Every time we get a picture, video, or written account from a war of soldiers interacting peacefully with the locals.
It's very... contrasting. In a good way. Especially the lovely photographs of soldiers giving things and having fun with the children.
If only the war didn't need to be necessary for such things to happen...
I am now known as Flyboy.For things I've seen personally, probably the view of the Rocky Mountains from an aeroplane above; maybe Niagara Falls on a stormy day.
For things I've seen in pictures; the Pale Blue Dot.
Made better with Carl Sagan's speech:
Here's a tree of life from Wikipedia
(though I originally saw it in Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth.)
Each of the species in that list has had its entire genome sequenced, which is quite neat in its own right.
The beauty, though, is in the implications; namely, that all life on Earth is related.
By the way, if you want Homo sapiens, it's near the edge between the red and the grey zone.
edited 31st Mar '12 7:18:49 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.I saw a nuclear explosion in my dream once...
That dream wasn't a nightmare.
FIMFiction Account MLPMST PageSunrise. Also this really hot French chick in Paris.
edited 31st Mar '12 9:30:02 PM by NLK
Likes many underrated webcomicsThe most beautiful thing I know of isn't something visible. It's sehnsucht, which cannot be pithily defined without losing a great deal of meaning, but which I like to roughly approximate as "deep longing and nostalgia for profound forgotten things".
But if we are strictly using things that are visible: the sunrise after the second night I almost died.
Smile for me!I guess a few things come to mind. First of all, standing on top of a mountain on a clear day and looking out on most of the state of Washington just blew me away.
The second thing to come to mind is a lot smaller. One year we had a particularly warm February followed by a light snowfall on the first day of spring. The end result was a little bit of snow balanced on the tips of tulips, and blossoming trees covered in snowflakes.
The last one is something that never ceases to impress me even though I've seen it dozens of times. I don't know how many of you have approached a large city by water at night, but it is a rather impressive sight. If you are ever in Seattle for any reason, I would suggest that you take a ferry after dark just to see it.
Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.Since you mention cities, I gotta say that every urban area I've ever walked in at the right time of night (when the sun has just set or is just about to rise) looked absolutely stunning.
I don't know if it's just me or if it works like that for everyone, but when the sky is illuminated just right, every building's outline looks much sharper than usual.
Now, I have eyeglasses, so it might have something to do with my poor vision, but during the day, when I look at things outside, the outlines are usually not all that clear; but in the right light, it's as if the world was a video game series and the newest game had way better graphics than the one before.
So those moments are really beautiful for me. When I see something very clearly, I also get immersed in contemplations about that thing and the nature of our universe. When I see these clear outlines, I get to thinking about light and the evolution of the eye and things like that, and I'm blown away by how great it is to be alive and get to experience this.
When I used to live in the town I grew up in, me and my girlfriend sometimes when swimming on summer nights. It was less than 1 kilometre from where we lived to the beach, and when we were done, we'd walk through the town and sometimes go on extended walks without a destination (which is also something I did with my friends occasionally,) and sometimes you get these moments.
Yeah, so I guess moments when the world just makes sense and really connects with you are what I'm nominating here as something most beautiful.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Similarly, the very rules of logic which define mathematics are included in my definition of the Universe. So not only the mathematical description of our Universe and its laws, but the entire framework.
Normally I don't define the Universe in such broad terms (but limit it instead to things that exist within what proponents of the Multiverse hypothesis would call our Universe,) but I'm trying to include everything here, and it's possible to do so using a certain way to view a Universe (one that includes any framework in which that particular Universe might participate.)
Well, anyway, what we share is an almost boundless (or so it feels in the limited framework of human experience) admiration for the very structures upon which human knowledge are based, and which in fact house even the things of which we humans have and seek knowledge.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.