If You’ve Never Seen The Sunset At Great Smoky Mountains National Park (located In Both North Carolina

Sand Tufas

You could be forgiven for thinking that the otherworldly rock formations in these pictures come from another planet, or from a sci-fi movie perhaps. But they’re actually called sand tufas and they come from right here on earth.

A tufa is a peculiar form of calcium carbonate, and they’re created when calcium-bearing freshwater springs well up through alkaline lake water (which is rich in carbonates). The carbonate and calcium combine and, over centuries, these elements form unusual spires, towering columns, and strange cauliflower-shaped mounds which can reach heights of up to nine metres (30ft). Tufas can only form underwater, and they’re only exposed when lakes are drained or dry out over many years. Check out this collection of pictures compiled by Bored Panda to see these curious formations for yourself.

Via + image credits

Playful Ravens by Mika Honkalinna

Wild cherry trees in Nara moutains, breathtaking pictures seen on

sagrada familia. gaudi’s magnificent, over the top, biomimetic fantasy spaceship

La Luna ✨🌖

Greenland by Dorthe Pedersen

via

Hidden Portraits: Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was an inventor, engineer, physicist and futurist. He arrived in the U.S. in 1884 and quickly catapulted his career by working with Thomas Edison, creating more than 700 patents and making major breakthroughs in modern alternating current (AC) electricity.

He’s featured in the Art with Watson series, Hidden Portraits. 15 artists teamed up with Watson to discover and illuminate the unknown essence of seven of history’s greatest thinkers using data. 

What Watson thinks: Watson’s analysis of Tesla’s works revealed a new side of the famed inventor – as an artist at heart.

About the artwork: The Artist Inside was inspired by Tesla’s conflicted, dual personas: the scientist and the artist. The mirrored cube represents Tesla’s mind, with the inner electric grid representing his fame as a well-known scientist. The generative art that come alive inside the cube speaks to Tesla’s lesser-known artistic side, uncovered with Watson.

Explore Tesla’s Hidden Portrait ->

Emerald City Comicon

Con is over and I’m finally back at home recuperating. Sorting through photos was a good way to keep myself occupied in line, but I’ve still got a few hundred more shots to weed through. So far my ECCC folder has about a thousand images in it so this may be a little while.

Photos to be posted include… Tyler Hoechlin Amanda Tapping Jewel Staite Marina Sirtis Anthony Mackie Clark Gregg Orlando Jones

…along with a few shots of our fantastic moderators for the weekend, Grant Imahara and Clare Kramer throughout these sets.

I’ll be putting everything up on flickr first, but will also be posting selected ones here, so keep an eye out!