A ghost heart is obtained by washing away all donor cells until you're left with a protein scaffold. This ghost heart is ready to be injected with a transplant recipient's stem cells so a new heart - one that won't be rejected - can be grown.

The ancient and mysterious 'Easter Island Heads' were carved from rock between A.D 1100 and 1500 by ancient Polynesians. Their traditional name is 'moai' but most people know them as the giant heads which is why it is often shocking when it's discovered they have bodies. "The reason people think they are [only] heads is there are about 150 statues buried up to the shoulders on the slope of a volcano, and these are the most famous, most beautiful and most photographed of all the Easter Island statues," Van Tilburg, who is also a fellow at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Life's Little Mysteries. 

These fluffy little creatures are baby flamingos, which may confusing to some as they are lacking their infamous pink color. Babies of this species are fed a bright red milk made from their parents' upper digestive tracts. As they grow up, they begin to develop their characteristic pink feathers. Adult flamingos feed on red and blue-green algae, which is filled with beta carotene, an organic chemical with a reddish-orange pigment. The digestive track system of flamingos extracts the pigment and it eventually dissolves into fats. These fats are deposited into new feathers for a full-on pretty in pink transformation.

In 1925 two medical students in Kirksville, Missouri were challenged to dissect a cadaver's nervous system, starting from the brain downward, but leaving the entire system in one piece. The process took the students - M.A. Schalck and L.P. Ramsdell-over 1,500 hours. Their "blood, sweat and tears" produced this extraordinary display, located at the  Museum of Osteopathic Medicine at A.T. Still University (ATSU) in Kirksville. There are only 4 of these in the world.

Salt crystals are cubic, but some grains when observed appear to be made up of overlapping cubes. This ionic compound is made up of sodium and chloride atoms. When a number of these molecules join to form a crystal they will often arrange themselves in a cubic pattern.

Ice crystal precipitation vary in shapes, intensity and size, but are found in cold regions around the world. "In the absence of supercooled liquid water, the growth of ice crystals to precipitation size is most likely dominated by aggregation of smaller ice crystals, which depends on the ice crystal number concentration and temperature (Hobbs et al. 1974) ," as you can see in the image below.

Aurora's are breathtaking cosmic light displays that can be seen from various planets in our solar system. An aurora is the finale to a process that begins with the sun. The sun emits a constant stream of charged particles or solar wind into the solar system. When these winds reach a planet they interact with the magnetic field that surrounds it, and compresses the field into a teardrop shape. The way in which the magnetic field change cause the charged particles to accelerate into the upper atmosphere, colliding with molecules such as nitrogen and oxygen which gives off energy in the form of light. A light ribbon of color is displayed across the sky in an aurora.

Each tiger has a unique pattern of stripes which are ideal for the camouflage needs of the animal.
"Interestingly, the skin of the tiger is also striped beneath the patterned fur," say Tigers.org. "The darkness of the pigmentation of the skin seems to be directly related to the darkness of the fur."

Reticulated glass frogs are found in the rain forests of Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador. The skin on their underside is completely transparent which allows for you to see their internal organs and even their beating heart. Scientists still don't know the evolutionary reason behind their see-through skin, but think the pattern on their backs are meant to resemble eggs and confuse predators.

Found mostly on West Coast beaches, they're not that rare and usually end up in home collections. But that doesn't diminish their beauty one bit!

In 1830 an engineer and craftsman by the name of Stephen Preston Ruggles took on a project for the print shop at Perkins School for the Blind, in Watertown, Massachusetts. He created a map of Boston with the streets, roads, bridges and squares marked with wooden divots. For centuries blind people had no formal way to learn geography, and this was one of the earliest archived attempts. In 1837 Samuel Gridley Howe, the school’s Founding Director along with Ruggles re-invented the method and created a method of embossing maps, releasing the Atlas of the United States Printed for Use of the Blind.

