IS THIS THE PORTAL TO HELL?

What we see does not always correspond to what it really is. Sometimes we /perceive reality (subjective) differently from what it actually is (objective). That’s exactly what happens when you look at this picture. Observing it, most of us see damned souls sinking towards the "mouth of hell".

I know, we need a few moments before we realize that obviously it’s none of that.

Nature has shown once more that it can be an incredible artist. While in most cases, we admire its beauty and call it heavenly, in this case, we can’t use that word. If the opposite to heavenly exists, this is it!

Deception lies in the speed with which the brain processes the scene without dwelling on the details. Only then, through sight we stop perceiving it distorted and the brain, at that point, brings everything back to reality. It’s a very ancient mechanism that goes back to when we had to defend ourselves against predators.

To survive, we needed to quickly assess a danger in order to escape in time or defend ourselves. That speed in processing the scene around us (even if it was wrong) could have saved our lives.

The photo was taken on the Kamokuna volcano in Hawaii, and the scene depicts solidified magma.

This landscape could be used in an apocalyptic movie without a need for special effects. Nature did on its own a great job that hardly any artist could achieve if wanting to create a post-apocalyptic scenography.

In January 2017, a portion of the Kilauea volcano cliff, more than 28 meters high, collapsed, giving rise to a flashy cascade of lava that poured into the ocean. And the spectacular images released by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and the tour operator Lava Ocean Tours show the incandescent magma pouring into the waters, creating a huge cloud of vapor broken by a tongue of liquid fire.

Credits: Laszlo Kestay (1996)