Artist Karla Mialynne achieves such impressively realistic details in her illustrations that viewers often wonder how she does it. In order to satisfy the natural desire for information, Mialynne has started aligning the tools she uses directly next to the images that she creates.
In order to clear the doubts, the artist now photographs all of the tools she used right next to her paintings. You can see that Karla mostly uses watercolor pencils, colored markers and acrylic paint to create her highly realistic drawings
Karla Mialynne’s website
Incredible Photorealistic Illustrations by Karla Mialynne
50 Amazing Lifehacks for Productivity by Jon Yongfook
Everyone loves productivity. Perhaps even more than we love chocolate. Wait, that’s just silly – chocolate rules all. That said, here’s 50 tips you can use to enhance your productivity. Try some out and rock on!
1. Learn to say NO
Deciding what is and isn’t important is one skill. But having the guts to say NO when you know something isn’t important or is disruptive to your flow, is quite another. Learn it.
2. Take public transport
Ditch the fancy car – take the bus or the train. Your mind will be free to get things done during your commute. You can get a head-start on emails, plan your todos or even do actual work if there’s enough space.
3. Listen to educational podcasts while you commute
Or use that time to enhance your mind! Learn a language or other new skill through your headphones – all while everyone else on the train is listening to Justin Bieber or morning radio. Intellectual smug face optional.
4. Try to live central to the things important to you
If you find yourself hanging out in a particular part of town often, try to live somewhere equidistant between there and work. Sounds simple, but it will hugely cut down on your time spent on transport.
5. Work from home
Figure out what tasks can be done at home and convince your boss it can be done. Free from the distraction of coworkers, meetings, long lunches, commutes – you’ll be more productive than ever.
6. Use website-blocking software
Website blockers like StayFocusd can give you a virtual slap on the wrist every time you try to access Facebook or Reddit while working. Over time, they can build a good habit of not checking social media while working.
7. Prioritize effectively
Decide what is the most important thing you need to do that day and do it first.
8. Be goal orientated rather than follow a todo list
Todo lists are useful but they can either become unwieldy or you can forget to update them with new tasks. Think about goals rather than specific todos and aim to complete them.
9. Make a “leave the house” mixtape
Know you need 30 mins in the morning to get ready? Make a 30 min mixtape and aim to leave before the last song plays. It’s a neat psychological trick!
10. Use the Seinfeld X technique
When asked how did he get so good at stand up, Seinfeld revealed his method for making sure he practiced every day. Every day he practiced, he put a red X in the calendar. After a week of Xs it was so satisfying to see, that he didn’t want to break the chain. Practice makes perfect and figuring out a hack that can keep you at it, is half the battle.
11. OHIO
Only Handle It Once. If you receive an email and can reply to it quickly, reply right away. Reason being, if you leave it until later, the time spent replying plus the time spent remembering over and over that you need to reply (and delegating it until later) ends up being much more than if you just replied to the email right away.
12. Make time to exercise
Release some endorphins – they are great for the mind! Exercise will help you to focus when you need to. Plus it’s also, you know, good for your body.
13. Create rock solid deadlines
Nothing will spur you into action more than a seemingly insurmountable challenge, and an ever-advancing date in the calendar when it all has to be completed.
14. Learn how to create tasks
“Lose weight” isn’t a task. It’s a goal that has many tasks associated with it. Split goals into clear, concise tasks.
15. Turn your desk/walls into a whiteboard
Having informal space to doodle thoughts is great for capturing ideas and flashes of brilliance – or impromptu collaboration.
16. Eliminate bad habits
You know all those time-wasting things you do? Stop doing them. There that was easy.
17. Meditate
Here’s a simple breathing exercise that will help you focus. Breathe in while counting to 3, breathe out while counting to 4. Repeat for a minute or so until relaxed and focused.
18. Batch mundane tasks
By nature we tend to drag out mundane tasks. Batch them together to spend less time on them, leaving more time for tasks we enjoy.
