Aurora
Auroras are not magic—they’re electron traffic jams in Earth’s magnetic tail, made visible.
Space exploration
Leaving the planet, at enormous cost, for contested reasons.
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Upper-atmospheric lightning
It is not lightning — it is plasma, brief, alien, and happening right now over a storm near you.
Salar de Uyuni
The world’s flattest, brightest, most trusted calibration pad—and nothing else.
More from nature
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Geodes
A geode is a hollow, roughly spherical rock in sedimentary or volcanic rock holding mineral matter, which may include crystals, deposited from groundwater or hydrothermal fluids.
Japanese Alps
The Japanese Alps are three mountain ranges that bisect Honshu, Japan's main island, and hold the country's only active glaciers.
Halo
A halo is an optical phenomenon in which sunlight or moonlight, bent and reflected by ice crystals in the air, makes rings, arcs and spots in the sky.
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is the biological process in which an animal's body changes abruptly in structure as part of its development, as when a larva becomes an adult.