Sugar Atoms

Azurite

Photograph by David Boyer

Some of nature’s intricate patterns are on display in this magnified view of the mineral azurite. The bright blue mineral was once used to make paints and may still be found in jewelry.

Sandstone Patterns

Photograph by Frans Lanting

A balance of playful yellow and passionate red, orange commands attention without overwhelming. This often flamboyant color brings to mind citrus and sunsets, fall leaves, and jack-o’-lanterns. Orange has even been found to stimulate appetite and creativity in humans.

Here, patterns etched in sandstone appear like an artist’s rendering of the Utah landscape. Dramatic sandstone formations are the main attraction at the state’s Arches National Park.

Limestone Towers, Madagascar

Photograph by Stephen Alvarez, National Geographic

A city of limestone towers rises in western Madagascar. Sharp, steep, and brittle, the maze of rock in Tsingy de Bemaraha national park and reserve has repelled all but a few explorers and scientists, leaving large parts of the region—and countless resident creatures—unknown to humans.

(For more pictures of the amazing colors of our world, buy the National Geographic book Life in Color.)

Mark Gray’s photo of Hardy Reef, on the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland

Lake Eyre - peter elfes

The century-old mystery of a missing mineral in coral reefs has been solved by a team from The Australian National University. 

The team, led by Dr Bradley Opdyke of the Research School of Earth Sciences, has uncovered a hidden stash of the mineral dolomite in coral reefs around the globe, ending a search that has lasted over 100 years. The discovery was published in November’s Biogeosciences. 

Angel’s Heart, Antelope Canyon, Arizona, New Mexico, US - by Australian photographer, Peter Lik. 

“The flowing sandstone lines of slot canyons are amazing,” says Peter. “As the sun shines through the narrow entrance of these canyons a natural lightshow highlights the incredible rock formations and shadows dance all around. Angel’s Heart was carved out by rushing water flowing over time, creating this masterpiece as though it was hand carved by a famous sculptor. 

I knew I had to capture this shot in the right light and waited days for the right moment.”

Flushed by its biggest flow in almost two decades, the Paroo River in northern NSW inundated up to 8000sq. km of ephemeral floodplain habitat in 2008. The Paroo is the last river in the Murray-Darling Basin that still runs its natural course, unfettered by major dams, weirs or diversions.

THE IDENTITY OF ONE of the first group of human beings to leave Africa has been narrowed down, according to new research. And the discovery pushes back the expansion of early humans out of Africa by tens of thousands of years.

The international team of archaeologists, including an Australian, has found more than 100 sites in the Middle Eastern nation of Oman which it says are “a trail of stone breadcrumbs” left by early humans.

It’s the first time sites such as these have been found outside Africa.

“After a decade of searching in southern Arabia for some clue that might help us understand early human expansion, at long last we’ve found the smoking gun of their exit from Africa,” team leader Dr Jeffrey Rose from the University of Birmingham said in a statement.

“What makes this so exciting is that the answer is a scenario almost never considered.”

ome stars in our galaxy could harbour planets with thick layers of diamond in their mantles. They may sound like prime real estate but new lab experiments suggest that these blingworlds, though carbon-rich, would be cold, devoid of most of the mechanisms that sustain life on Earth.

Our solar system is relatively carbon-poor. Consequently, Earth’s core is made of iron and its mantle of silica-based minerals. Some stars have high carbon-to-oxygen ratios compared with the sun, however, and such stars might host planets with mineral compositions very different from that of Earth.

In 2005, astronomer Marc Kuchner, now at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues showed that planetary systems with high carbon-to-oxygen ratios would form planets with layers of graphite. High pressure would convert parts of this layer into layers of diamond many kilometres thick.

Now Wendy Panero and Cayman Unterborn of Ohio State University in Columbus have extended the study to better understand both the composition of such planets and their likely geological processes.