19. Use virtual assistants
Waiting on hold is a waste of time – luckily there are services like Lucyphone who can do the waiting for you.
20. No meeting Wednesdays
At Asana, Dustin Moskovitz employs a “no meeting Wednesday” rule, meaning that the entire company knows wednesdays are for glorious, uninterrupted work.
21. Sleep early
Your mind can’t function properly if you’re tired. Sleep early so you’re not tired during the day when you need your brain performing optimally.
22. Start work early and work fewer hours
The morning hours are great for productivity. At 6am, there’s not many other people up, you’ll be relatively free from distractions and your mind is fresh from resting. You can pack a full day of work into just 3 hours from 6am to 9am. Try it.
23. Learn the Pomodoro Technique
In a nutshell: Decide on a task. Set a timer for 25 mins. Focus and work as hard as possible. When the timer goes off, take a break for 5 minutes. Repeat the process, taking a longer 15-30 minute break every few cycles.
24. Get a second monitor
Not having to switch or rearrange windows can give a serious productivity boost – and monitors these days are pretty cheap.
25. Carry a random report
A bit of social hackery. If you work in an office, carry around random, important-looking bits of paper. People will be less likely to hassle you or drag you into an impromptu meeting if you walk with the hustle of a Very Busy Persom (TM).
26. Get a life outside of work / the web
De-stressing is important, and it’s equally important to de-stress away from the internet. Go and take up a sport or a craft to feed your brain. Variety is important.
27. The Two Minute Rule
If something can be done in 2 minutes, do it right away. If not, leave until an appropriate later timeslot.
28. Learn about sleep cycles
The body sleeps in cycles of 90 minutes. If you’ve ever woken up feeling groggy for much of the day, you might have woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle – it’s best for the body if you wake up at the end of a cycle.
29. Install Inbox Pause
Here’s a handy Gmail plugin that simply pauses all incoming mail (it goes into a special inbox) until you are ready to receive them again.
30. Install Boomerang
Here’s another handy Gmail plugin that lets you schedule emails to be sent. Often we may write an email at night but know that the optimal time to send it is in the morning. You can either send it now at a suboptimal time, or you have to remind yourself to send it in the morning. Or you can just get Boomerang to schedule it for you!
31. Don’t think about time
Don’t sit on the train thinking about how long it’s taking. This will exhaust you. Use the time more wisely – occupy your mind by thinking about your todos, or listening to something useful.
32. Establish an ending time to your work day
Having a strict deadline for when your work day ends will increase productivity as you strive to get more done before you leave.
33. Experiment with a change of location
Feed the mind – the same working environment month after month can erode your productivity. Mix things up, get out of your comfort zone and maybe become a road warrior for a while. If your boss won’t let you work from an idyllic tropical beach location, see if your company will let your team head to a cafe to work for a day.
34. Disable phone notifications
Those flashing popups can be a huge distraction – disable them when you need to focus.
35. Focus on 3 priorities a day
There’s something magic about the No. 3. Try to achieve 3 goals per day. No more, no less.
36. Listen to appropriate music
This will be different for everyone, but there’s music that helps you focus and there’s music that’s distracting as everyone starts singing along to Baby Got Back blasting from the office stereo.
37. Work with a friend who is also working
Nothing says “stop procrastinating now” more than staring in the face of a buddy who is crushing it and focusing 100% on their work.
38. Take walking meetings
Kill 2 birds (or more, kill all the birds!) with one stone – get out of the office, change your environment, and set a psychological deadline for meetings by taking “walking meetings” round the block or round a nearby park.
39. Learn less, do more
Put that theory into practice – your brain wants to learn from experience and will function much better from doing so.
40. Rest if you need to
It’s ok to rest. In fact it’s ok to rest a lot. One habit of highly productive people is that they are not functioning at 100% productivity every day. You’ll just burn out that way. Take days off to recharge.
41. Store files in the cloud
Use Google Drive or Dropbox to save yourself from getting into a faff when sending clients the latest version of files, or switching computers.
