Top 10 Amazing Places On Earth :
Lake Hillier :
Lake Hillier is a saline lake on the edge of Middle Island, the largest of the islands and islets that make up the Recherche Archipelago in the Goldfields-Esperance region, off the south coast of Western Australia. It is particularly notable for its pink colour. A long and thin shore divides the Southern Ocean from the lake.Lake Hillier was visited by the Matthew Flinders' expedition on 15 January 1802. Flinders' journal entries are considered to be the first written records of the lake. Flinders observed the pink lake after ascending the island's highest peak (now called Flinders Peak), describing the lake as follows:As recently as 2012, Lake Hillier has been located within the boundaries of the Recherche Archipelago Nature Reserve. Since 2002, the lake itself has been considered to be a wetland of “subregional significance”
Deadvlei :
Deadvlei is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei, inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia. Also written DeadVlei or Dead Vlei, its name means "dead marsh". The pan also is referred to as "Dooie Vlei" which is the (presumably original) fully Afrikaans name. In Google there are many references to the site, its name often being translated erroneously in terms such as "dead valley"; a vlei is not a valley (which in Afrikaans is "vallei").[1] Nor is the site a valley; the pan is a desiccated vlei.
Dead Vlei has been claimed to be surrounded by the highest sand dunes in the world, the highest reaching 300-400 meters (350m on average, named "Big Daddy" or "Crazy Dune"), which rest on a sandstone terrace.
The clay pan was formed after rainfall, when the Tsauchab river flooded, creating temporary shallow pools where the abundance of water allowed camel thorn trees to grow. When the climate changed, drought hit the area, and sand dunes encroached on the pan, which blocked the river from the area.
The trees died, as there no longer was enough water to survive. There are some species of plants remaining, such as salsola and clumps of !nara, adapted to surviving off the morning mist and very rare rainfall. The remaining skeletons of the trees, which are believed to have died 600-700 years ago (AD 1340- 1430), are now black because the intense sun has scorched them.[2] [3]Though not petrified, the wood does not decompose because it is so dry.
In 2000 the psycho thriller The Cell (starring Jennifer Lopez) was partly shot in that location. The Bollywood blockbuster film Ghajini was shot here in 2008.
zhangye danxia landform :
The Danxia landform (Chinese: 丹霞地貌; pinyin: dānxiá dìmào) refers to various landscapes found in southeast, southwest and northwest China that "consist of a red bed characterized by steep cliffs".[1] It is a unique type of petrographic geomorphology found in China. Danxia landform is formed from red-coloured sandstones and conglomerates of largely Cretaceous age. The landforms look very much like karst topography that forms in areas underlain by limestones, but since the rocks that form danxia are sandstones and conglomerates, they have been called "pseudo-karst" landforms.
The first studies, on what are now referred to as Danxia landforms, were conducted at Mount Danxia near Shaoguan, China. In the 1920s and 1930s Chinese geologists made an effort to learn more about these interesting geomorphic structures.[2] Danxia landforms are made up uplifted continental crust that has been faulted and eroded, exposing large scarps of layered rock, red in color.Danxia landforms cover several provinces in southeast China. Taining County, Fujian Province, has very good examples of "young" danxia landforms wherein deep, narrow valleys have been formed. As the landform gets older, valleys widen and one gets isolated towers and ridges.The danxia landform is named after Mount Danxia, one of the most famous examples of the danxia landform. A very peculiar feature of danxia landscape is the development of numerous caves of various sizes and shapes. The caves tend to be shallow and isolated, unlike true karst terrain where caves tend to form deep, interconnecting networks. In 2010, several danxia landscapes in southern China, with a general name of "China Danxia", were inscribed as a World Heritage Site.
Enchanted Well Brazil
“Enchanted Well” or ” Poço Encantado”, located in Chapada Diamantina National Park in Bahia state, Brazil. The ‘well’ was formed through erosion of an underground river in the surrounding limestone environment. The water is so clear that pebbles and tree stumps can clearly be seen, even though the water is 60 metres in depth!!
To add to the spectacle, a small crevice allows the infiltration of sunlight at certain times; causing a breathtaking waterfall of pale blue light. Beautiful isn’t it?
Mount Roraima :
Mount Roraima is the highest of the Pakaraima chain of tepui plateaus in South America. First described by the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in 1596, its 31 km² summit area is bounded on all sides by cliffs rising 400 metres.
Mount Roraima lies on the Guiana Shield in the southeastern corner of Venezuela's 30,000-square-kilometre (12,000 sq mi) Canaima National Park forming the highest peak of Guyana's Highland Range. The tabletop mountains of the park are considered some of the oldest geological formations on Earth, dating back to some two billion years ago in the Precambrian.
