The Monitor Daily

Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Log in

As a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, this site may earn from qualifying purchases. We may also earn commissions on purchases from other retail websites.

  • Home
  • Politics & National News
  • Business News
  • Tech & Science
  • Health & Lifestyle
  • About us
    • Contact US
    • Privacy Policy GDPR
    • Terms of Use
  • Latest News
    • Stormy Planet
    • US Surgeon Performs Face Transplant
    • 2017 MTV VMAs Nominations Are In And Voting Is Now Open
    • Bright House: Free McAfee AntiVirus and Adult Controls
    • Antarctic Yeti Crab Gets Formal Scientific Name
    • Spiders Take Over Australian Town
    • Interesting Facts About the Apollo 11 Mission
    • Social Smoking or The New Landmark of Elegance Among Young Women
    • Rare Weasel Returns To Washington State

Pages

  • About The Monitor Daily
  • Contact US
  • Our Team
  • Privacy Policy GDPR
  • Terms of Use

Recent Posts

  • Precisely what is Administration Buyback? Feb 12, 2020
  • Precisely what is Administration Buyback? Feb 12, 2020
  • Where by do Registered requests get kept Dec 1, 2019
  • Find a Star of the event on the Submit Purchase New bride List May 19, 2019
  • Locate Really enjoy On the internet Apr 30, 2019
  • Get Love On the net Apr 12, 2019
  • NYC Man Snaps Photo of the Victim After Sucker-Punching Him in Broad Daylight Jun 29, 2018

Mystery of the African Fairy Circles Was Finally Solved

By Leave a Comment

"fairy circle"

Namibian fairy circle

With all the technological progress we’ve made in the last couple of centuries, we’d think it’s safe to assume that we know pretty much everything going on with our planet. But that’s totally not the case – we’ve most likely found the answer to not even half of the observable natural occurrences.

One example of this is related to fairy rings, mysterious bald spots occasionally popping in Namibian grasslands. Thought for a long time to be a hoax similar to crop circles, the mystery of the African fairy circles was finally solved after they appeared in Australia. The exact cause behind them is still mostly a mystery, but the process through which they are formed was finally understood.

Up until recently, the strange circles were only known to appear in Africa. They are random patches of naturally missing grass, sometimes even presenting a six-sided honeycomb shape. Expectedly, this has fascinated scientists for decades, as the strange pattern couldn’t be seen anywhere else in the world, and there was no explanation for it.

However, as some of these fairy circles randomly and all of a sudden popped up in the Australian outback, researchers finally managed to get to the bottom of this so far unsolved mystery. It turns out that the grass is growing in those patterns voluntarily.

According to the team of scientists from the Leipzig, Germany Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, particularly Stephan Getzin, the lead researcher in the study,

The interesting thing about fairy circles is that they are spread with great regularity and homogeneity, even over vast areas, but they occur only within a narrow rainfall belt.

Because of this, researchers were led to believe that the circles were caused by the plants’ attempt to grow in a way that would ensure they’d be able to deal with the dry environment in which they live. But if that’s the case, that would mean that the circles that freshly popped up in Australia are the same as those in Africa.

Despite the completely different types of soils, both acting differently, in the two countries, it turns out that the process the grass is going through is actually the same. The researchers still aren’t sure why two types of grass in two types of environments, growing in two different types of soil are growing in strangely identical patterns, but they’re sure it has to do with the grass coping with the dryness.

According to Getzin,

The details of this mechanism are different to that in Australia. But it produces the same vegetation pattern because both systems of gaps are triggered by the same instability.

Image source: Wikimedia

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Tech & Science

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 34 other subscribers

Operation Paperclip

Remembering Georg von Tiesenhausen, Last Member of Von Braun’s Rocket Team

By Leave a Comment

giant ground sloths on white background

It Seems that Giant Sloths Once Roamed Earth, and Humans Used to Hunt Them? (Study)

By Leave a Comment

sn 2001ig supernova explosion and images of its stars

A Star Escaped a Supernova Explosion, and NASA Snapped its Picture

By Leave a Comment

ngc 6420 galaxy resembling a giant butterfly

Hubble Spots Giant Butterfly Formed by a Black Hole and Stellar Winds (Study)

By Leave a Comment

infrared image of a dog

Space Technology Could Help Protect Earth’s Endangered Species

By Leave a Comment

snake slithering on a beige background

Kirigami Skin Is Helping a Soft Robot Slither Like a Snake (Study)

By Leave a Comment

woolly mammoth

Ice Age Tracks Reveal How Young Mammoths Cared for Adult Ones (Study)

By Leave a Comment

High Priestess tomb.

Archaeologists Discovered 4400-Years-Old High Priestess Tomb Near Cairo

By Leave a Comment

dwarf galaxies

Dwarf Galaxies Challenge the Entire Dark Matter Cosmology (Study)

By Leave a Comment

NASA Scientists and Food Experiments

NASA Scientists to Test if Astronauts Could Eat Their Own Poo

By Leave a Comment

KFC Smoky Wings Box Can Turn into Awesome Drone

By Leave a Comment

Tesla Model S

Tesla Model S Involved in Autopilot Malfunction Accident

By Leave a Comment

Duke Nukem.

John Cena Cold Feature in Duke Nukem Movie

By Leave a Comment

Battlefield One

Battlefield One Apocalypse DLC to Land in February

By Leave a Comment

Related Articles

  • Operation Paperclip

    Remembering Georg von Tiesenhausen, Last Member of Von Braun’s Rocket Team

  • giant ground sloths on white background

    It Seems that Giant Sloths Once Roamed Earth, and Humans Used to Hunt Them? (Study)

  • sn 2001ig supernova explosion and images of its stars

    A Star Escaped a Supernova Explosion, and NASA Snapped its Picture

  • ngc 6420 galaxy resembling a giant butterfly

    Hubble Spots Giant Butterfly Formed by a Black Hole and Stellar Winds (Study)

  • infrared image of a dog

    Space Technology Could Help Protect Earth’s Endangered Species

  • snake slithering on a beige background

    Kirigami Skin Is Helping a Soft Robot Slither Like a Snake (Study)

  • woolly mammoth

    Ice Age Tracks Reveal How Young Mammoths Cared for Adult Ones (Study)

  • High Priestess tomb.

    Archaeologists Discovered 4400-Years-Old High Priestess Tomb Near Cairo

  • dwarf galaxies

    Dwarf Galaxies Challenge the Entire Dark Matter Cosmology (Study)

  • NASA Scientists and Food Experiments

    NASA Scientists to Test if Astronauts Could Eat Their Own Poo

Categories

  • Business News
  • Entertainment
  • Featured
  • Health & Lifestyle
  • Nature
  • Politics & National
  • Sports
  • Tech & Science
  • US
  • World

Copyright © 2021 TheMonitorDaily.com

About · Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Sitemap · Contact

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more.