42. Airplane mode
An easy way to disable all distracting incoming notifications? Switch your phone to airplane mode.
43. Declutter your work space
Tidy desk, tidy mind. Also more space for you to scribble on (if you’ve converted it into a whiteboard from the previous point).
44. Learn regex
Regex is like voodoo for text manipulation. Ever been asked to do something like “here’s a list of 200 bullet points… can you put curly quotes around all of them?”. Doing that by hand would be a mundane task that you’d drag out all day. Doing it with regex would take about 10 seconds.
45. Don’t multitask
You are not a computer. Focus on one task at a time.
46. Do something mundane at the start of the day
Get your brain into “work mode” by doing something easy and repetitive at the start of the day, like washing the dishes.
47. Leave 10 mins per hour for email
Don’t let email eat into your productivity. A good rule of thumb is 10 minutes per hour for checking and replying to emails.
48. Turn your phone face down
An even more ghetto trick to avoid phone notification distractions – just turn it face down (and on silent, obviously).
49. Flip a coin
If indecisiveness is causing bad productivity, flip a coin, decide, and get on with it.
50. Work on something you’re passionate about
Perhaps the most important productivity hack of all. If you’re working on something you’re passionate about, you’ll already be automatically inclined to focus on it and give it your all – the time you spend on something you’re passionate about will be worth 10x the time spent on something you’re not passionate about. Don’t waste your time, we only have a limited amount! Use it on the things you love to do.
Amazing Ab Workout to get you in shape
Banish that wobbly belly forever with these stomach-toning exercises and training tips.
When it comes to body confidence, a flat, defined stomach is a definite boost. Most blokes dream of shedding their shirt at the beach and flashing a chiselled, washboard stomach. And for women, a flat, wobble-free midriff is a common fitness goal.
As is generally the case, though, the things we crave the most are often the hardest to change. A defined stomach is hard work to achieve, but it is possible. In this workout, we showcase four of the best abs exercises to get a taut and terrific tum.
Here is an amazing Ab workout series ranging from beginner right up to elite. A major part of you fitness needs to concentrate on your core and these exercises are guaranteed to get the job done. With this series you can start off easy with you Ab workout and build yourself up to the elite series over time.
Ab Workout Beginner series
Ab Workout Intermediate series
Ab Workout Expert series
Ab Workout Elite series
The 45 Best Perfectly Timed Photos Of 2013 according BuzzFeed
2013 is almost over. If there’s one thing we all learned in 2013, it’s that getting that perfect picture is much more important than running in to help.
1. The perfectly timed impromptu bath picture:
Via funnie.st
19. The perfectly timed “take a picture of yourself clapping” picture:
22. The perfectly timed president riding a magic carpet picture:
Getty
Achieving Your Dream
Your dreams and what you hope to accomplish for yourself are really huge parts of your life.
If you’re at a point in your life where you’ve been thinking about this a lot, remember you’re not alone. Life doesn’t stop, and you’ll get through it all if you just keep swimming.
I found a video done by Spoken Reasons a few days ago, and I think he outlines perfectly the best ways to go about chasing your dreams: Faith, Consistency and Hard Work. Have a look at the video, and feel free to comment about what you think & what your dreams are!
x Leah Symonne x
10 Things we Can Learn from Children
Childhood is unarguably the best part of one’s life. We always look back and smile at our childhood and ponder how we have grown up and changed over the years. Childhood is the most beautiful of all seasons. It is like the spring season in one’s life.
The cradle is considered a symbol of happiness. Every family welcomes the newborn with gusto, for children’s playfulness and their mirth illuminate the house. Though we always think that they are naive and they are not aware of anything in the world (which is true), it does not mean that they are wrong always. In fact, their premonition is very strong. Children are sometimes, the best illustration of life’s most simple, yet most overlooked principles. The simplest of their actions can reveal so much about our own lives. The fact that they are blissfully unaware, yet totally in the moment is intriguing. Whether it is sleeping like an angel or smiling like a princess, adults can learn so many things from children, even though they we are older and know more about life. After all, it is the lesson that we learn that is more important, rather than from where or from whom we learn it.
