Mysterious and beautiful planet The earth holds many secrets. Our planet is believed to have formed about 4.54 billion years ago from a large cloud of interstellar dust and gas.

Planet Earth is the only known to man on this moment an object in the Universe inhabited by living organisms. The earth is home to millions various types living beings, including humans. Science currently cannot give an unambiguous answer about the existence of life on other planets.

It is possible that we will never reveal all the secrets of our and other planets. But there are places on Earth that would definitely appeal to the inhabitants of other worlds.

See unearthly landscapes of our amazing planet.

9 PHOTOS

1. Shark Bay in Western Australia.

85% of the entire history of existence of planet Earth was inhabited only by microbes. The only evidence of this is the products of the activity of cyanobacteria - stromatolites. Stromatolites are most often found in extremely saline waters. And living specimens that have survived to this day can be found in Shark Bay.

2. Shark Bay is listed due to its unique ecosystem. world heritage UNESCO.
3. Yellowstone national park.

What makes the color of the water in this hot spring so beautiful? Life, that's what!
Water takes on this unusual color under the influence of extremophiles. These are living beings that need to live extreme conditions environment or that are well adapted to it.

4. Lassen Volcanic National Park in California.

Hell on Earth or Bumpass Hell is a hydrothermal site whose groundwater is heated by hot magma to very high temperatures. high temperatures. Despite this, some microorganisms live in water. The Spirit rover has discovered minerals on Mars that indicate the red planet had the same hydrothermal environment as Bumpass Hell.

5. River Tinto in southwest Spain.

The increased acidity of the waters and the high content of iron oxides in it gave the river such an unearthly, Martian appearance. For most organisms, such an environment is lethal, but the river is inhabited by living microorganisms - extremophiles, including algae and fungi.

6. Lake Simba is located at an altitude of 5872 m in the Chilean Andes.

Volcanic lakes still remain the most mysterious objects on the ground. The red color of the lake is given by algae floating close to the surface of the water. They contain special pigments to protect against high ultraviolet radiation. Scientists believe that similar lakes existed on Mars 3.5 billion years ago.

7. Mono Lake in California.

The water in it is 2-3 times saltier than in the ocean, and the high content of calcium carbonate gives the lake a mystical, otherworldly appearance.

8. Glacier on Ellesmere Island in Canada.

The water that flows from the top of the glacier is like a chemical mixture with a high sulfur content. However, living microorganisms were also found in it. Astrobiologists use studies of these glaciers to study potential life on the moons of Jupiter.

9. Underwater cave or “blue hole” on Bahamas.

It is believed that for more than a billion years, the Earth's oceans did not contain oxygen. In sea rocks that are billions of years old, fossil remains of purple bacteria have been preserved, which during the process of photosynthesis produce not oxygen, like modern plants, but sulfur. Currently, astrobiologists are studying these bacteria.

Phantasmagoric views of salt marshes, deserts and islands... All these amazing photographs are not at all the scenery for science fiction films or photographs of the surface of other planets. All these are unearthly landscapes of our blue ball, planet Earth.

(Total 21 photos)

1. The expanses of the Salar de Yuni salt marsh in.

World's largest by time wet season reflects the sky like a huge mirror. And during the winter months, when the weather is dry, the surface of the salt marsh becomes like a mosaic. (Photographer: Sergio Pessolano)

2. “Fairy Fireplaces” in Cappadocia, Türkiye. These rock formations dominate the rest of the landscape in an area located between the villages of Cavusin and Zelve. (Photographer: Timothy Neesam)

3. Contrary to the common misconception that the desert is monotonous, in fact the desert can be either black or white. In the photo: White Desert in Egypt. (Photographer: tronics)

4. “Chocolate Hills” on the island of Bohol, Philippines. The central areas of Bohol Island are dotted with 1,700 natural mounds. The vegetation covering these hills takes on a "chocolate" color during the dry season. (Photographer: Lemuel Montejo)

