LAS CAÑADAS - TENERIFE

Las Cañadas caldera, Mount Teide – Not dead just sleeping! The UN Committee for Disaster Mitigation has listed Teide for close observation due to its history of powerful eruptions and its location near several large towns.

At the summit of Mount Teide, one of the largest Island volcanoes in the World is the Las Cañadas caldera. The crater, which is an enourmous sixteen kilometres across, is a picture of what Hell might look like if it cooled a little. Shear walls that formed when the caldera first collapsed encircle this dry and alien place. And, with an arrogance than can only be accepted as typical, humanity has built roads and observatories across this no mans land that is little more than a plug over a sleeping yet still active and very large volcano. When we visited it some years ago we were standing in the viewing gallery when the ground beneath our feet trembled and several windows suddenly cracked. The sleeping giant was grumbling in its sleep. The land mass created by the volcano is Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

GREAT BLUE HOLE OF BELIZE

The Great Blue Hole is located in the Light House Reef aproximately halfway between Long Caye and Sandbore Caye. It is about 60 miles east from the mainland of Belize (city). In 1997 it was designated as a World Heritage site.

Found on both land and in the ocean throughout the Bahamas and the national waters of Belize are deep circular cavities known as Blue Holes which are often the entrances to cave networks, some of them up to 14 kilometres in length. Divers have reported a vast number of aquatic creatures some of which are still new to science. In addition, they’ve recorded chambers filled with stalactites and stalagmites which only form in dry caves. For the explorers this was proof that at one time, nearly 65,000 years ago, when the world was in the grip of the last major ice age, the sea level of the Bahamas was up to 150 metres lower than it is today. Over time the limestone of the islands was eroded by water and vast cave networks created. When sea levels rose again about 10,000 years ago some of these collapsed inwards and the Blue Holes were formed

SANQINGSHAN - CHINA

SANQINGSHAN - CHINA Sanqingshan is a relatively small National Park near the city of Shangrao in the Jiangxi province of China. What it lacks in size it makes up for in shear natural beauty. It is officially the 7th World Heritage Site designated in China and has been noted for its exceptional scenic attraction. The key mystique of this remarkable place is the combination of extraordinary granite geology in the form of weird outcrops and pillars combined with seasonal climate variations than often cause mists, fogs and striking sunsets. Those that have visited this place describe a feeling of overwhelming peace and tranquility. This effect is enhanced by the profusion of natural waterfalls, pools and springs. If you allow yourself, it is truly possible to see Earth, Water, Wind and Fire joined in time.

A story that is told is that Mu-Go the “Lord of the East” wished to create a garden for the amusement of his consort “Yin” and persuaded the four elements to fuse together and create Sanqingshan as a private garden for her amusement.

EYE OF AFRICA - MAURITANIA

Currently scientists believe that they know what caused this formation. Hey! It's a Ri chat structure ... whatever that really means. A more Bizarre theory is that it is the impact site of an ancient but very powerful bomb.

From space this mysterious depression in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania really does look like a human eye. The image to the left is the "pupil" but a visit to Google Earth zoomed out a little will reveal the cliffs that make up the rest of the eye. This natural phenomenon is actually a richat structure caused by the dome shaped symmetrical uplifting of underlying geology now made visible by millennia of erosion. Please note that this explanation is not wholly accepted by the scientific community. There still remain academics that believe it is the sight of a meteor impact and yet others still that believe it resembles the formations caused by underground nuclear blasts. By the way, we estimate that the detonation would have had to be in the gigaton range. Currently no country in the world has a weapon even close to this destructive yield.

Hell's Door in Turkmenistan

In the midst Karakoum (Turkmenistan) desert, close to
disappearing village called Darvaza, there are approximately one crater
hundred meters in diameter and more than twenty meters from the depths,
called "door of hell." Inside this well, the fire had burned for
tens of years, the fire that seemed endless. The Darvaza better not
a work of nature, but the result of poor Soviet mining
prospecting began in the 50's. In 1971, drilling which provoke
collapse of an underground cavity, so revealing gaping holes
leakage of gas in large quantities. The geologists decided to torch
wells to remove toxic gas like that, it's too underrated soviet
cavity dimensions: gas should burn
in a few weeks has really kept burning without interruption since
1971! It is unknown how long "» gates of Hell «will continue
burning. Although Darvaza wells located in an area difficult
access, many people gathered there to watch this exciting
phenomenon. The intense heat coming from the crater allowed to approach
place only for a few minutes as the temperature is unbearable.
At night, this event Dantean: fire burning in all the splendor that, providing
wells display a burning volcano.

Titan: Nasa scientists discover evidence 'that alien life exists on Saturn's moon'

Researchers at the space agency believe they have discovered vital clues that appeared to indicate that primitive aliens could be living on the planet. Data from Nasa's Cassini probe has analysed the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan, which experts say is the only moon around the planet to have a dense atmosphere.

