The Searles Lake basin, deep within California’s desert conservation area, is a dry lake bed featuring more than 500 rock spires known as the Trona Pinnacles.

The pinnacles are formed from a rock-like substance known as “tufa”, a calcium carbonate deposit laid down by springs that used to rise up from beneath the lake. The pinnacles are anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years old and reach up to 42 m above the lake bed.

You’ve probably seen the Trona Pinnacles before without realising it – this otherworldly landscape has been used in numerous sci-fi films including Star Trek V, Planet of the Apes and Lost In Space, and it’s the location for about about 30 new film projects every year!

View ground level images from Lost In Space and the Planet of the Apes remake and there’s more info on Wikipedia.

Thanks to Jeff Alu & Jason Wolfe

Off the west coast of the Isle of Wight, England, stand the unmistakable white chalk stacks known as The Needles.

Whilst there’s not a lot needle-like about them anymore (photo), The Needles were originally named for an actually needle-shaped rock known as ‘Lot’s Wife’, which stood nearly 37 metres tall – here’s a drawing of how it might have looked. When the precarious chalk stack inevitably collapsed into the sea in 1764, the resulting crash was said to have been heard from many miles away.

Other than the needles themselves, we can still see the lighthouse (photo) which has stood at the western end of The Needles since 1859, and overlooking the formation on the cliffs is the Needles Old Battery a military installation built between 1861 and 1863 as part of the previously featured Palmerston follies.

The battery was initially equipped with 7 inch Armstrong RBLs which were later replaced with 9 inch RMLs (two of which can still be seen today), which took a team of 9 men to load and fire! These were eventually moved further up the cliff, as the concussion from firing them actually caused the chalk cliffs to crumble.

Today, the battery is apparently home to the best tearoom on the island! You’ve just got to love England.

Thanks to andrea and Dee.

We get lots of submissions from people who claim to be able to see faces, animals or even aliens in the natural landscapes of Google Earth, but often the images are so open to interpretation that we unfortunately can’t see what it is that our readers are seeing.

On the other hand, when we’re sent something that’s clearly recognisable, in virtually every case the sight has been man made. So when we received this submission that bears an undeniable¹ resemblance to the profile of a face in a field in Ohio, we initially assumed this was the work of a particularly adventurous crop-circle artist.

On closer inspection however, this face might not be so obviously man-made. Are the “eyes” actually islands of trees? Is the “mouth” just a naturally darker patch of ground? And yet, the “chin” must surely have been created by a trail left by a tractor, right?

So whilst it’s possible that a farmer was getting creative, we think the most likely explanation is that this is just a particularly freaky combination of natural formation and man’s influence, which is playing on our natural predilection to assign meaning wherever we look.

Still, it does look an awful lot like a face.

Thanks to Jennifer.

It’s that time of year again: December has sneaked up on us, Christmas is on its way and we’re now definitely into winter time.

But as climate chaos threatens our future, it also reduces the possibility of a White Christmas each year. Desperate to see some snow we have to head south to Brabant Island in Antarctica, where we find this fantastic snowball.

The snowball is about 6m wide and appears to be a natural occurrence, having recently rolled off the hills to the north. That would make a great snowman…

Also to get you in the Christmas spirit, Google have announced that in conjunction with NORAD (that’s the North American Aerospace Defence Command) they will be tracking Santa around the globe using Google Earth.

You can bookmark the page now in preparation for Christmas Eve.

Thanks: Micradott and Google LatLong

The equator, or latitude 0, separates the northern and southern hemispheres of the globe. Defined as the middle point of the two geographic poles, there’s no way anyone could argue about its location.

However the meridian – longitude 0 – has no scientific definition so could basically be anywhere you like on the planet.

The most widely accepted meridian was defined at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. However, even here the meridian has shifted about a bit.

18th century astronomer James Bradley’s meridian is still shown on UK maps today, but has otherwise mostly been forgotten. The much more famous meridian, which is now used as the base point for all the world’s time zones, was defined by George Airy.

Airy’s prime meridian was chosen using the very scientific system of setting up his equipment in the observatory as close as possible to Bradley’s equipment, but without getting in the way!

Two miles directly north of Greenwich, on the banks of the River Thames, Airy’s meridian is marked out by a line of trees.

Also just to the north of Greenwich is a millennium sundial, which is a few metres off the meridian. Purportedly this was a construction error and the clock will always be wrong by about 8 minutes!

If you were to take your satnav device along to the observatory at Greenwich, or just set longitude to 0 in Google Earth, you’ll find yourself outside the observatory at this seemingly insignificant point, 102.5 metres east of the prime meridian.

That’s because Google Earth, and your satnav, use the International Reference Meridian, which was defined much later by observing stars from many different countries.

So readers, if you were defining a new meridian, where on the globe would you put it?

More information on the prime meridian, the world geodetic system, how it’s used in Google Earth and the prime meridian at Wikipedia.

Thanks to LionelB, Reagan Blundell, Sly Golovanov, Frank Taylor & Roy G. Ovrebo.