Raccoons are known for their bandit black and white look, which is what makes this albino creature an anomaly. Unlike their friends, albino raccoons lack any sort of camouflage which makes hiding from predators difficult and thus their lifespan shorter. Albinism is a congenital disease that causes either partial or complete loss of pigmentation in an animal.

A NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has captured a unique view of the Moon as it passed between the spacecraft and Earth. A series of test images shows the fully illuminated “dark side” of the Moon that is not visible from Earth.

Did you know that there are about 1,500 species of starfish that we know of? From the tropics to frigid polar waters, they are found from the intertidal zone down to abyssal depths, 6,000 m (20,000 ft) below the surface.

Living 50 metres off the north Mayo coast at Downpatrick Head sits the 45 metre high flat topped sea stack Dún Briste (the Broken Fort). Interestingly, this is considered to be a relatively new sea stack as it was only separated of the mainland Ireland in 1393 when monster seas severed it from County Mayo in an overnight storm. The summit of the stack is approximately 50 metres long and 15 metres across the centre. This flattopped stack contains the remains of the buildings where people were living on the night of the great storm. In 1980 three scientists landed on the summit by helicopter and spent a couple of hours examining the remains of the buildings and plant life still surviving there. They discovered the remains of a building running across the centre of the headland with enough details left to say that both people and livestock lived together inside it.

The first walk through aviary was built for the St. Louis World's fair in 1904 by the Smithsonian Institute. It was considered to be the largest of its kind at the time and was bought by the Saint Louis Zoo where it remains to this day. Proper aviary construction for zoos requires veterinary involvement due to health and husbandry concerns for the animals.

But before you freak out and lock yourself inside, remember that most germs won't harm you. Your immune system protects you against infectious agents. And growing up in 'natural' environments help kids develop a balanced immune response.

Geodes are hollow rocks that contain inward-facing crystals that are formed by numerous different processes, namely a slow flow of mineral material into pockets of air within rocks. One of the most renowned regions for amethyst mineralization and geode mining is the Artigas region of Uruguay. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, The largest amethyst geode weighs 13,000 kg (28,660 lb) and is 3 m (9 ft 10 in) long, 1.8 m (5 ft 10 in) wide and 2.2 m (7 ft 2 in) high. It is displayed in Shandong Tianyu Museum of Natural History (China) in Shandong, China.

This journalist has a receiver for the In-Ear piece which allows her to hear the team and a transmitter that is used for her clip-on microphone, both meticulously fastened to her dress in a way viewers wouldn't notice anything.

This scary looking creature from the family of bacteriophages, or phages for short. Discovered independently by Frederick Twort in 1915 and Félix d’Herelle in 1917, phages were used to treat cholera by scientists who did not yet know how they worked. In 1940 was the first time phages were seen under an electron microscope and scientists realized how they work. This virus infects bacteria and cannot survive or reproduce without it. Once they invade a host cell they can consume the host's nutrients and reproduce.

The Boeing 787 is known as the 'Dreamliner' and its variants seat 242 to 335 passengers. The 787 was designed to be 20% more fuel-efficient than the Boeing 767, which it was intended to replace.
While Boeing isn't having a great time right now, with grave safety concerns over it's new 737 max 8, the dreamliner has been a commercial success. Still, it wasn't all plain sailing; the aircraft suffered from several in-service problems related to its lithium-ion batteries, including fires on board during commercial service. This resulted in the FAA grounding all 787s in the US in 2013, with other civil aviation authorities following suit. The battery design was revised, and the Dreamliner was back in the skies within a few weeks.

Elephant's tails have a few uses. For example elephants can use their tails to communicate with each other; much like a dog, a swishing or wagging tail can signify happiness or excitement.
Baby elephants sometimes hold on to the tail of older animals while they are walking, for guidance and security on long walks. The tail full of hair also works as a flyswatter, to help keep away those annoying and biting flies.

