We are trying to study space and distant planets, and this is commendable. But do not forget the fact that on our mother Earth there are still a lot of amazing phenomena and anomalies, which scientists still cannot give a clear explanation. In this article, we will introduce you to five of the most amazing and mysterious wonders of nature.
Animal rain
Warm summer rain is great! You can run under it, or you can raise your head up, open your mouth and catch drops with your tongue. But what if, instead of drops, a frog, fish or snake falls on your tongue? Well, if not a cow, but such cases have also been observed.
Animal rain is one of the most mysterious phenomena that can be observed in various parts of the planet. For example, in 1578, the Norwegian city of Bergen was bombarded with large yellow mice that literally fell from the sky. On January 15, 1877, a cloud passed over the city of Memphis (USA), which brought with it and generously poured on the heads of the townspeople not only tubs of water, but also thousands of snakes of various breeds and sizes. In 1978, in New South Wales, Australia, it rained exclusively with shrimp. In March 2010, in the same Australia, during the rain, fish, frogs and, for some reason, birds fell from the sky. In early January 2011, hundreds of crows and jackdaws fell from the sky in Sweden at night. And then in the state of Arkansas, USA there was a "shower" of several thousand blackbirds.
And in 1990, in the Sea of Okhotsk, such a "rain" sunk a Japanese fishing schooner. But this time, not ordinary frogs or birds were falling from the sky, but … real cows! There were few cows, but the fact remains: one of them collapsed right on the deck of the schooner and let her go to the bottom. Several more, ruminants, according to the fishermen, fell in the neighborhood. What kind of cows they are, and where they came from in the sky, especially in the open sea, remains a mystery.
The ancients explained the phenomenon of rain from frogs by the fact that frog eggs are carried away by the wind, frogs are born in the sky and then fall to the ground. Sounds logical (for the ancients). Modern scientists are inclined to the sudden appearance of a tornado that can pick up frogs, snakes, fish and even cows, and then bring them down on the heads of people - it is possible that it is so, but in any case, this mystery has not yet been fully solved.
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Fireballs Nag
Unlike croaking, mooing and biting rains, the following mysterious phenomenon can be observed not everywhere, but in a strictly defined area - in the north of Thailand and the south of Laos. Here, on the Mekong River in October (and sometimes in other months) a unique event takes place - the appearance of Nag fireballs.
In the middle of the night from the depths of the river, fireballs up to two meters in diameter rise into the air one after another. Having risen 20 meters upward, the balls dissolve in the air, and new ones appear after them.
There is no mysticism here, although Buddhists claim that these balls are released in an unknown way by a mythical creature living at the bottom of the Mekong with the tail of a snake and the head of a man named Nag. Scientists did not find any Naga, but they also denied the involvement of Buddhists in this phenomenon. That is, the Naga fireballs are not an attempt to deceive the believers and attract more tourists, this is a very real phenomenon of nature, for which, however, there is no clear explanation yet. The most realistic today is the following assumption: special mixtures are formed in the waters of the river, which ignite and rise into the air under certain weather conditions. The assumption is rather flimsy, but still closer to reality than the presence of a human-headed snake named Nag in the river, which throws fireballs out of boredom.
Lake Hillier in Australia
Now you won't surprise anyone with multi-colored lakes. Scientists have long found that a unique color to some water bodies can be given by microorganisms living in it, plants, minerals dissolved in water, and much more, which is quite amenable to modern science. But Lake Hillier in Australia was able to throw scientists a riddle that they could not solve. The water in this lake is bright pink, but the researchers could not find any minerals, microorganisms, or aquatic or semi-aquatic plants that could impart this pink color to the lake water. For more than 70 years, scientists have been studying the composition of the water, plants and inhabitants of Lake Hillier, fighting over its mystery, but all in vain. The lake is pink, and why is unknown.
The disappeared lake Riesco
Another lake, this time located in Chile, also shocked scientists with its behavior. Lake Riesco - a huge reservoir with an area of about 15 thousand square kilometers - for tens of thousands of years fed on glacial waters, was considered a local landmark and attracted crowds of travelers for its beauty. And suddenly, literally in one day, the lake … disappeared. That is, yesterday the inhabitants of the area could admire its waters, and today, on this place, a huge wasteland appeared, which looked as if no lake had ever existed here.
The only intelligible hypothesis put forward by the researchers of this phenomenon is as follows: an earthquake happened the previous night, the natives did not feel it, since the whole process took place deep underground, at the level of tectonic plates. One or more of the plates shifted, and between them formed such a deep rift that the waters of Lake Riesco simply went there with ends. So the lake no longer exists, it is unlikely that it will appear in the next millennium, and therefore it can be safely erased from geographical maps.
Eye of the Sahara
This phenomenon is not going to disappear anywhere, and its mystery lies in the fact that none of the scientists can really explain: where did it come from?
We are talking about the Eye of the Sahara, or, in a scientific way, the Richat structure, a strange ring 50 kilometers in diameter, formed in the middle of the Sahara desert.
Initially, the structure of Richat did not raise questions from anyone. All as one scientists sincerely believed that this was just a trace from the fall of a giant meteorite that collapsed to Earth millions of years ago. Of course, at some point, researchers were found who tried to find the remains of this meteorite, but, oddly enough, they did not succeed. "Meteorite" left no traces of its arrival on Earth, not a piece of itself, except for the place of its supposed fall.
Then the scientists thought: maybe it was not a meteorite? Perhaps the Eye of the Sahara is the mouth of a giant volcano, which extinguished forever the same millions of years ago and was covered by sand almost to the very top? But volcanic rocks, as well as traces of an eruption (albeit very ancient), were not found near the Richat structure. And this riddle remains unsolved to this day.
Konstantin Fedorov