Earth doesn't need special effects. It already has glowing beaches, moving boulders, technicolor mountains, and other bizarre phenomena. Some of these natural oddities were once a complete mystery but now have perfectly sensible scientific explanations.
Here are 10 bizarre natural phenomena that you'd have to see to believe.
1. Blood Falls, Antarctica
A red waterfall spilling across a snow-white glacier sounds like something from a horror film, but Blood Falls is not only real but also entirely natural. The crimson-colored liquid gushes from Taylor Glacier and contains extremely salty, iron-rich water. When that iron reaches the air, it oxidizes and turns the water reddish-orange. Very creepy name, but a surprisingly straightforward explanation.
2. Sailing Stones, Death Valley, USA
The rocks of Racetrack Playa appear to actually move across the desert by themselves, leaving long tracks in the mud behind them. Researchers eventually caught them in action and discovered that the stones move under a rare combination of water, thin ice, sunshine, and wind.
Some rocks weigh hundreds of pounds, yet they creep along so slowly that you could watch without noticing anything happening.
3. Spotted Lake, Canada
During summer, much of British Columbia's Spotted Lake evaporates due to high temperatures, revealing large green, yellow, and blue pools of water. These colors vary depending on the types and amounts of minerals and water remaining, but regardless, the colorful puddles do look quite magical.
4. Catatumbo Lightning, Venezuela
Near Lake Maracaibo, powerful thunderstorms seem to keep forming over the Catatumbo River region without taking a break. It's all thanks to the warm, moisture-filled air from the lake that meets cooler air descending from the surrounding mountains. In reality, it isn't literally one endless storm, but the flashes occur often enough to make the area one of Earth's most remarkable lightning hotspots.
5. Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni covers a bit over 10,000 sq km, making it the world's largest salt flat. For much of the year, it resembles an endless white desert, but during the rainy season, a shallow sheet of water can transform parts of it into a gigantic mirror, reflecting the clouds so clearly that the horizon practically disappears.
6. The Great Blue Hole, Belize
This enormous sinkhole sits right off the coast of Belize. This natural marvel began as a limestone cave when sea levels were much lower. Rising oceans later flooded it, but the submerged ledges and stalactites below were preserved. From above, it looks like somebody dropped a perfectly round pool of navy-blue ink into the Caribbean.
7. Bioluminescent Waves, Various Locations
Sometimes the ocean waves genuinely glow in the darkness of the night. In Mosquito Bay, Puerto Rico, microscopic organisms called dinoflagellates that live in the water produce flashes of blue light when disturbed. This means that waves, paddles, and even swimming fish can all trigger the glow. The result looks magical, although not every glowing algal bloom is harmless, so 'look but don't touch' is the rule number one here.
8. Zhangye Colorful Hills, China
China's famous Colorful Hills look like some deity took out a bow of crayons and started testing the colors. Naturally, that's not how this natural wonder came to be.
Those red, yellow, green, and grey bands are just differently colored layers of sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone. Due to tectonic movement, the layers got all mixed up, while wind and water gradually sculpted the gorgeous landscape visible today.
9. The Darvaza Gas Crater, Turkmenistan
Nicknamed the "Door to Hell," this blazing crater burns above a natural-gas deposit in the Karakum Desert. There's an urban legend going around that Soviet scientists ignited it after a drilling accident in 1971. Even though covering their own failures with fire and explosions is what Russians do best, it's still an undocumented story.
10. The Northern and Southern Lights
Auroras usually appear when charged particles from the Sun reach the Earth's polar regions and collide with different gases high in the atmosphere. It's crazy to realise that those shimmering curtains of green, red, blue, and purple lights are just oxygen and nitrogen getting bombarded by the sun.