There Is a Beach in Japan with Plenty of Tiny Stars to Be Found in the Sand

There are hundreds of stunning beaches on our globe. But there is only one where the sand looks like millions of little stars.

Hoshizuna no Hama is a beach on the Japanese island of Iriomote (Okinawa prefecture). It is called The Beach of Star Dust as the sand there is full of five-pointed and six-pointed stars. The locals believe that these are the remains of children of gods who dies falling into the ocean.

In fact these stars are nothing but remains of shells of forams from the Baculogypsina sphaerulata subdivision. They live in the waters of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. When they die, the currents bring their shells from the coral reef onto the Hoshizuna no Hama beach. It turns out, however, that they can also be found on beach on other Japanese islands, including Taketomi (the Kaiji beach), Tokashiki (the Aharen beach) and Hatoma (all beaches there).

Forams are single-celled organisms which colonized 70% of the Earth's surface. They form their shelves and can be found in a variety of sophisticated shapes.