AMAZING RAINBOW PLACES TO VISIT NOW

There are 2 particular places on Earth that seem like they are beautiful illusions, when, in fact, their alien-like dramatic color profiles come from very real, scientifically explainable causes. Check them out below.

GRAND PRISMATIC SPRING -- YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

While photos of the Grand Prismatic Spring, in Yellowstone National Park, look like they must have been Photoshopped or otherwise manipulated, what seems like an illusion, is real. The intense colors of this unique body of water are produced by different organisms, including cyanobacteria.

This thermal spring, officially described, and named, by the Hayden Expedition in 1871, its leader, Ferdinand Hayden, wrote:

“Nothing ever conceived by human art could equal the peculiar vividness and delicacy of color of these remarkable prismatic springs. Life becomes a privilege and a blessing after one has seen and thoroughly felt these incomparable types of nature's cunning skill.”

Hot springs form when water, heated by the Earth’s core, bubbles up through the surface. In the Grand Prismatic Spring, extremely hot water flows from its middle and cools as it spreads across the spring’s 370-foot surface.

At the center, water temperatures can reach 189°F, which is too hot to sustain much life, so the water appears very clear blue.

As the water spreads out and cools, it creates concentric circles of different temperatures, each of which sustains its own unique type of cyanobacteria -- each with its own unique color. In fact, the bacteria survive with the help of photosynthetic pigments, such as chlorophyll and carotenoids, that yield a spectrum from from red, to orange, yellow, and green.

For example, the first ring outside the middle of the spring gets its pale yellow shade from synechococcus bacteria’s reliance on beta-carotene for survival.