The Seven Wonders of the Natural World may have been named too quickly. Wonders like The Grand Canyon and Victoria Falls are certainly big, and anyone who sees them will surely be impressed—but sheer size isn’t enough to truly leave a person in awe. There are other places in this world, though, that are far stranger. Places that seem almost alien, as if they could only exist on a planet that evolved separately from our own. These are places that scientists have had to struggle just to understand how they ever could have been formed. Places that will truly make you wonder— not just because they’re beautiful, but because they seem to follow scientific laws that don’t exist anywhere else on earth.

Shanay-Timpishka The Boiling River


Deep in the amazon lies a river four miles long
and unlike any other on earth. The Shanay-
Timpishka is so hot that any animal that steps
into it gets boiled alive . When a hapless creature
wanders in, the eyes cook first, melting in its
skull. Soon the animal is in too much pain to
keep swimming to safety. Water fills its mouth
and lungs, and it is cooked from the inside out.
The river gets as hot as 91C (196F)—and
scientists aren’t completely sure why. Normally,
water that gets this hot is fed by a volcano, but
this one is 700km removed from the nearest one.
There is a theory, though. Scientists believe that
boiling hot water from under the earth cracks
through fault lines and heats up the river,
making the water a geothermal system unlike
any other on the earth.

Even my bedroom

Movile Cave
The Cave With an Atmosphere of Sulfur

In south-eastern Romania, there is a cave that
was locked away from the slightest ray of light
for 5.5 million years—and that has a completely
different atmosphere from the earth.
The cave was discovered by workers looking to
set up a powerplant. They tested the ground to
see if it was a safe place to build—and cracked
open a pathway that leads into one of the
strangest places on earth.
If you descend through the narrow shaft and past
a series of tunnels, you enter a chamber with a
lake of sulphuric water stinking of rotting eggs.
The air there is toxic, filled with hydrogen
sulphide and contaminated with 100 times the
surface’s levels of carbon dioxide.
The strangest part, though, is that a whole
ecosystem has survived inside it. Researchers
have found 33 species inside the cave that don’t
exist anywhere outside of it. They’ve adapted to
survive in a sulphuric atmosphere, living by
feeding off a foam on top of the stones.

Let me pack here first.

In Knaresborough in North Yorkshire is a well that seems like something ripped out of a story by H. P. Lovecraft. It’s a place where water trickles down a cliff side that looks like a skeleton’s grinning face—and where anything you place under the water will turn to stone. The process usually takes three to five months, but you can leave anything you own under the trickling water and, when you return, it will be stone. People have left everything from teddy bears to bicycles there, and every one has been transformed into a statue. For a long time, people believed that the well was cursed by a witch. Scientists today, though, have found that the water just has an unusually high mineral content. As a result, it creates a hard mineral shell over anything it touches—just like how stalactites are formed in caves.

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Inside of what was once a Soviet Union nuclear weapon factory is a lake pumped full of more radioactive material than anything else on earth. Lake Karachay is so radioactive that you would only have to stand near it for an hour for it to kill you. The lake was used by the Soviet Union to dump nuclear waste. They poured obscene amounts into it, and it caused major problems. In 1957, an explosion in the factory spread the radioactive particles in the lake around a 23,330km (9,000 square miles) area. Then in 1967, the waters dried up and the radioactive dust was blown a further 1,450km (900 miles) away. Today, the water is mostly covered up with concrete to keep these disasters from happening. The area is still so toxic, though, that it makes Chernobyl look like a family-friendly tourist destination.

In Austria, there’s a park with beautiful hiking trails and benches you can jog through any autumn morning. If you visit in the spring, though, it’s a little different—in fact, you’ll need scuba gear. The park is near the Hochschwab Mountains, which get completely covered with snow in the winter. There’s so much snow on the mountains that, when it melts, the park’s lake doubles in size—and drowns the park . If you swim through it in the spring, you’ll see benches and bridges under the water. Even some of the alpine flowers, which normally only survive above the surface, will bloom under the water. Then, partway through the summer, the water starts to recede—and the park emerges from underneath.

