds, you can listen to a recording of ants kicking.
Sometime during the night of July 2, 2009, a 1,000-foot-long section of beach below Bluff Point, near Homer, Alaska, rose about 20 feet. What was once a long, flat expanse of sand and gravel suddenly turned into a much higher, boulder-strewn beach. Geologists studied the strange event and finally determined that the bluff, which rises about 460 feet above the beach, had “slumped,” meaning that a large section of its face had slid downward. The massive amount of moving earth drove itself under and into the beach, squeezing and contracting the surface and forcing it upward. The newly risen beach is a geological treasure trove that may offer valuable information about similar processes that have occurred on coastlines around the world. And, added Alaskan geologist Bretwood Higman, “It’s good to have a reminder that the Earth is alive.”
Giant blobs of bubbling, gelatinous mucus have been spotted—and are growing, in some cases, to several miles wide—on the surface of the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas south of Europe. Technically, they’re called marine mucilage, and scientists have been aware of them since 1729. But only in the last few years have the mucus blobs become a problem, possibly due to rising sea temperatures. A mucilage begins as a cluster of microscopic sea creatures, some living and some dead, that becomes a home and feeding ground for other, larger creatures. The trouble with mucilages, according to researchers at the Polytechnic University of Marche in Italy, is that they become gigantic breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses, including E. coli, that could potentially threaten fish, other sea life, and, presumably, anyone who eats them. The largest blobs can also become heavy enough to sink to the ocean floor and smother even more sea life.
Americans consume the most calories, download the most songs, and own the most guns in the world.
On October 18, 1984, Rick and Pete Timm were rounding up cows on a remote patch of their farm near Grand Coulee, Washington, when they came across a strange sight: a hole in the ground about seven by ten feet wide and two feet deep. It had a flat bottom and straight vertical walls—as though it had been cut out by a cookie cutter, one geologist later said. Even stranger: The Timms found an intact piece of earth about seven by ten feet by two feet deep—the same size and shape as the hole—about 75 feet away. It had obviously come from the hole they’d found, but there was no sign that it had been dragged or rolled, and no tracks from any machinery that might have been used to extract and move it. It was, they said, as if a chunk of earth had been scooped up, carried through the air, and set down. The Timms called a geologist, who couldn’t figure it out—so he called in more geologists, none of whom could come up with any plausible explanation for the hole. A similar event occurred three years later in Norway. No explanation for the “cookie-cutter hole” phenomenon has ever been discovered. But, naturally, many people around the Timms’ farm speculate that it was the work of aliens.
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Brazil: peas and slices of hard-boiled eggs
Germany: asparagus spears and eggs, sunny-side up
Sweden: bananas
Japan: squid, maple syrup, ketchup, and mayo jaga, a mixture of mayonnaise and potatoes
Russia: the traditional Russian mixture of mockba, which consists of sardines, tuna, salmon, mackerel, and onions
Costa Rica: coconut
Quebec: apples and sultanas (yellow raisins)
Scotland: corn
A California woman has turned the house where her children died into a haunted-house attraction.