An impact crater is a depression in the surface of a planet, moon, or other solid body in the Solar System or elsewhere, formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller body. In contrast to volcanic craters, which result from explosion or internal collapse, impact craters typically have raised rims and floors that are lower in elevation than the surrounding terrain. Lunar impact craters range from microscopic craters on lunar rocks returned by the Apollo Program and small, simple, bowl-shaped depressions in the lunar regolith to large, complex, multi-ringed impact basins. Meteor Crater is a well-known example of a small impact crater on Earth.
The Taj Mahal, is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. The tomb is the centrepiece of a 17-hectare (42-acre) complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, and now commonly called the Genbaku Dome, Atomic Bomb Dome or A-Bomb Dome, is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The ruin of the hall serves as a memorial to the over 140,000 people who were killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. It is permanently kept in a state of arrested ruin as a reminder of the destructive effects of nuclear warfare.
The Witwatersrand is a 56-kilometre-long (35 mi), north-facing scarp in South Africa. It consists of a hard, erosion-resistant quartzite metamorphic rock, over which several north-flowing rivers form waterfalls, which account for the name Witwatersrand, meaning “white water ridge” in Afrikaans. This east-west-running scarp can be traced with only one short gap, from Bedfordview in the east, through Johannesburg and Roodepoort, to Krugersdorp in the west.
The Royal Exhibition Building is a World Heritage-listed building in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, built in 1879–1880 as part of the international exhibition movement, which presented over 50 exhibitions between 1851 and 1915 around the globe. The building sits on approximately 26 hectares, is 150 metres (490 ft) long and is surrounded by four city streets. It is at 9 Nicholson Street in the Carlton Gardens, flanked by Victoria, Carlton and Rathdowne Streets, at the north-eastern edge of the central business district. It was built to host the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880–81, and then hosted the even larger Centennial International Exhibition in 1888, and the formal opening of the first Parliament of Australia in 1901. The building is representative of the money and pride Victoria had in the 1870s. Throughout the 20th century smaller sections and wings of the building were subject to demolition and fire; however, the main building, known as the Great Hall, survived.
The Bazaar of Tabriz is a historical market situated in the city center of Tabriz, Iran. It is one of the oldest bazaars in the Middle East and the largest covered bazaar in the world. It is one of Iran's UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Iranian architecture or Persian architecture is the architecture of Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Its history dates back to at least 5,000 BC with characteristic examples distributed over a vast area from Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. Persian buildings vary from peasant huts to tea houses, and garden pavilions to "some of the most majestic structures the world has ever seen". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as the capital Tehran has brought about a wave of demolition and new construction.
Vredefort is a small farming town in the Free State province of South Africa with cattle, peanuts, sorghum, sunflowers and maize being farmed. It is home to 3,000 residents.
The Mausoleum of Khawaja Ahmed Yasawi is a mausoleum in the city of Turkestan, in southern Kazakhstan. The structure was commissioned in 1389 by Timur, who ruled the area as part of the expansive Timurid Empire, to replace a smaller 12th-century mausoleum of the famous Turkic poet and Sufi mystic, Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (1093–1166). However, construction was halted with the death of Timur in 1405.
The Orosirian Period is the third geologic period in the Paleoproterozoic Era and lasted from 2050 Mya to 1800 Mya. Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined chronometrically.
Konye-Urgench, also known as "Old Urgench" or Urganj, is a city of about 30,000 inhabitants in north Turkmenistan, just south from its border with Uzbekistan. It is the site of the ancient town of Gurgānj, which contains the ruins of the capital of Khwarazm. Its inhabitants deserted the town in the early eighteenth century in order to develop a new settlement, and Konye-Urgench has remained undisturbed ever since. In 2005, the ruins of Old Urgench were inscribed on the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites.
Abu Mena was a town, monastery complex and Christian pilgrimage centre in Late Antique Egypt, about 50 km (31 mi) southwest of Alexandria, near New Borg El Arab city. Its remains were designated a World Heritage Site in 1979 for the site's importance in early Christianity. There are very few standing remains, but the foundations of most major buildings, such as the great basilica, are easily discernible.
A dome is a feature in structural geology consisting of symmetrical anticlines that intersect each other at their respective apices. Intact, domes are distinct, rounded, spherical-to-ellipsoidal-shaped protrusions on the Earth's surface. However, a transect parallel to Earth's surface of a dome features concentric rings of strata. Consequently, if the top of a dome has been eroded flat, the resulting structure in plan view appears as a bullseye, with the youngest rock layers at the outside, and each ring growing progressively older moving inwards. These strata would have been horizontal at the time of deposition, then later deformed by the uplift associated with dome formation.
Pseudotachylyte or Pseudotachylite is a cohesive glassy or very fine-grained rock that occurs as veins and often contains inclusions of wall-rock fragments. Pseudotachylyte is typically dark in color; and is glassy in appearance. It was named after its appearance resembling the basaltic glass, tachylyte. Typically, the glass is completely devitrified into very fine-grained material with radial and concentric clusters of crystals. The glass may also contain crystals with quench textures that formed via crystallization from the melt. Chemical composition of pseudotachylyte generally reflects the local bulk chemistry. Pseudotachylyte may form via frictional melting of faults, in large-scale landslides, and by impact processes. Many researchers often define the rock as one formed via the melting. The original description/definition by Shand did not include interpretation about its generation, and it is suggested that there are pseudotachylytes formed via comminution without melting. Quartz in pseudotachylyte from the Vredefort impact site displays high residual stress as documented by synchrotron X-ray Laue microdiffraction.
South Africa is a tourist destination and the industry accounts for a substantial amount of the country's revenue. The official marketing agency for the country South African Tourism is responsible for marketing South Africa to the world. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, the tourism industry directly contributed ZAR 102 billion to South African GDP in 2012, and supports 10.3% of jobs in the country. The official national marketing agency of the South African government, with the goal of promoting tourism in South Africa both locally and globally is known as South African Tourism.