We may come across many such instances where we suddenly stumble upon an idea and reflect on it, after observing kids. Then we realize the power of it. It is simple, yet sophisticated. This article tells you ten things you can learn from kids. Read on and be amazed!
10. Always ask for what you want
Children never hesitate to ask for what they think is rightfully theirs. In fact, they demand for it. If you break a promise you made, for instance, they demand an explanation and will not settle with just any excuse. But we adults sometimes don’t come forward and ask what we want, for the fear of rejection. We start thinking, “It won’t happen anyway. So why ask?” This is where we go wrong. What is the harm in putting forth our question or opinion? We are not entitled to be judged. We should be clear of this.
9. Fearlessness
Children always want to explore. Explore anything that’s beyond. And they are not afraid to do so. They are happy when they are let free. We should not restrict them too much. It curbs their enthusiasm. We can learn something very important from them, and that is to be bold. Be bold and take the step already! If you only think of the consequences, you will never begin and if you don’t take the first step, how will you complete the journey? In many situations, we may have to be bold and take things in our stride. Being fearless will itself sketch the right path for us.
8. Enjoy yourself and enjoy life
Kids always play pranks and have fun. Their innocent pranks make us smile. They enjoy being themselves and spread happiness to the people around them. They know how to enjoy life. Adults must draw this inspiration from kids. In the daily rush of activities, we forget to be ourselves. We forget our identity, amidst the clutter of life. The word ‘enjoy’ is no longer present in our lexicon. Why is that? Circumstances made us that way? No, it is just that we don’t enjoy and appreciate what comes our way. Only when we truly accept our life the way it is, will we learn to enjoy. Enjoying your life will give you truest satisfaction.One of the main differences between children and adults is that adults live in the mind, whereas children live in the heart: That is why they are so cheerful, optimistic and full of energy. The heart is the source of joy, love, peace and oneness. It is also the fount of spontaneity. Because children live in the heart, they are always spontaneous. They do not suffer from self-doubt and insecurity the way adults do. Children charm us precisely because they are all heart. They inspire us to go deep within and bring our own heart-qualities to the fore. This we can do through prayer and meditation. If we unearth our forgotten childlike heart we will discover true and lasting happiness.
7. Live for the moment
Yes, live for the moment. If you are unhappy now, just let it go with this moment and be happy from the next. Yes, keeping the sad and anxious emotions short term is good for our health and well being. Have you ever seen kids feeling bad about their past or worrying about the future? Probably not. It is something adults are accustomed to doing. Since the past was not perfect and over, and since the future is uncertain, it is the present that matters the most. You must make use of the present in the best possible way. Live in the moment. Live it fully.
One of the reasons children are often so happy is that they live fully in the present moment. When a child plays with a toy, his toy becomes his whole world. He has eyes for nothing else. As adults our mind is always roaming, thinking of the past or the future. Rarely it is in the here and now. But that’s where life is happening. Past and future are both illusions. As a wise person once wrote: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” Children teach us that happiness lies nowhere else but in the here and now.
Children are blessed with the ability to sleep well. We need such kind of sleep, where we forget all worries and just sleep!
6. Imagination, Enthusiasm and curiosity
Kids have really wild imagination. It is surprising because, from the little they see, they are able to imagine so much. Such is the power of their mind. They have a beautiful mind. A mind which is optimistic. A mind which fosters bold and unconventional ideas. We can guess how much they expect out of life from their lofty dreams. They are so hopeful of the future.
Kids are generally curious. They want to know what is behind the façade. They give keen attention to detail and sometimes ask questions, for which we may not have answers!
Being enthusiastic is another thing we can learn from them. The zest, the zeal and the verve with which they approach everything. Without enthusiasm and excitement, life does not have any charm. If we are hopeful, we will automatically be optimistic.
