What caused the mystery of the Dark Day?

Halfway through the morning the sky turns yellow. Animals run for cover and darkness descends, causing people to light candles and start to pray. By lunchtime night has fallen. Is it the end of the world?

The Dark Day, as it’s become known, took place on May 19, 1780 in New England and Canada. For the past 232 years historians and scientists have argued over the origins of this strange event.

…

So what might explain 1780’s Dark Day?

The Met Office points out that thick cloud can drop low enough to turn on automatic street lights and require cars to use their lights. But it’s unlikely this alone would be enough to cause a Dark Day.

A solar eclipse can be ruled out as there is a record of when these occur - and they only last for a matter of minutes.

truth-has-a-liberal-bias:

mothernaturenetwork:

Solar eclipse viewable in U.S., China, Japan
Depending on where people are in the eclipse’s path, some may witness an annular eclipse in which the moon blocks out all but a ring of the sun. The event will be the first time in 18 years that such an eclipse is visible from the continental United States.

At sunrise in some parts of China and Japan and by sunset in the western United States, a partial solar eclipse is set to slink across a narrow swath of the Earth on May 20 and 21. […]

sovietpropaganda:

Siberian salamanders have compounds in their blood that enable them to survive temperatures of -45°C(-49F). They can stay frozen solid for years before thawing and reviving as good as new. (Wild Russia - NDR)

EARTH COUGHS UP THE COOLEST FUCKIN THINGS.

dendroica:

A bird called an anhinga gobbles up a fish for his lunch at a wildlife reserve in FloridaPicture: FRANCISCO PARILLA / CATERS NEWS (via Pictures of the day: 25 April 2012 - Telegraph)

blamoscience:

From The Earth Story Facebook:

While it certainly looks as though someone has taken a great deal of paint to these hills, these colours in fact formed naturally.
This unique geological formation is known as the Zhangye Danxia landform, found in southern China. It was formed by sediments laid down in a low-elevation fault basin during the Cretaceous period, which then experienced uplift due to their position on top of various fault zones. The various colours are a result of the erosion of the thick-bedded red sandstone and conglomerate: from running water erosion, biological effect, chemical precipitation and organic staining.

sadburro:

Alien landscape at home #1

Kilauea eruption with molten lava and papaya trees near Kapoho, Hawaii, 1960. 

kqedscience:

Small Furry Hyrax Sings in Regional Dialects

By recording hundreds of the animals’ songs and applying clever mathematics, researchers discovered that differences in note arrangement, or syntax, in hyrax songs vary as the distance increases between colonies — a surprising occurrence of dialect.

(Click here to read more and view a short video of a singing hyrax.)

(via: Wired Science)

rhamphotheca:

The Wombats (family Vombatidae)

by Animal Diversity Web staff

This family of metatheria contains 2 genera and 3 species, all Australian. They are medium to large size animals (19-39 kg) with a stocky body, short limbs, small ears, and a very short tail. The head is compactly built and is used in constructing tunnels. The limbs are especially powerfully, with short broad feet and strong, flat claws. Posture is plantigrade. Wombats are burrowers, building impressive burrow systems with many burrows. Some burrows exceed 20 m in length. 

(Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat, by ZakVTA)

Wombats have a remarkably rodent-like skull. They have a single pair of incisors. These teeth are heavily built and rodent-like in form. Also like the incisors of rodents, the incisors of wombats have enamel on anterior and lateral surfaces only. The pouch of wombats is well developed, but it is oriented so that it opens to the rear, rather than forward as is more usual in marsupials. The embryo forms an allantoic placenta, as is true of at least some peramelids and koalas but not other marsupials.

Wombats are strictly herbivorous grazers; they have a simple stomach and a short, broad cecum. They are most closely related to the Koalas. During the Pleistocene, herds of giant wombats the size of a rhinoceros roamed the plains of southern Australia…

(read more: EOL)      

(images: T - Common Wombat, by Muzina Shanghai; B - from Brehms Thierleben, 1883)

mohandasgandhi:

mothernaturenetwork:

Tiny shark has bioluminescent belly
The sharks regulate their bioluminescence by changing the degree of pigmentation covering the glow-creating photophores.

I’m obsessed with this type of stuff and you guys should be too.

silas216:

Though its exact cause has been disputed, the fire underneath Centralia, Pennsylvania ignited sometime in 1962 and has been burning ever since.

The town sits on top of a rich vein of coal, and the fire has defied every attempt to extinguish it. National awareness of Centralia’s unending environmental catastrophe came in 1981 when a 12-year-old boy fell into a 150-foot hole that suddenly appeared in his back yard. Most residents were relocated in 1984, and in 1992 the entire town was condemned. Most buildings were torn down, creating the Centralia that can still be seen today: a network of streets running through empty fields and, increasingly, new growth forest. As of 2007, Centralia had nine residents. 

(via Centralia | Atlas Obscura | Curious and Wondrous Travel Destinations)