rhamphotheca:

Blood Falls, a Natural Time Capsule Containing a Unique Ecosystem

This five-story, blood-red “waterfall” pours ever so slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valley. Geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, and believed the red color came from algae. Its true nature turned out to be more spectacular.

Roughly two million years ago, a small body of water containing an ancient community of microbes was sealed beneath the surface of the Taylor Glacier. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, the microbes have remained isolated inside a natural time capsule, in a place with no light, oxygen, or heat.

The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the seepage its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the microbial subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

More photos of Blood Falls can be seen on Atlas Obscura

wnycradiolab:

Are there more of these? There certainly are.

awkwardsituationist:

high tide and low tide in great britain. photographs by michael marten

theatlantic:

How Humans Are Changing the Planet—in 7 Dramatic GIFs

“Much like the iconic image of Earth from the Apollo 17 mission—which had a profound effect on many of us—this time-lapse map is not only fascinating to explore,” Google Earth’s Rebecca Moore writes, “but we also hope it can inform the global community’s thinking about how we live on our planet and the policies that will guide us in the future.”

See more. [GIFs: Google/USGS/NASA/TIME]

sirmitchell:

rubthatnub:

McRib is Back by Jonathan Devis

His teacher told him to take art more seriously… and here is his rebuttal on his final project.

Brilliance. Don’t ever let an art teacher tell you what you need to do to be an “artist”. That’s up to you. This kid fucking rules. 

Artist statements: everybody else is doing it wrong.

This is what is happening in my tummy right now.

cabinporn:

The Dune Shacks of Peaked Bars Historic District.

From The Provincetown Design Group:

Nestled into the ever-shifting shapes of the Province Lands dunes, they are primitive in structure, but surrounded by a rare sort of richness – the mesmerizing environment of the ever-changing dunes, great undulations of sand that are constantly swept by the ocean’s winds into new shapes and that have long been a place of withdrawal for artists, eccentrics, writers and Cape residents.

Since the mid 1990s, area non-profits have offered solitude in the dunes to writers, artists, scientists, historians, musicians, and dancers through summer and fall shack residency programs.

Photos by Chris Seufert, Paul Neumann, Debra Bacon, and Stephanie Foster.

Sara we need to do this, like for reals.

nevver:

Eugène Séguy

odditiesoflife:

Long Term Exposure Photos of Fireworks

Photographer David Johnson captures the International Fireworks Show in Ottawa, Canada using an unusual photographic technique of long term exposure. His photos of fireworks look more like bacteria under a microscope. The results are amazing.