Lofoten

Photo:Ximonic

This is Lofoten an archipelagos in the country of Nordland, Norway.

Photo: Petr Šmerkl, Wikipedia.

Even though it lies within the arctic circle temperatures are very mild even in winter, due to the Gulf stream.

Photo: Ximonic

It's sea is teaming with life containing the world's largest deep water coral reef.

Photo: Per 

The sky's are also filled with life with a high density of Sea Eagles and Cormorants and millions of others.

Photo: Ximonic

Otters are common and you can find moose on the largest islands.

Photo: Øystein Bjørke

It's not all great, the sun never sets from 25 May to 17 July and the sun doesn't even rise from 9 December to 4 January.

 Photo: Ximonic

It's stunningly beautiful though.

The Dark Nut

I probably shouldn't find this as funny as i do, Ice Age: Continental Drift is out now.

Flowering Bamboo

Bamboo flowering is an impressive sight but it doesn't happen often, in fact many bamboo can take from 65 years all the way to 130 years to flower and then they all flower at the same time regardless of geographic locations or climatic conditions, then it all dies and we still don't know why this is.

 

Photo: Mogens Engelund

There are two main theories about why this happens. Firstly, the predator satiation hypothesis, the idea is that by flooding the area with fruit even if large amounts are eaten there will still be seeds left, by having a flowering cycle longer than the lifespan of the rodents, bamboos can control animal populations by causing starvation during the period between flowering events. The death of the adult is due to lack of resources, as it would be better for the parents to pour all there resources in to creating a larger seed crop than to keep energy for their own regrowth.

Photo: Stéfan Le Dû

The second theory is the fire cycle hypothesis, this hypothesis thinks that the dead bamboo create a large fuel load, a fine target for lightning strikes, increasing the chance of wildfire, hopefully clearing the way for  new bamboo.

Photo:  Casey Yee

But both theories have been disputed, the predator satiation theory does not account for the flowering cycle being 10 times longer than the life of the rodents. The fire cycle theory is considered to be wrong by some scientists because of a lack of precedent for anything using something unpredictable like lightning to increase its chance of survival.

Source: Flowering Bamboo

Lego Forest

It's not photoshop these are all real

The locals of Broken Hill woke up to this amazing site

There are 15 sets of  ‘pine’ trees and flowers

 They have been recreated to a 1:1 ratio of the original pieces, but made to be 66 times bigger

 Surreal isn't it?

It's all part of Lego's Festival of play celebrating 50 years of Lego in Australia

More about Broken Hill, Source Lego Festival

Firework colour

Ever wondered what gives a firework it's colour? well now you can find out

The Works has posted this chart on there Facebook page to help you identify what makes it that colour.

More about The Works