The highest point in Guyana and the highest point of the Brazilian state of Roraima lie on the plateau, but Venezuela and Brazil have higher mountains elsewhere. The triple border point is at 5°12′08″N 60°44′07″W, but the mountain's highest point is Maverick Rock, 2,810 metres (9,219 ft), at the south end of the plateau and wholly within Venezuela.
Lake Baikal (Russian: о́зеро Байка́л, tr. Ozero Baykal; IPA: [ˈozʲɪrə bɐjˈkɑl]; Buryat: Байгал нуур, Mongolian: Байгал нуур, Baygal nuur, meaning "nature lake";[3]) is a rift lake in Russia, located in southern Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast.
turquoise ice lake baikal russia :
Lake Baikal is the largest (by volume) freshwater lake in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water.[4][5] At 1,642 m (5,387 ft),[1] Baikal is the world's deepest lake.[6] It is considered among the world's clearest[7] lakes and is considered the world's oldest lake[8] — at 25 million years.[9] It is the seventh-largest lake in the world by surface area. With 23,615.39 km3 (5,700 cu mi) of fresh water,[1] it contains more water than all the North American Great Lakes combined.
Chocolate Hills :
The Chocolate Hills or Tsokolateng burol in filipino are a geological formation in Bohol Province, Philippines. There are at least 1,260 hills but there may be as many as 1,776 hills spread over an area of more than 50 square kilometres.The Chocolate Hills are a famous tourist attraction of Bohol. They are featured in the provincial flag and seal to symbolize the abundance of natural attractions in the province.[3] They are in the Philippine Tourism Authority's list of tourist destinations in the Philippines;[4] they have been declared the country's third National Geological Monument and proposed for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.The vegetation of the Chocolate Hills is dominated by grass species such as Imperata cylindrica and Saccharum spontaneum. Several Compositae and ferns also grow on them. In between the hills, the flat lands are cultivated with rice and other cash crops. However, the natural vegetation on the Chocolate Hills is now threatened by quarrying activities.
crystal caverns :
Cave of the Crystals or Giant Crystal Cave is a cave connected to the Naica Mine 300 metres below the surface in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico. The main chamber contains giant selenite crystals, some of the largest natural crystals ever found. The cave's largest crystal found to date is 12 m (39 ft) in length, 4 m (13 ft) in diameter and 55 tons in weight. The cave is extremely hot, with air temperatures reaching up to 58 °C (136 °F)[2] with 90 to 99 percent humidity. The cave is relatively unexplored due to these factors.[3] Without proper protection, people can only endure approximately ten minutes of exposure at a time.
A group of scientists known as the Naica Project have been heavily involved in researching these caverns.In 1910 miners discovered a cavern beneath the Naica mine workings, the Cave of Swords (Spanish: Cueva de las Espadas). It is located at a depth of 120 m, above the Cave of Crystals, and contains spectacular, smaller (1 m long) crystals. It is speculated that at this level, transition temperatures may have fallen much more rapidly, leading to an end in the growth of the crystals.
Eye of Sahara :
The Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of the Sahara and Guelb er Richat, is a prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert near Ouadane, west–central Mauritania.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 30 km in diameter.Exposed within the interior of the Richat Structure are a variety of intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks. They include rhyolitic volcanic rocks, gabbros, carbonatites and kimberlites. The rhyolitic rocks consist of lava flows and hydrothermally altered tuffaceous rocks that are part of two distinct eruptive centers, which are interpreted to be the eroded remains of two maars. According to field mapping and aeromagnetic data, the gabbroic rocks form two concentric ring dikes. The inner ring dike is about 20 m in width and lies about 3 km from the center of Richat Structure. The outer ring dike is about 50 m in width and lies about 7 to 8 km from the center of this structure. Thirty-two carbonatite dikes and sills have been mapped within the Richat Structure. The dikes are generally about 300 m long and typically 1 to 4 m wide. They consist of massive carbonatites that are mostly devoid of vesicles. The carbonatite rocks have been dated as having cooled between 94 to 104 million years ago. A kimberlitic plug and several sills have been found within the northern part of the Richat Structure. The kimberlite plug has been dated being about 99 million years old. These intrusive igneous rocks are interpreted as indicating the presence of a large alkaline igneous intrusion that currently underlies the Richat Structure and created it by uplifting the overlying rock.
Tianzi Mountain :
Tianzi Mountain is located in Zhangjiajie in the Hunan Province of China, close to the Suoxi Valley. It is named after the farmer Xiang Dakun of the Tujia ethnic group, who led a successful local farmers' revolt and called himself "tianzi".This means "son of Heaven" and is the traditional epithet of the Chinese emperor. It is also made out of marble.
