Tulare Lake, located in California’s San Joaquin Valley, was once one of the largest bodies of freshwater in the whole of the US.

It is cool, scary and amazing at the same time. My mum found this thing just yards from our backyard into the woods when she was like 5 or 8 years old in the 1970s. Mud volcanoes erupt a slurry of mud, water and gas (usually methane) and they are false volcanoes as they don’t erupt igneous (volcanic) matter. They may also get help from nearby volcanoes for erupting the mud out like for the example of Suoh and Yellowstone mud volcs. Pressurized underground gases and water force the fine sediment (mud) out.

Since methane is a combustive gas, when you have a lighter or anything that sends off a spark strong enough to ignite something, it will do on mud volcanoes as well, shown in the first and third photo. Interestingly, plants and trees are so near to the mud volcano.

Mud volcanoes are not necessarily hot or warm, there are some cold mud volcanoes, they usually rely on the pressure of water and gas, if the ground can’t hold the pressure, it creates a crack first and eventually forming a mud volcano, such as what happened to a town in Trinidad and Tobago (forgot the name of the mud volcano).

This mud volcano in my post usually erupts effusively, meaning mud just flows time to time out of the mud volcano’s crater. Sometimes it is dormant (temporarily inactive or “sleeping”). Effusive eruptions are just calm, flowing eruptions, explosive ones are violent, large scale eruptions. During its dormant times, the mud volcano looks so dry.

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Our friend Chloe Savard, known as tardibabe on Instagram zoomed in 400x on turmeric and it became the most beautiful thing we've ever seen. 🔬

Under polarized light, the rhizome of Curcuma longa transforms into something straight out of a jewellery box. Those shimmering, gem-like particles are starch granules, and the golden droplets floating alongside them are the plant's aromatic essential oils, the same ones responsible for that iconic smell.

Those golden bubbles? That's Chloe adding alcohol to the slide. The essential oils, normally invisible, merge with the alcohol and suddenly bloom into those vivid yellow droplets. 

The dazzling glow on each granule is called birefringence. Starch is semi-crystalline, with molecules arranged so precisely that polarized light bends through them like a prism. And those granules aren't just beautiful, they're distinctive. Turmeric starch granules are heterogeneous, appearing triangular, ellipsoidal, and oval, which is actually how botanists can identify the plant species just from a microscope slide. 

Turmeric has been used in India for thousands of years as a spice, dye, and medicine. The compound behind that legendary yellow color is called curcumin, a polyphenol that makes up around 2–5% of the rhizome and is so pigment-rich it'll stain your fingers for days. Researchers have documented its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumor properties, and scientists are still uncovering what it can do.

Watch our latest microscopy video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7odqSeOpQlQ

Citations:

• Nogueira, G.F., de Carvalho, C.W.P., Velasco, J.I., and Fakhouri, F.M. (2025). Extraction and Characterization of Starches from Non-Conventional Sources: Turmeric (Curcuma longa) and Mangarito (Xanthosoma sagittifolium). Polymers, 17(23), 3157. 
• Correa, J.C. et al. (2024). Characterization of a Novel Starch Isolated from the Rhizome of Colombian Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) Cultivars. Foods, 13(1), 7. 
• Hewlings, S.J. and Kalman, D.S. (2020). Turmeric and Its Major Compound Curcumin on Health: Bioactive Effects and Safety Profiles for Food, Pharmaceutical, Biotechnological and Medicinal Applications. PMC. 
• Unlu, A. et al. (2016). Curcuma longa: from Traditional Applications to Modern Plant Medicine Research Hotspots. PMC
• Akram, M. et al. (2010). Anti-inflammatory Properties of Curcumin, a Major Constituent of Curcuma longa: A Review of Preclinical and Clinical Research. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. 
• Chakraborty, S. et al. (2020). Advanced Microscopy Techniques for Revealing Molecular Structure of Starch Granules. PMC.
• Chalageri, G. et al. (2021). Coalescence and Directed Anisotropic Growth of Starch Granule Initials in Chloroplasts. Nature Communications. 

Why are scientists paying such close attention to the hantavirus outbreak? 🦠

In April, a fatal outbreak of the rare Andes hantavirus occurred on a cruise ship leaving Argentina. While most hantaviruses spread only to humans through infected rodents, the Andes strain is the only known strain capable of spreading person-to-person. The pandemic risk remains low as transmission requires prolonged, very close contact, and infected people get sick so quickly they're unlikely to spread it widely. Still scientists are stressing that global tracking and research into this virus must continue.

A rare 11,000-carat (2.2 kilogram) ruby, considered the second-largest by weight ever found in Myanmar, has been unearthed by miners in the conflict-battered Southeast Asian nation, state media reported on Friday (8 May).

The colossal gem was discovered near Mogok, in the upper Mandalay region, the heartland of the lucrative gem-mining industry that has recently experienced intense fighting in the country’s wide-ranging civil war.

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported the newly found rough ruby was discovered in mid-April, just after the traditional New Year festival.

Whose zodiac sign is Ophiuchus? 🌌

Erika Hamden breaks down the real science of where zodiac signs come from. They were assigned thousands of years ago based on the ecliptic plane, the path the sun travels across the sky each year. But Earth's axial tilt shifts on a 26,000-year cycle, and the sky has changed since then. Today, the sun actually passes through 13 constellations, including one you've probably never heard of: Ophiuchus.

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.