Kids don’t laze around, the way we do at times. They don’t adopt the sedentary lifestyle that we do. They are physically very active, always up to something. It would be very good for our health if we could be active too.Being enthusiastic is another thing we can learn from them. The zest, the zeal and the verve with which they approach everything. Without enthusiasm and excitement, life does not have any charm. If we are hopeful, we will automatically be optimistic.
5.To be free spirited and to be Innocent
Kids are free spirits. They are impulsive. They have no inhibitions whatsoever. They say what they feel and they are very expressive. But we start developing inhibitions as we grow older, just to fit into the mould cast by the society. Why are we depriving ourselves of the opportunity to express? Expression breeds creativity. It is better to be yourself, than try to pretend, just to be accepted by other people. Let your inner spirit fly out of the prison that is constructed by your negative thoughts. Don’t think, “What would they think of me?” Instead, just be yourself.
Little kids are very innocent. Innocence is a child’s best quality. Its silent sobs are just as adorable as its laughter. Children have no malice. They have a very clear conscience. They are so innocent that they cannot even think of violence or revenge. They don’t have a judgement of their own. They trust anyone who is nice to them. They are too young to start thinking. They are candid and straightforward. Although this doesn’t help always, it is actually good be non-judgemental and look at everyone the same way.
4. To give from the heart
You know how children when they are very young they don’t actually identify themselves with what we think they are, and when talking about themselves they usually do so in 3rd person: Dana’s doll, Dana’s dress, etc. They don’t say my dress, my doll until parents teach them to do so. Before that happens, and before they start identifying things as being theirs, they give and they share from the heart, everything with everyone and later on, we teach them to keep “their stuff” for themselves.
This is a lesson we definitely need to learn from them, knowing that when: “One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.
3.To be trully Happy
Happiness comes from within. Children show this better than anyone else. They are always happy, no matter what. Their mirth brightens everyone around them. The way they burst into peals of laughter is something one cannot miss. Their cackle and their ever so cherubic smile can melt anyone’s heart. Indeed the best childhood years are also the best years of the parents’ lives.
What we have to learn is, to keep smiling all the time. To laugh and make others laugh. Being happy is the best thing you can gift yourself. If we carry our childhood with us, we never actually grow older!
2. Never give up!
When a child is learning how to walk, he takes a few steps and then falls down. Immediately he gets up, walks a few steps and falls down again. But although he may fall down a hundred times before he finally learns how to walk, the child does not feel that it has failed when it falls down. He knows that falling down is part of the process of learning how to walk. Because his so-called failures do not discourage him, the child continues trying until he is successful. We can all learn from this example by taking our so-called failures as stepping stones to our ultimate success. “Failure is the fast approaching train of the greatest success,” Sri Chinmoy wrote. If we take a “never give up” attitude, we can be successful in anything we undertake. Since we all learned how to walk, we all mastered this attitude at a very tender age. Let the child again be the father of the man.
Play the game of life
To children, everything is a game. And their game is played purely for enjoyment. Children are not concerned with winning or losing, they only want to have joy. By watching children play, we can learn something valuable: Life itself is a game in which we are the players. When we take life too seriously, we often suffer and feel miserable. But if we realize that life is a game, we can see things in perspective. The purpose of a game is not winning or losing, but playing well and having fun. So we will not be discouraged and depressed when we experience failure. And conversely, we will not be bloated with pride and arrogance if we are successful. We will take both failure and success as valuable experience, teaching us how to play the game of life well. Like children we will play for the sake of playing. Therein lies the secret key to enduring happiness.
Leap of faith: Jumping off the Old Bridge in Mostar
Only the incredibly skilled and heroically brave attempt to dive 21 metres off the Old Bridge in Mostar. But TNT gives it a go anyway
In the minds of most sane people, jumping off tall bridges is a way to die – but in Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina, it’s a way of life.
Standing on the edge of the bridge, looking at the fast-flowing river 21 metres below, I can’t help but think I’ve made a serious mistake. I can hear Igor, my diving instructor, giving me some last-minute pointers on how to make the perfect jump, but I’m not really listening. All I can think is: “Don’t fuck this up.” While the dozens of tourists who are all clamouring to take photos are probably thinking the opposite: “I really hope he fucks this up.”