Lake Hillier :
Lake Hillier is a saline lake on the edge of Middle Island, the largest of the islands and islets that make up the Recherche Archipelago in the Goldfields-Esperance region, off the south coast of Western Australia. It is particularly notable for its pink colour. A long and thin shore divides the Southern Ocean from the lake.Lake Hillier was visited by the Matthew Flinders' expedition on 15 January 1802. Flinders' journal entries are considered to be the first written records of the lake. Flinders observed the pink lake after ascending the island's highest peak (now called Flinders Peak), describing the lake as follows:As recently as 2012, Lake Hillier has been located within the boundaries of the Recherche Archipelago Nature Reserve. Since 2002, the lake itself has been considered to be a wetland of “subregional significance”
Deadvlei :
Deadvlei is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei, inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia. Also written DeadVlei or Dead Vlei, its name means "dead marsh". The pan also is referred to as "Dooie Vlei" which is the (presumably original) fully Afrikaans name. In Google there are many references to the site, its name often being translated erroneously in terms such as "dead valley"; a vlei is not a valley (which in Afrikaans is "vallei").[1] Nor is the site a valley; the pan is a desiccated vlei.
Dead Vlei has been claimed to be surrounded by the highest sand dunes in the world, the highest reaching 300-400 meters (350m on average, named "Big Daddy" or "Crazy Dune"), which rest on a sandstone terrace.
The clay pan was formed after rainfall, when the Tsauchab river flooded, creating temporary shallow pools where the abundance of water allowed camel thorn trees to grow. When the climate changed, drought hit the area, and sand dunes encroached on the pan, which blocked the river from the area.
The trees died, as there no longer was enough water to survive. There are some species of plants remaining, such as salsola and clumps of !nara, adapted to surviving off the morning mist and very rare rainfall. The remaining skeletons of the trees, which are believed to have died 600-700 years ago (AD 1340- 1430), are now black because the intense sun has scorched them.[2] [3]Though not petrified, the wood does not decompose because it is so dry.
In 2000 the psycho thriller The Cell (starring Jennifer Lopez) was partly shot in that location. The Bollywood blockbuster film Ghajini was shot here in 2008.
zhangye danxia landform :
The Danxia landform (Chinese: 丹霞地貌; pinyin: dānxiá dìmào) refers to various landscapes found in southeast, southwest and northwest China that "consist of a red bed characterized by steep cliffs".[1] It is a unique type of petrographic geomorphology found in China. Danxia landform is formed from red-coloured sandstones and conglomerates of largely Cretaceous age. The landforms look very much like karst topography that forms in areas underlain by limestones, but since the rocks that form danxia are sandstones and conglomerates, they have been called "pseudo-karst" landforms.
The first studies, on what are now referred to as Danxia landforms, were conducted at Mount Danxia near Shaoguan, China. In the 1920s and 1930s Chinese geologists made an effort to learn more about these interesting geomorphic structures.[2] Danxia landforms are made up uplifted continental crust that has been faulted and eroded, exposing large scarps of layered rock, red in color.Danxia landforms cover several provinces in southeast China. Taining County, Fujian Province, has very good examples of "young" danxia landforms wherein deep, narrow valleys have been formed. As the landform gets older, valleys widen and one gets isolated towers and ridges.The danxia landform is named after Mount Danxia, one of the most famous examples of the danxia landform. A very peculiar feature of danxia landscape is the development of numerous caves of various sizes and shapes. The caves tend to be shallow and isolated, unlike true karst terrain where caves tend to form deep, interconnecting networks. In 2010, several danxia landscapes in southern China, with a general name of "China Danxia", were inscribed as a World Heritage Site.
Enchanted Well Brazil
“Enchanted Well” or ” Poço Encantado”, located in Chapada Diamantina National Park in Bahia state, Brazil. The ‘well’ was formed through erosion of an underground river in the surrounding limestone environment. The water is so clear that pebbles and tree stumps can clearly be seen, even though the water is 60 metres in depth!!
To add to the spectacle, a small crevice allows the infiltration of sunlight at certain times; causing a breathtaking waterfall of pale blue light. Beautiful isn’t it?
Mount Roraima :
Mount Roraima is the highest of the Pakaraima chain of tepui plateaus in South America. First described by the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in 1596, its 31 km² summit area is bounded on all sides by cliffs rising 400 metres.
Mount Roraima lies on the Guiana Shield in the southeastern corner of Venezuela's 30,000-square-kilometre (12,000 sq mi) Canaima National Park forming the highest peak of Guyana's Highland Range. The tabletop mountains of the park are considered some of the oldest geological formations on Earth, dating back to some two billion years ago in the Precambrian.
