Science & nature
Categories
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Fata Morgana: A wintry optical illusion
No, it’s not the offspring of a celebrity. It’s a pretty cool illusion that takes place when temperatures are also pretty cool – well, actually, very cool. Cold, in fact. Freezing cold.
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The Chilean lake that disappeared without a trace
While it’s not unusual for things to go missing, the disappearing items are usually pretty small – not, say, a huge 30-metre-deep lake. However, that’s exactly what disappeared from Chile in 2007.
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Murderous mushrooms from around the world
To most of us, mushrooms are just a type of food – a spongy plate-filler to be either gobbled up or brushed aside, according to our personal tastes. However, there are roughly 14,000 species and only a very small number of these are ever chopped up and covered in garlic. Around the world, mushrooms come…
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5 plants you probably wouldn’t want in your garden
Gardening is seen as a therapeutic hobby – and rightly so too. There’s nothing quite like watching something you put into the ground and watered grow to its full beauty. We tend to buy and pot plants that make our gardens and parks look prettier, but there are some odd plants from different parts of…
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Where the objects in your bathroom come from
It seems that just keeping yourself clean requires stuff from all over the world, so join us as we splish splash our way around some familiar bathroom items…
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Pando: The trembling giant
With a nickname like “The Trembling Giant”, you’d expect Pando to be something special… and he is. The tree (if you can call him that) is a serious contender for oldest living organism, as well as being one of the biggest and the heaviest.
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Catatumbo lightning: The never-ending Venezuelan storm
Some people say lightning never strikes twice in the same place. These people obviously haven’t heard of the Catatumbo lightning in Venezuela, which has been striking the same spot almost continuously for centuries!
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Jabuticaba | Unusual fruit from around the world
Sometimes called Brazilian grapes, jabuticaba fruit are big purple berries, 3-4 cm in diameter. Unusually, rather than growing in bunches, the fruit grows all the way up the tree’s trunk and leaves it looking like it might have a hideous disease.
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Thatch screwpine | Unusual fruit from around the world
The fruit of the thatch screwpine is made up of many little wedges, each containing between two and eight of the plant’s seeds.
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Salak | Unusual fruit from around the world
The salak is a type of palm tree which grows its fruit in clusters at the base of the plant (rather than dropping it on you from above, like some other palm trees I could mention).