Plants that cheat, weather long dismissed as legend, balances that hang by a thread: nature away from the clichés.
Saint-Kilda is an archipelago whose agricultural lands became highly toxic due to the accumulation of heavy metals. Analyses conducted by the University of Aberdeen revealed soils loaded with lead, zinc, arsenic, and cadmium. This pollution came from the intensive use of bird carcasses and peat ash mixed into fertilizers to grow crops.
The saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) is the imposing cactus that gave its name to the Saguaro National Park in Arizona. It must wait between 75 and 100 years for its main stem to start branching and give it its characteristic western silhouette. This emblem of Arizona finally reaches a height of nearly 15 meters and a weight of 8 tons at the end of its growth.
The Gavot plateau is a morainic deposit approximately 300 meters thick that acts as a filter for infiltration water. This water circulates there for about fifteen years before re-emerging at the level of Evian. It is then exploited by the Société des eaux minérales d'Évian thanks to this natural protection.
The white dwarf is a dense star that undergoes crystallization at its center as it cools. This phenomenon releases heat and gravitational energy which slow down the cooling of the star. Observations based on Gaia data have thus revealed that these celestial objects could be up to two billion years older than expected.
Some Swiss tales feature dwarves punishing humans through memorable natural disasters. Near Eisten, a venerable dwarf dissatisfied with the tightness of his boots causes the emptying of a lake that buries the forest and the alpine pastures. Near Lake Thun, another dwarf destroys an entire village with an avalanche because only the poor had opened their door to him.
Mare milk possesses a lipid content twice as low as that of cow milk and human breast milk. This peculiarity comes from the fact that the mare is not a ruminant and absorbs its dietary lipids without modification in the small intestine. Consequently, one liter of this milk provides less than 600 Kcal, unlike ewe milk which reaches 1100 Kcal.
A white dwarf is a star whose atmosphere is the only part visible from the outside. The outer layers of this star diffuse heat very poorly, causing a spectacular thermal gradient between the surface and the center. Thus, a surface temperature between 8 000 K and 16 000 K is accompanied by a core temperature reaching 5 000 000 to 20 000 000 K.
Ahsoka Tano is a character who crafts new lightsabers after abandoning her old ones. She recovers the crystals from the lightsaber of the Sixth Brother, an Inquisitor killed during a duel on the moon of Raada. By placing these crystals into her weapons, she purifies their initial red color which then becomes completely white.
The DB gap is an enigmatic temperature range observed in certain stars at the end of their life. Between 30 000 K and 45 000 K, no white dwarf presents an atmosphere dominated by helium. This phenomenon remains unexplained, although it is attributed to evolutionary processes such as convective mixing and gravitational settling.
Tadig Kozh is a nineteenth-century priest renowned as a great miracle worker. In the middle of the century, he led spectacular exorcism sessions in the middle of the night in the Saint-Hervé chapel. He climbed the summit of Menez Bré barefoot during full moon nights in order to order the demons to parade before chasing them away with holy water.
The Inaccessible Island rail is a bird whose young are born with a surprising physical feature. Upon hatching, the chicks are entirely covered in black plumage matched with a beak and legs of the same color, while their mouth stands out due to its silver color. This characteristic is accompanied by a very rapid development, since the young specimens start walking barely two hours after their birth.
Indonesia will be the country most affected in the world by flooding linked to global warming. Before the year 2050, this large-scale phenomenon will submerge 2,000 islands and invade 42 million homes according to the forecasts of the Asian Development Bank. This catastrophe is already underway and is pushing many inhabitants to leave their land.
Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia, but the government announced its relocation to an entirely new city named Nusantara. This transfer is motivated by overpopulation, the central geographical position of the future site, and the gradual sinking of the current metropolis below sea level. The construction project for this new urban area on the island of Borneo was made official in 2019.
Sulawesi and Borneo house the oldest known cave paintings in the world. These parietal artworks have survived the millennia and testify to the very ancient human occupation of the region. They have been dated by scientists between 40,000 and 60,000 years, well before the arrival of Austronesian migrations.
The green iguana is a reptile that has become an invasive species in southern Florida. In January 2008, exceptionally cold nights plunged these animals into a state of dormancy and caused them to fall from their trees. Dozens of specimens thus littered the bike paths before waking up upon the return of warmth.
The green iguana is an arboreal reptile that can reach very high population densities in suitable environments. A study conducted in Belize revealed that these animals particularly favor plants of the Citharexylum genus and mimosas. Under these optimal conditions, it is thus possible to encounter no fewer than 90 specimens per hectare.
The green iguana is an oviparous reptile that digs a burrow to lay its eggs in the dry in February. It happens however that this animal shares the nest of other formidable species to ensure its egg-laying. In Panama, such cases have been observed with an American crocodile, and in Honduras with a spectacled caiman.
The green iguana replaces its teeth in a very particular way by hollowing out the old ones from the inside. The tooth bud of the new tooth grows directly at the base of the worn tooth and inside it. This internal growth thus allows the new tooth to gradually replace the old one. This reptile also possesses flattened teeth equipped with several tubercles that are attached to the inner edge of the jaw.
The green iguana is a species of arboreal and herbivorous lizard measuring up to two meters long for a weight of 5 kg. The animal possesses a vast natural range in South and Central America, but it has also established itself elsewhere through escape. Populations are thus found in the United States, notably in Florida, Hawaii and Texas, where it disrupts the local ecosystem.
Mount Garibaldi is a Canadian stratovolcano composed exclusively of dacite, an igneous rock rich in iron. It shares this singularity only with Glacier Peak within the Cascade Arc. Due to a particularly viscous and silica-rich magma, its past eruptions took on an explosive Peléan character.
Ganymede is the largest natural satellite of Jupiter and formed by accretion in about 10 000 years. This speed is explained by its proximity to Jupiter, in a sub-nebula denser than that of Callisto. This rapid formation allowed it to retain the heat necessary to separate rock and ice, unlike Callisto.
Ganymede is the largest natural satellite in the Solar System and possesses a considerable mass of ice. Its density suggests an equal mixture of rock and water in the form of ice. The total mass of this ice thus reaches 2.02 times that of the Moon.
Ganymede is a moon of Jupiter whose size was specified by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes during their passage in 1979. They thus revealed that this moon exceeds the dimensions of Titan. Titan is a moon of Saturn that scientists previously believed to be bigger than Ganymede.
Tambora is an Indonesian volcano whose immediate danger zone covers 58.7 square kilometers. A risk prevention plan formally prohibits any habitation there due to the threats of pyroclastic flows, lava flows, and falling ejecta. This strictly regulated zone borders a larger caution zone including several inhabited villages such as Doro Peti and Pasanggrahan.
The pluviometric quotient designates the Emberger climatic index, a tool developed in 1930 by the botanist Louis Emberger. This index was modified in 1955 to define five different types of Mediterranean climates, from the most arid to that of high mountains. Morocco is the only country in the Mediterranean region to possess all of these climates on its territory.
The Kalmyk horse is an equine breed recognized for its remarkable sobriety, mobility, and endurance. It can thus travel about one hundred kilometers without feeding thanks to its robustness and rustic origins. This capacity was notably noted by Houel to illustrate the animal's resistance to fatigue.
Mount Garibaldi is a stratovolcano characterized by a unique asymmetrical morphology. This peculiarity is explained by the formation of its main cone directly above the former Cordilleran Ice Sheet. Its broad summit thus gathers several distinct peaks, the highest of which reaches 2 678 meters in altitude.