They have discovered that life forms have been breathing in the planet’s atmosphere and also feeding on its surface’s fuel. Astronomers claim the moon is generally too cold to support even liquid water on its surface. The research has been detailed in two separate studies. The first paper, in the journal Icarus, shows that hydrogen gas flowing throughout the planet’s atmosphere disappeared at the surface. This suggested that alien forms could in fact breathe. The second paper, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, concluded that there was lack of the chemical on the surface. Scientists were then led to believe it had been possibly consumed by life. Researchers had expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene gas. But the Cassini probe did not detect any such gas. Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Nasa Ames Research Centre, at Moffett Field, California who led the research, said: “We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth. "If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.” Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, added: “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process. “In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.” They warned, however, that there could be other explanations for the findings. But taken together, they two indicate two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist.

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The Richat Structure

The Richat Structure is one of those geological features that are more clearly observed from space than from down on the ground. It was first observed from space by Gemini 4 astronauts McDivitt and White in June 1965.
Located in the center of Mauritania, the western end of the Sahara desert this prominent circular feature has attracted attention since the earliest space missions because it forms a conspicuous bull's-eye in the otherwise rather featureless expanse of the desert. Described by some as looking like an outsized ammonite in the desert, this 'eye of Africa' , which has a diameter of almost 50 kilometers (30 miles) has become a landmark astronauts since the earliest manned missions.

Most of the image looks yellowish, indicating sand desert. The dark brown part is bare sedimentary rocks, and within that you can see the Richat Structure, a gigantic ring structure of some 40 km in diameter.

The onion-like formation is formed by concentric bands of resistant paleozoic quartzite rocks form ridges, and between with valleys of less-resistant rock between them.

The part of the sedimentary rock corresponding to the white of the eye is a plateau standing some 200 m above the sand desert. The Richat Structure corresponding to the iris of the eye lies in a depression, and the peak of the outer rim is 485 m above sea level. The Richat Structure consists of Early Paleozoic rocks, some 600 million years old. Around the center, rocks resistant to weathering and erosion (purple and blue-green part) make 100 m high ridges, and nonresistant rocks (yellow and brown part) form valleys. These features alternate and are concentric.

The Richat Structure was previously thought to have been formed by metorite impact or volcanic activity, but field surveys have demonstrated that neither are correct. The current thinking is that these features were formed by an uplift and subsequent erosion from wind and water.
However, why the structure is circular remains a mystery.

Solving the Mystery of the Nasca Lines

Ever since the first commercial trans-Andean aviators spotted them in the 1930s, the giant ground drawings that cover 400 square miles of southern Peru's desert coast have remained an enigma. Acre-sized tracings of hummingbirds, foxes, and condors; a 100-foot-tall man with owllike eyes, his raised arms beckoning to us from a hillside; dozens of spirals, zigzags, triangles, and trapezoids; and 1,000 miles of long, straight lines crisscross a dry wasteland that bears an uncanny resemblance to the surface of Mars. Could these geoglyphs be effigies of ancient animal gods or patterns of constellations? Are they roads, star pointers, maybe even a gigantic map? If the people who lived here 2,000 years ago had only a simple technology, how did they manage to construct such precise figures? Did they have a plan? If so, who ordained it? It all seems so otherworldly. To comprehend the Nasca lines, created by the removal of desert rock to reveal the pale pink sand beneath, visitors have proposed every imaginable explanation--from runways for spaceships to tracks for Olympic athletes, from op art to pop art, to astronomical observatories. As much as the lines awe me, I marvel equally at the imagination of the people who have sought explanations for them.

Water, walking, astronomy, kinship, division of labor and ceremonial responsibility, cleansing and sweeping, radiality: there is a place for all of these human actions and concepts in a complex, but nonetheless believable story of the Nasca lines. Above all, I think the lines were made to walk upon; they were pathways. I have no doubt that some sort of ritual on the ray centers and trapezoids, wherein people assembled for reasons connected to the ritual acquisition of water, was involved. The patterns of lines also speak of relations among people who maintained them, and possibly of astronomy via the connection between sunrise/sunset positions and the date of arrival of water in the valleys adjacent to the pampa. Whatever the mosaic of explanations, our cardinal rule has been that everything must make sense in the context of what we know about Andean culture in general and about Nasca culture in particular. We can no longer view the Nasca lines as the product of a massive superhuman work effort undertaken as a single-minded grand project. The people of ancient Nasca had no need of our cultural trappings. They used little advanced technology in their weaving, pottery making, and metallurgy, no sophisticated knowledge of mathematics and geometry in the Western sense, and no maps or blueprints in order to create what we see.

If my three decades of pilgrimage to the pampa have taught me anything, it is that to understand the Nasca lines we need to escape from the straitjacket of our own universe of discourse. The maze of lines and figures etched across the desert floor in a seemingly confusing manner is neither whimsical nor chaotic. The pampa isn't just a conglomeration of dysfunctional doodles on a gigantic scratchpad. There is order--a pattern and a system behind the geoglyphs--and it tells us about the people who lived there.

Anthony F. Aveni is the Russell B. Colgate professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. The article was adapted from his forthcoming book, Between the Lines: The Mystery of the Giant Ground Drawings of Ancient Nasca, Peru (Austin; University of Texas Press).