Before engines and earth-moving equipment were invented, mining salt was one of the most expensive and dangerous things to do.
While salt is now plentiful, until the Industrial Revolution it was difficult to come by, and salt mining was often done by slave or prison labor and life expectancy among those sentenced was low.
In Roman times, salt on the table was a mark of wealth; so valuable was this resource that soldier's pay was originally in salt. This is where the word 'salary' comes from. 

Here are some interesting facts about spacesuits, according to NASA:
1. A spacesuit weighs approximately 280 pounds on the ground - without the astronaut in it. In the microgravity environment of space, a spacesuit weighs nothing.
2. Putting on a spacesuit takes 45 minutes, including the time it takes to put on the special undergarments that help keep astronauts cool. After putting on the spacesuit, to adapt to the lower pressure maintained in the suit, the astronaut must spend a little more than an hour breathing pure oxygen before going outside the pressurized module.
3. The reason that spacesuits are white is because white reflects heat in space the same as it does here on Earth. Temperatures in direct sunlight in space can be more than 275 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. No difference exists in a male's or female's suit, though the female astronaut usually requires a smaller size.
5. The shuttle spacesuit was designed to be made of many interchangeable parts, to accommodate the large number of astronauts with widely varying body sizes. These parts (upper and lower torsos, arms, etc.) are made in different sizes.
6. The body measurements of each shuttle astronaut are taken and recorded. Then the measurements are plotted against the size ranges available for each spacesuit component. The suit components are then assembled. Training suits are usually assembled nine months prior to flight, and flight suits are usually assembled four months prior to flight.

This photo was uploaded onto the Astronomy Picture of the Day and shows the shadow of the Moon darkening part of the Earth. It was taken by crew on the former Mir space station and it is estimated that the shadow moved across the Earth at nearly 2000 kilometers per hour.
"Only observers near the center of the dark circle see a total solar eclipse - others see a partial eclipse where only part of the Sun appears blocked by the Moon," APOD explained. "This spectacular picture of the 1999 August 11 solar eclipse was one of the last ever taken from the Mir space station. The two bright spots that appear on the upper left are possibly Jupiter and Saturn, although this has yet to be proven. Mir was deorbited in a controlled re-entry in 2001."

In Baby Driver, the red Subaru WRX becomes the star of the show as it weaves in and out of lanes, fits through imperceptible gaps between bumper-to-bumper traffic, jumps barriers, and skids around obstacles like a lucky drunk on ice. Edgar Wright, the writer and director of the movie, brought together a team of experts to coordinate incredibly complicated chases that he was determined to shoot on location in Atlanta. He estimates that 95 percent of the movie was shot in-camera, with CGI utilized for just a few touch-ups and quick shots.

According to its owner, it was a wild, not potted cactus, and the spines are 2-4" long. They also say that those spines were so sharp, they stabbed them even when they used oven mitts to repot the plant!

Sperm whales are the largest among the toothed whales, and have heads that are one-third the animal's length. These big headed whales have 20-26 pairs of cone-shaped teeth along their lower jaw, but interestingly enough none on the top. While this may seem bizarre for eating, it is strange that sperm whales have teeth at all. Their primary food item is the giant squid, which they don't chew but slurp up.

This macro photograph shows the individual seeds on the skin of a strawberry. Strawberry "seeds" are the ovaries of the berry that hold the actual seeds inside. The photographer, Alexey Kljatov, wrote on Flickr that the photo was created by :“Focus stacking + averaging (10 groups with different focus, each group contains 8 identical shots for averaging). The problem with this shot was that strawberry is too glossy (I put white plastic bag around berry to diffuse daylight).”

These prints lie in The Bull Canyon Dinosaur Track Trail. It's a short trail with a great viewpoint of Fisher Valley. The tracks are of a Therapod, likely something similar to a Velociraptor made famous in the Jurassic Park movies. The prints are left in Entrada Sandstone and about 200 million years old. On site, they look as if the dinosaur ran off the edge of the existing cliff, which is 1,000 feet above the valley floor.