In the countryside of Piemonte, Italy, there is an unusual sight. There is a cherry tree there that looks, in most respects, just like any other healthy cherry tree—except that it happens to growing directly on top of a mulberry tree . This isn’t completely unprecedented. Parasitic trees have grown out of others before, but normally they are small, stunted things that live short lives before falling off. The Double Tree of Casorzo, though, consists of two fully-formed, healthy trees, each spreading its branches five meters across. Nobody quite knows how it happened. The locals believe that a bird may have dropped a cherry seed on top of the mulberry tree. The seed grew roots that pushed through the mulberry tree’s hollow trunk and reach all the way to the soil below—letting it survive and grow into a full, healthy tree.

In Western Venezuela over the Catatumbo River, there is a storm that never ceases. Starting at 7:00 PM every night, lightning crashes over the water for ten hours every night, 260 nights each year . Nobody knows for sure why it happens. Up until recently, the leading theory was that it had something to do with uranium in the bedrock— although scientists are starting to doubt it. Today, the leading theory is a complicated one. It posits that the shape of the mountains causes warm trade winds to collide with cold air from the Andes. That collision is then fueled by the rapidly evaporating water below and methane from a nearby oil field. Nobody actually knows for sure, though, why it happens. Everything about is mysterious— including one moment, in 2010, when it inexplicably stopped. One day, the storm just died down without explanation, and seemed, for a while, to be over. Then, after 6 weeks of silence, it sparked up again—and has been raging ever since.

On the Japanese Island of Hokkaido there is a lake that’s unlike any other in the world. The water is a unique, electric shade of blue that shimmers and changes its shade when you look at it from different angles. As the seasons change the water changes color even more , shifting through shades of blue and green. The lake was actually man-made. The locals set up a dam in the area and set up a reservoir where the water blocked by the dam could collect. To their surprise, though, the water it collected changed color. Scientists believe that the water’s strange color comes from aluminum hydroxide particles that have mingled in with it. The particles reflect blue light unusually well, making its reflection of the sky above far more vivid that any body of water anywhere else on earth.

Known to the locals as the “River of Five Colors,” Cano Cristales is truly a hidden paradise. Tucked away in the mountains of Colombia, there are only two ways to reach the river, and both of them are by plane . The colors of the river come from a combination of algae, the natural hue of the river rocks, and the blue of the water itself. In particular, the red comes from an aquatic plant called Macarenia clavigera . Because the coloration comes from living creatures, the effect shifts constantly, like a living watercolor painted by God’s own hand. The most spectacular time to see Cano Cristales is in the summer , when the heat brings out the most vibrant shades of red. In addition to the striking colors and the incredible biodiversity of the region, Cano Cristales also flows over some of the oldest rocks in the world—the Guiana Shield, which formed about 1.2 billion years ago.

In Indonesia, there is a sulfur mine built into a
volcano, and when the workers enter it at night
they turn off their lights. They don’t need them—
because their way is lit by the strange, glowing-
blue liquid trickling down the side like lava.
Kawah Ijen is often described as a volcano with
blue lava, although scientists now know the blue
trickle isn’t really lava—it’s sulfur. Sulfuric
gases inside heat up and burst out of it, shooting
blue flames up to 5 meters into the air. The
gases then condense into liquid sulfur, which
spills down the mountain slopes, looking like
flowing neon-blue lava .
All the sulfur in the air makes it toxic, and
researchers and photographers who visit it have
to wear gas masks to stay safe. The workers in
the mine, though, do not—and suffer through the
unbreathable air while they work in the light of a
pale blue glow that’s slowly killing them—and is
unlike any in the world.
http://i1.wp.com/listverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/bluefire2.jpg?zoom=3&resize=289%2C192

A nice piece, it jst missing pictures to better illustrate d places!!!

Some Nairalanders be lyk, Pictures or Adonbelivit

there are lots of wonders in this world which am part of

Interesting