![]() ![]() No matter where this fall season takes you, there are plenty of fall foliage and pumpkin patches to keep you busy too. From Indiana’s Exploration Acres (which has four mazes built over 20 acres of farmland) to the Great Vermont Corn Maze (New England’s largest corn maze), or even Connecticut’s Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm (an especially kid-friendly destination), these labyrinths are suited for family outings and adult exploration alike. We’ve rounded up the coolest corn mazes across the country, each of which earns its place in the sun for anything from intricate designs to spooky Halloween happenings. Thankfully though, the best and biggest corn mazes in America are less Stephen King and more Mark Twain. The thought of getting lost in a multi-acre labyrinth, surrounded by 10-foot-plus corn stalks, facing miles of winding paths and the prospect that you might be lost forever. Happy algae translates to more oxygen and other benefits for the coral.There's a reason why movies like Children of the Corn, The Shining and even Signs still scare the heebee-jeebies out of us, even after multiple rewatches. Instead, the researchers believe that the pigments help make more light for their symbiotic algae, which need it for photosynthesis. This, combined with the general lack of sunlight at these depths, means that these pigments weren't acting as a sunscreen. ( Watch: Go beneath the waves and see coral reefs in living color.) Interestingly, Wiedenmann also discovered that the corals could produce these pigments in the absence of any light at all. When Wiedenmann illuminated the corals with blue or ultraviolet light-mimicking what's found in the ocean depths-he found that they could also glow red or green. After photographing them in their natural environment, Wiedenmann packed samples of 16 different species of coral into plastic bags and brought them back to his lab in England for further study. ![]() The researchers found that some of the corals at these depths glowed an intense green or orange. (Also see " As Oceans Heat Up, a Race to Save World's Coral Reefs.") The few lightwaves that do make it this far are almost all in the blue range, the other colors having scattered. Īt these depths, very little sunlight reaches corals. In 2014, Wiedenmann teamed up with Israel's Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences to study mesophotic reefs-or those reefs that are between 100 feet (30 meters) to more than 330 feet (100 meters) deep-near Eilat, Israel (map). Which begs the question: Why were the Red Sea corals so colorful? Rainbow Bright Though these pigments are well studied, scientists hadn't looked much at fluorescence in deeper dwelling corals, since they're not as exposed to sunlight. The sun's intense rays, which can sunburn swimmers and divers that flock to these reefs, cause similar damage to coral and zooxanthellae, the symbiotic algae that lives inside coral.Īlthough bright sunlight at shallow depths can make the pigments hard to see with the naked eye, they can be visible if the coral makes lots of them, says Wiedenmann, who led a new study on the corals published June 24 in PLOS ONE. ( See more stunning coral pictures.)Ĭorals generally get their glow from fluorescent pigments that act as sunblock. Wiedenmann was especially amazed because the shallow-water corals on the same reef only give off a green color. "I was indeed surprised to find such a great color diversity at these greater depths," said Jörg Wiedenmann, a marine biologist at the U.K.'s University of Southampton. Deep beneath the surface of the Red Sea, a rainbow of glowing corals have been discovered that's unlike anything scientists have ever seen. ![]()
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