As soon as I jump off the bridge I know I’ve done it wrong. I want to enjoy it, to feel the adrenalin pumping through my veins, but with the river hurtling towards me at an alarming rate and my arms and legs flailing all over the place, all I can think is that it’s going to hurt.
“Long ago, local boys used to jump off the bridge to impress aristocrats,” says Admir Deliç, the head of the diving club. ‘When I was younger we used to do it to impress girls.”
“The first jump isn’t the hardest,” he explains. “The worst one is the second, because you know what’s coming.”
The Weirdly Cool Places on earth That Look Like were made by Alien
We’ve made huge strides towards finding exoplanets and surveying the other worlds in our solar system recently — but most of us will never know what it’s like to stand on another soil, especially under another sun. Good thing there are a lot of places on Earth that you could easily mistake for strange new worlds. No wonder that traveling is one of the best forms of recreation – even looking at these pictures takes your mind to far away places… And yes, all those of those places are real!
The Bosnian pyramid of the sun
The Osmanagić pyramid hypothesis (or Bosnian pyramids) is a concept promoted by author Semir Osmanagić, who asserts that a cluster of natural hills in central Bosnia and Herzegovina are the largest human-made ancient pyramids on Earth. The hills are located near the town of Visoko, northwest of Sarajevo. Visočica hill, where the Old town of Visoki was once sited, became the focus of international attention in October 2005, following a news-media campaign promoted by Osmanagić and his supporters.
Japan’s Ancient Underwater “Pyramid”
Submerged stone structures lying just below the waters off Yonaguni Jima are actually the ruins of a Japanese Atlantis—an ancient city sunk by an earthquake about 2,000 years ago.
That’s the belief of Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan who has been diving at the site to measure and map its formations for more than 15 years.
Alien Face hidden to look like mountains in Canada, Google Earth discovery, UFO sighting news
These objects can be clearly made out of the face:
chin, neck, lips, nose, nostrils, eye, eye lid, forehead, hair or hat line, shoulders, clothing over the shoulders, V shape of neck and chest between robe, tall crown or headdress indicating of royal birth.This face must have been made hundreds of thousands even millions of years ago, but was it a great race of indians in Canada that made it for the gods to look down upon or was it made by an alien race? If it was made by an alien race, it could have been made millions of years ago, also then it might be the face of a great man from their species, for things like this are only created out of love for the person.
Richat Structure (also known as the Eye of the Sahara), a circular structure in the Sahara desert near Ouadane, Mauritania
The Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of the Sahara and Guelb er Richat, is a prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert of west–central Mauritania near Ouadane. This structure is a deeply eroded, slightly elliptical, 40 km in diameter dome. The sedimentary rock exposed in this dome ranges in age from Late Proterozoic within the center of the dome to Ordovician sandstone around its edges. The sedimentary rocks comprising this structure dip outward at 10°–20°. Differential erosion of resistant layers of quartzite has created high-relief circular cuestas. Its center consists of a siliceous breccia covering an area that is at least 3 km in diameter.
Etosha pan in Namibia, similar to the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
The shallow hydrocarbon lakes on Titan are behaving like a salt pan on Earth.
Cano Costales Colombias- Stunning river of five colors
Waiotapu (or Wai-O-Tapu) in new Zealand’s Taupo Volcanic Zone with colorful hot springs
Wai-O-Tapu (Māori for “sacred waters”) is an active geothermal area at the southern end of the Okataina Volcanic Centre, just north of the Reporoa caldera, in New Zealand’s Taupo Volcanic Zone. It is 27 kilometres south of Rotorua.[1] The area has many hot springs noted for their colourful appearance, in addition to the Lady Knox Geyser, Champagne Pool, Artist’s Palette, Primrose Terrace and boiling mud pools. The geothermal area covers 18 square kilometres.[1] Prior to European occupation the area was the homeland of the Ngati Whaoa tribe who descended from those on the Arawa waka (canoe).
Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat (10,582 sq km or 4,086 sq mi) in southwest Bolivia, contains at least the half of the world’s lithium reserves
Great Blue Hole, a 406 ft (124 m) deep circular submarine sinkhole Belize with a radius of 984 ft (300 m), formed during quaternary glaciation and made famous by Jacques Cousteau as a scuba diving site.
People in Belize think it should be one of the seven wonders of the world. Dive boats visit it every day. It is protected by the Belize Audubon Society and is a Belize National Monument. It became a World Heritage site in 1997. Jacques Cousteau took the Calypso and his one-man submarines into the hole in 1972 to examine stalactites suspended from overhanging walls. The Great Blue Hole is surrounded by shallow water of Lighthouse Reef Atoll, a nearly perfect circle in the middle of a shallow reef. The atoll is located ~96 km east of the Belize mainland. It is not an easy place to reach.
Huanglong, northwest Sichuan, China, known for some colorful pools formed by calcite deposits.
Vale da Lua (Valley of the Moon) in Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, Brazil with some of the oldest rock formations on Earth
Is one of the oldest, most beautifully diverse and unusual tropical ecosystems in South America. The National Park has over 161,891 acres (65,515 hectares) of gorgeous landscape full of exotic flora and fauna, lots of spectacular waterfalls, bizarre rock formations, caves and grottoes. According to NASA, when observed from outer space, the Chapada’s high plateaus are the most luminous point visible on Earth; this bright glowing is caused by the reflection between the sun and the abundance of quartz crystal in the region.
The windy McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica without snow. Here is the longest river (or rather, meltwater steam) of the continent named the Onyx. There are no fish, but it supports microscopic life.
The Dry Valleys are an Antarctic anomaly. While most of the continent is covered in a thick layer of ice, the dry, frigid Valleys are almost entirely ice-free, an arid expanse of mostly dirt, small rocks, and big boulders. The Valleys are dotted with a few frozen lakes, and, during the austral summer, are etched with short-lived streams that link the lakes with surrounding glaciers, some of which reach the Valley floors. This is not what you’d expect to see in Antarctica.
The ferocious teeth of the Earth dragon
The ferocious teeth of the Earth dragon—the sand seas of the Namibia desert as captured by South Korea’s Kompsat-2 satellite. The complete photo at high definition and its descriptionfrom the European Space Agency
Stone Forest Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province
Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, enjoys great fame among tourists not only because the region features a consistently warm climate, but also thanks to its wonderful vistas and landscapes. Among the most dramatic of these attractions is the Stone Forest (Shilin), known since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.) as the ‘First Wonder of the World.’
Sailing Stones, Racetrack Playa, Death Valley, Calif.
There is something utterly magical about the sailing stones of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley California. Scattered about the desert are large rocks with mysterious trails left behind them. The trails show that these rocks have rolled and zig-zagged across the ground, sometimes for as long as 860 feet. Yet no one has ever seen the stones actually move. The trails last for years before fading, so it is almost impossible to predict when the stones will move or how fast they move.
Door to Hell is an aptly named natural gas field in the Karakum Desert of Darweze,
Turkmenistan that has been burning for over forty years. The flaming crater was originally a level surface identified by Soviet scientists in 1971 as an area rich in gas resources. Unfortunately, the ground collapsed under the weight and pressure of the drilling rigs set up at the site. Thus, environmentally hazardous methane gases were released from the massive depression, forcing scientists to take quick action and burn out the gases. What they didn’t expect was for the fire to last over four decades.
Considering the large size of the crater, containing the gaseous outbreak would be very expensive, which is why the scientists opted for an easier, more cost-effective, and what they presumed would be a quicker solution. The gas firing, a common practice for extreme circumstances like this 42-year-old incident, set the enormous basin ablaze and was expected to last only a few days. Instead, it continues to burn bright to this day. Now, it is a tourist hotspot (no pun intended), drawing visitors from all around the world to the inferno pit.