![]() The sun not only makes the veggies bigger, it makes them sweeter. Up to 20 hours a day of sunlight creates vegetables straight out of a mad scientist’s lab: a 138-pound cabbage, a 35-pound broccoli, a 42-pound beet, a carrot as tall as a grown man and a one-ton-plus pumpkin. Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesĪlaska’s barely-setting summer sun may mean insomnia for humans, but it’s got major benefits for things that photosynthesize. Ginormous VegetablesĪ giant pumpkin at the Alaska State Fair in 2010 weighed in at 1,101 pounds. “So if you are moving, they appear to be chasing the sun, like dogs might.”īecause sundogs are more likely to appear when the sun is low, sunrise and sunset on frigid days are the best times to spot these glowing pups. “They’re called sundogs because they’re always 22 degrees from the sun,” Rector says. Sometimes they’re white or gold, other times they have a near-rainbow spectrum. On cold days when the sun is low on the horizon, ice crystals in the atmosphere refract light to create bright spots on either side of the sun. Their scientific name is parhelia, but sundogs just has a flashier ring to it. “As it narrows it squeezes the water into a smaller area, causing the bore tide to get quite high.”īeluga Point, south of Anchorage on the Seward Highway, is a prime bore-watching spot. “Another factor is that the opening to the Turnagain Arm is quite wide, and then it narrows to a point,” Rector says. It’s still draining when the water rushes back in at the next high tide. Because the arm is so long, it takes hours for the water to drain out at low tide. ![]() The Turnagain Arm’s impressive tidal bore has to do with the shape and length of the waterway, says Travis Rector, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Alaska Anchorage. It causes an inland wave as high as 12 feet, more than big enough to hang ten. Twice a day, Alaska’s Turnagain Arm waterway experiences a bore tide, when outgoing water slams against the tide coming in from the ocean. Here’s something you don’t often find in the lower 48: Surfers on a river. Jessica Dake/Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest From the tidal bore of Turnagain Arm to the gleaming “sundogs” that appear on the coldest days, here’s a guide to the state’s once-in-a-while wonders. The state is also home to some of the wildest natural phenomena in the world. More coastline than all other 49 states combined. Summers lush with wildflowers and blackberries. intelligence agencies have sought to make public more information about unidentified flying objects and data from reported incidents.Alaska is a place of extremes. airspace as a result of us not necessarily knowing what is in our skies at a given time," Evans said Wednesday in a news briefing.Įvans also noted that the definition of UAPs, as they are referred to in government parlance, was recently expanded: Rather than only covering "unidentified aerial phenomena," the designation now refers to "unidentified anomalous phenomena" in order to include mysterious undersea encounters and strange sightings in the outermost parts of the planet's atmosphere - a region known as "near space."ĭebates over potential UFO sightings have garnered increased attention in recent years, particularly as Congress and U.S. "There could potentially be very serious risks to U.S. ![]() While extraterrestrial origins are not being ruled out, the independent group was convened to address broader national security concerns, he said. Daniel Evans, the assistant deputy associate administrator for research in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said there has been no convincing evidence that reports of UFOs have anything to do with aliens.
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