Must Watch: 20 rare natural phenomena around the world

New Delhi: Nature on Earth is mysterious. Scientists are yet to fully gauge the phenomena that occur often in nature. Here is a list of 20 rare natural phenomena around the world1. Milky Way galaxy: With the increasing environment pollution, Milky Way galaxy can not be seen clearly in the night sky. Ask your grandparents and they would tell you about the spectacular band of stars splashed across the sky, the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is the galaxy that contains our solar system. 2. Volcanic Lightning: It's a fusion of flash with ash. Volcanic lightning can be twice as bigger as lightning of super cell thunderstorms. Specialists believe it is caused by a silica-based charging process, in which volcanic ash is charged as magma fractures within the volcano. Hence fragmentation of magma during an explosive eruption causes the ash to gain a charge. It is like shuffling shoes on carpet and the contact produces static charges, which is the basic principle behind ordinary thunderstorms too. 3. Horsetail Fall: It is a seasonal waterfall that flows in winter and early spring in Yosemite National Park of California. A unique feature of this waterfall is that the setting sun illuminates the fall making it glow orange and red. This natural phenomenon is known as ‘fire fall.'This phenomenon happens few days every year during the last two weeks of February as the sun sets behind the horizon line and everything begin to go dark, sunlight will hit and reflect off the falls at the exact right angle creating a spectacular albeit short lived effect, which looks like a beautiful lava fall. 4. Glowing waves: Pinpricks of light on the Maldives shores seem to mirror stars. The beautiful glowing waves are the product of marine microbes called phytoplankton—and now scientists think they know how some of these life-forms create their brilliant blue glow. Various species of phytoplankton are known to bioluminesce, and their lights can be seen in oceans all around the world. The most common type of marine bioluminescence is generated by phytoplankton known as dinoflagellates. A special channel in the dinoflagellate cell membrane responds to electrical signals—offering a potential mechanism for how the algae create their unique illumination. 5. Fire whirls: Fire whirls are formed when scorching heat and turbulent wind conditions combine to form swirls of air. They then transform into a tornado-like structure that sucks the burning debris and combustible gases. Their cores are actually on fire. They are usually about 1 to 3 feet wide and 50 to 100 feet tall, but under apt conditions, very large fire tornadoes several tens of feet wide and more than 1000 feet tall can form. 6. Red tide: Red tide is a common name for a phenomenon known as an algal bloom (large concentrations of aquatic microorganisms) when it is caused by a few species of dinoflagellates and the bloom takes on a red or brown color. Red tides are events in which estuarine, marine, or fresh water algae accumulate rapidly in the water column, resulting in coloration of the surface water. They are also known to deplete oxygen in the waters and/or release harmful toxins that may cause illness in humans and other animals. Red tide is a global phenomenon; however, since 1980s harmful red tide events have become more usual and widespread.Red tides have occurred in British Columbia, Gulf of Mexico. 7. Naga fireballs: Also called as Mekong lights are mysterious fireball bursts from Mekong River in Thailand. These glowing reddish balls rise from the water high into the air. Diverse sizes from smaller sparkles up to the size of basketballs; they quickly rise up to a couple of hundred metres before disappearing. The number of fireballs reported varies between tens and thousands per night.Their numbers vary between tens and thousands per night. They are often reported around the night of Wan Ok Phansa (a local festival) at the end of Buddhist rains in late October. 8. Catatumbo Lightning: At the mouth of the Catatumbo River in Venezuela, lightning flashes almost continuously for around 200 nights every year. Methane rising from marshes and nearby oil deposits is thought to play a key role in this process. For reasons unclear, the intensity of the storms has grown over the past decade. The frequent lightning over this area is considered to be the world's largest single generator of tropospheric ozone. 9. Sea foam: Sea foam or spume occurs due to turbulence in seawater that has higher concentrations of dissolved organic matter particularly decaying algal blooms.These compounds can act as foaming agents.Foam forms as this organic matter is churned up by the surf. Most sea foam is not harmful to humans and is often an indication of a productive ocean ecosystem, but that is not the case when large harmful algal blooms decay near shore. This kind of foam can potentially impact human health and the environment. 