5. Reflections of sunlight on the surface of the Salar de Yuni salt marsh, Bolivia. The Salar de Juni, the largest salt marsh in the world, is covered with a layer of water during the rainy season that reflects the sky. (Photographer: Luca Galuzzi)

6. Bird's eye view of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is an endorheic salt lake between Israel and Jordan. The most low point on the surface of the planet, the deepest salt Lake in the world, the waters of this lake are saltier than the ocean... The list of distinctive features of this reservoir can be continued for a long time. (Photographer:Pennina Neumann)

7. Four corners, English. Four Corners is a region of the United States covering southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. The name is associated with the Four Corners Monument, located at the intersection of the borders of all 4 states (the only such border crossing in the United States). (Photographer:gregmote)

8. Black Desert in Egypt. (Photographer:Gekko82)

9. Sunset over the Alvord Playa desert in southeastern Oregon. It's quite unexpected to come across a desert in these parts, on the northwest Pacific coast. In the Alvord Playa desert, which is the bottom dry lake, on average there is only 180 mm of precipitation per year. (Photographer: rasone)

10. Stopover. Sahara Desert in Tunisia. (Photographer: andzer)

11. Windy shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya. This lake is located in the East African Rift Valley. Its salty waters form the world's largest lake located in the desert. (Photographer: Yannick Garcin)

12. “Twin Towers” ​​in Monument Valley, USA. (Photographer: Wolfgang Staudt)

13. Red sand dunes of the Namib Desert, Namibia. Sands of such an unusually red color as in the Namib Desert are rarely seen in nature. (Photographer: Brian Preen)

14. Richat structure, located near Ouadan, Mauritania. This photo was taken from space. The Richat structure is a ring formation 50 km in diameter and is located in the center of the featureless Sahara Desert. (Photographer: trodel_wiki/NASA)

15. Dragon tree (dragon's blood), growing on the island of Socotra. Due to its isolated position in the waters Indian Ocean, a unique ecosystem has formed on the island that you will not find anywhere else in the world. (Photographer: Sotti)

16. Ledges formed by hardened lava are washed by ocean waves off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. Coastal ledges formed by hardened lava give the landscapes of this Hawaiian island an otherworldly appearance. (Photographer:PatrickSmithPhotography)

17. Blue Lake and mountain peaks of Torres del Paine National Park, Chile. Exactly this unusual place from the list of "8 Wonders of Chile". Mountain peaks located on the territory of this park face the blue sky. (Photographer: winkyintheuk)

18. Fly Geyser in the Black Desert, Nevada, USA. The Black Desert is more widely known as the site of the Burning Man festival. (Photographer: Stephen Oachs)

21. Iceberg in the dark waters of the Southern Ocean, off the coast of Antarctica. (Photographer: winkyintheuk)

The modern viewer is quite sophisticated when it comes to scenery for science fiction films - but even about 30 years ago people looked with rapture at the spray-painted blue jungles of other worlds or inhabited by stuffed monsters sand quarries, shot through color filters. Today, directors give preference to natural filming with subsequent digital processing - fortunately, both the diversity of the planet’s landscapes and the level of graphic editors allow this. And we will take a trip to those wonders of nature that are immortalized in several famous science fiction films.

Avatar - part 1

After watching James Cameron's Avatar, many people, shocked by the beauty of the planet Pandora, began to dream of visiting “fairytale places.” Of course, you can only meet unearthly jungles on the screen, but it is quite possible to get closer to their prototypes in real life. Forests inhabited by the Navi people were filmed in nature reserves and national parks in different parts of the world - on Borneo island, Costa Rica, in the rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon. Of course, there are no stunning phosphorescent flowers there, but still nature is truly magnificent, and will give unforgettable experience tourists.

The most popular place among fans of the film is Pandora’s “Floating Mountains,” where the pilot Trudy flew in the clouds through the UPC (“watch where you’re going”). They were filmed on the quartz rocks of Wulingyuan in national park Zhangjiajie (China, Hunan Province). These incredible geological formations are about 800 meters high, and the most high peaks Wulingyuan reaches 3000 meters above sea level. And they really “float” when the fog rises above the tropical forests at their feet. However, in Avatar, computer graphics were added to show that the rocks were simply suspended in the air.