The highest point in Guyana and the highest point of the Brazilian state of Roraima lie on the plateau, but Venezuela and Brazil have higher mountains elsewhere. The triple border point is at 5°12′08″N 60°44′07″W, but the mountain's highest point is Maverick Rock, 2,810 metres (9,219 ft), at the south end of the plateau and wholly within Venezuela.
Lake Baikal (Russian: о́зеро Байка́л, tr. Ozero Baykal; IPA: [ˈozʲɪrə bɐjˈkɑl]; Buryat: Байгал нуур, Mongolian: Байгал нуур, Baygal nuur, meaning "nature lake";[3]) is a rift lake in Russia, located in southern Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast.
turquoise ice lake baikal russia :
Lake Baikal is the largest (by volume) freshwater lake in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water.[4][5] At 1,642 m (5,387 ft),[1] Baikal is the world's deepest lake.[6] It is considered among the world's clearest[7] lakes and is considered the world's oldest lake[8] — at 25 million years.[9] It is the seventh-largest lake in the world by surface area. With 23,615.39 km3 (5,700 cu mi) of fresh water,[1] it contains more water than all the North American Great Lakes combined.
Chocolate Hills :
The Chocolate Hills or Tsokolateng burol in filipino are a geological formation in Bohol Province, Philippines. There are at least 1,260 hills but there may be as many as 1,776 hills spread over an area of more than 50 square kilometres.The Chocolate Hills are a famous tourist attraction of Bohol. They are featured in the provincial flag and seal to symbolize the abundance of natural attractions in the province.[3] They are in the Philippine Tourism Authority's list of tourist destinations in the Philippines;[4] they have been declared the country's third National Geological Monument and proposed for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.The vegetation of the Chocolate Hills is dominated by grass species such as Imperata cylindrica and Saccharum spontaneum. Several Compositae and ferns also grow on them. In between the hills, the flat lands are cultivated with rice and other cash crops. However, the natural vegetation on the Chocolate Hills is now threatened by quarrying activities.
crystal caverns :
Cave of the Crystals or Giant Crystal Cave is a cave connected to the Naica Mine 300 metres below the surface in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico. The main chamber contains giant selenite crystals, some of the largest natural crystals ever found. The cave's largest crystal found to date is 12 m (39 ft) in length, 4 m (13 ft) in diameter and 55 tons in weight. The cave is extremely hot, with air temperatures reaching up to 58 °C (136 °F)[2] with 90 to 99 percent humidity. The cave is relatively unexplored due to these factors.[3] Without proper protection, people can only endure approximately ten minutes of exposure at a time.
A group of scientists known as the Naica Project have been heavily involved in researching these caverns.In 1910 miners discovered a cavern beneath the Naica mine workings, the Cave of Swords (Spanish: Cueva de las Espadas). It is located at a depth of 120 m, above the Cave of Crystals, and contains spectacular, smaller (1 m long) crystals. It is speculated that at this level, transition temperatures may have fallen much more rapidly, leading to an end in the growth of the crystals.
Eye of Sahara :
The Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of the Sahara and Guelb er Richat, is a prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert near Ouadane, west–central Mauritania.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 30 km in diameter.Exposed within the interior of the Richat Structure are a variety of intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks. They include rhyolitic volcanic rocks, gabbros, carbonatites and kimberlites. The rhyolitic rocks consist of lava flows and hydrothermally altered tuffaceous rocks that are part of two distinct eruptive centers, which are interpreted to be the eroded remains of two maars. According to field mapping and aeromagnetic data, the gabbroic rocks form two concentric ring dikes. The inner ring dike is about 20 m in width and lies about 3 km from the center of Richat Structure. The outer ring dike is about 50 m in width and lies about 7 to 8 km from the center of this structure. Thirty-two carbonatite dikes and sills have been mapped within the Richat Structure. The dikes are generally about 300 m long and typically 1 to 4 m wide. They consist of massive carbonatites that are mostly devoid of vesicles. The carbonatite rocks have been dated as having cooled between 94 to 104 million years ago. A kimberlitic plug and several sills have been found within the northern part of the Richat Structure. The kimberlite plug has been dated being about 99 million years old. These intrusive igneous rocks are interpreted as indicating the presence of a large alkaline igneous intrusion that currently underlies the Richat Structure and created it by uplifting the overlying rock.
Tianzi Mountain :
Tianzi Mountain is located in Zhangjiajie in the Hunan Province of China, close to the Suoxi Valley. It is named after the farmer Xiang Dakun of the Tujia ethnic group, who led a successful local farmers' revolt and called himself "tianzi".This means "son of Heaven" and is the traditional epithet of the Chinese emperor. It is also made out of marble.
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