10. Bioluminescent Mushrooms: Several species of fungus use bioluminescent light to attract insects to help spread spores in the still air of the dense tropical rainforests. There are 71 known species of bioluminescent fungi. They are found across Asia, Europe, North America, and South Africa 11. Snow roller: Large chunks of snow blown along the ground by the wind, leads to forming snow rollers. Unlike snowballs, snow rollers are typically cylindrical in shape, and are often hollow since the inner layers, which are the first layers to form, are weak and thin compared to the outer layers. They can be seen in cold countries like Czech Republic, Poland. The following conditions are necessary for the formation of snow rollers:The ground must be covered by a layer of ice to which snow will not stick. The layer of ice must be covered by wet, loose snow with a temperature near the melting point of ice. The wind must be strong enough to move the snow rollers, but not strong enough to blow them apart. Alternatively, gravity can move the snow rollers as when a snowball, such as those that will fall from a tree or cliff, lands on steep hill and begins to roll down the hill. 12. Ice circles: Ice circles occur in slow moving waters in cold climates. They are thin and circular slabs of ice that rotate slowly in the water. They are most frequently observed in Scandinavia and North America. They are usually small, but they have been reported to be more than 4 meters in diameter. They occur most frequently in Scandinavia and North America. 13. Brinicle: Also known as ice stalactite form beneath sea ice when a flow of extremely cold, saline water is introduced to an area of ocean water. The sinking brine is so cold that it causes the seawater to freeze around it. When it hits the seabed, a web of ice spreads killing sea urchins and starfish. 14. Ball lightning: Ball lightning is described as a luminous sphere of lightning which seems to appear out of nowhere and vanishes into thin air. It varies in size from 2 to 10 inches in diameter. They are reportedly seen around thunderstorm and usually hover parallel to earth. Balls that appear distinctly orange and blue seem to last longer than average. 15. Brine pools: Underwater lakes, or brine pools, are areas of water with an extremely high concentration of salt. The concentrations of salt are so high that the mixture is heavier than water and so lies underneath the normal sea water. The high salinity of these pools prevents water of lower salinity from entering and creates a distinct surface and shoreline for the pool. The surface of these pools behave quite similarly to the surface of a regular pool, with waves and everything 16. Tree spiders: In July, 2010 floods swamped parts of Pakistan. An unexpected side-effect of the massive flooding was that millions of spiders turned trees into cocoons. They crawled into trees to escape the rising flood waters. Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiders' webs. Locals had never before seen such a phenomenon before, but they also reported unexpected decline in mosquito population. 17. Baltic and North seas meet: In the resort town of Skagen you can watch an amazing natural phenomenon. This city is the northernmost point of Denmark, where the Baltic and North Seas meet. The two opposing tides in this place cannot merge because they have different densities. 18. Underwater crop circles: The mystery circle as it was first called was more than six feet in diameter and contained intricate patterns of ridges radiating out from the center. The unexpected artist of this sand circle was found to be a tiny male puffer fish. It spent days and nights to make the circle using only a flapping fin to attract a mate. After completing the circle the fish actually decorated it with broken pieces of shells. Females who mated with the male laid their eggs in the center of the circle. As for the seashells, they, too, may be more than just decoration. It's possible they provide nutrients to the young puffer fish as the eggs hatch. 19. Green Lake, Austria: On the bed of the emerald green waters of Green Lake, Austria underwater explorers will discover fish swimming though the branches of trees, a floor covered in grass, benches, bridges and a landscape that looks like it belongs over ground. It is because for half of the year it is over ground. In the frozen winter months the area is almost completely dry and is a favorite site for hikers. As the temperature begins to rise in spring, the ice and snow on the mountaintops begins to melt and runs down into the basin of land below. The waters are at their highest in June when it becomes a Mecca for divers keen to explore the rare phenomenon, before the waters recede at the end of July. 20. Etruscan Vase Moon: During full moon, in some places moon can be seen strangely distorted as it arises. This odd moon image was created by moonlight refracting through an atmospheric inversion layer on Earth where cold air was trapped near the surface. The photographer also reported that, as the moon rose, a red rim was faintly visible on the lower part of the moon, while a green rim appeared on the top, similar to the Sun's famous green flash.