The largest stone pillars, covered with centuries-old pine trees, received names in the traditional Chinese spirit: “Rabbit Looking at the Moon”, “Abode of the Gods”, etc. This geological reserve is both a botanical garden and a natural zoo, and there is also an extensive network of caves, powerful deep rivers and waterfalls. Stunning landscapes open up from the peaks, so not a single person has yet regretted their trip to Wulingyuan.

Avatar – part 2

As you know, work on the next part of the already legendary film is in full swing (and we expect the fruits of this work by 2014). James Cameron decided that the action would take place in the depths of the waters of Pandora, and for realistic filming he chose not just anything but Mariana Trench. The director’s passion for deep-sea diving has been pursuing him for a very long time: he has already filmed the psychedelic science fiction film “The Abyss” (1989) underwater, and in addition, one cannot help but recall the sunken “Titanic”. Australian engineers, on his instructions, installed a deep-sea vehicle with special 3D cameras designed personally by the famous director, so the quality of the video material promises to be impeccable.

By the way, the passengers-scientists of the Trieste apparatus descended to Cameron into the deepest depression of the World Ocean only once - in May 1960, passengers-scientists of the Trieste apparatus descended to a depth of 11,000 meters, and stayed there for only about a third of an hour. Cameron said that he would populate the Pandorian Ocean with incredible creatures, as realistic as anything we saw in the first part of the blockbuster. And, what’s even nicer, on the initiative of the director, profits from the film go to protect the environment, restore tropical forests and other large-scale eco-actions.

Star Wars

“Episode One: The Phantom Menace” is remembered by many: it was the best science fiction of the turn of the millennium (1999), captivating the public with high-speed races on flying cars, from which young Skywalker emerged victorious. According to the plot, the action takes place on Anaken’s home planet – hot and deserted Tatooine.

The filming of this fragment of the film, as it turned out, took place in the Snake Canyon (Tunisia), which is included in the mandatory program of local excursions. Also in the film, during the competition, the Atlas Mountains flash in the background, albeit also in computer processing.

The one-story clay town on Tatooine, where the Skywalkers and their slave owner lived, is also not a studio filming: the scenery there was specially preserved for fans of the film who come to see the living legend with their own eyes. Some scenes were also filmed on the island of Djerba, and two local towns gave names to the story planets. Star Wars» - Tatooine and Naboo (Nabyul). The older, previously released parts of the film were also partially filmed in Tunisia - in the 1500-year-old Berber cave city of Matmata, on the El Djerid salt flat, on the oasis in the city of Nefta. The rebel base from Episode 4 was filmed in the 2,500-year-old Mayan ruins of Tikal (northern Guatemala).

Travel to Mars

Generally speaking, there are many science fiction films about Mars, and everything can be divided into two groups: those that were filmed through red filters, making the actors look like boiled crayfish, and those that were filmed naturally. Where on Earth does the Martian landscape come from?

It turns out that we have something like that! We're talking about rare reds. sand dunes Namib Desert in Namibia. The name from the local dialect translates as “There is nothing” - and indeed, this area has not seen rain since the time of dinosaurs.

But here you can meet Bushmen with children - they look like aliens, and are accompanied by tamed wild cats - cheetahs, lions and caracals.

Superman

... And also all his numerous remakes (which can be watched without tears of emotion and sarcasm) contain one key point: an ice fortress, a copy of the palaces of the planet Krypton.

It turns out that in Mexico there is a cave of crystals called Cueva de los Cristales, consisting of the world's largest 11-meter ice “rods”, converging to form domes and walls. The unique microclimatic conditions of the cave formed these giant crystals over many millennia. Of course, filming never took place here - however, it was this cave that served as the prototype for the pavilion layouts, so this attraction is often visited by fans of the red-and-blue superhero.