Sascha Pare

Tristan da Cunha is a group of islands in the South Atlantic that formed from the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana. Today, it's home to a tiny and extremely isolated farming community.

Kawah Ijen is an active volcano on the island of Java with an extremely acidic crater lake and gas emissions that produce blue flames upon contact with oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Soaring carbon emissions, an unexpected new source of global warming, and collapsing ocean currents shocked scientists in 2024. Here are our picks for this year's top climate change stories.

The Denmark Strait cataract is a sloping portion of the seafloor between Iceland and Greenland that funnels cold water from the Nordic Seas into the Irminger Sea, fueling Atlantic Ocean currents.

The geoengineering scheme, known as stratospheric aerosol injection, would not be cheap, but scientists say it could buy us some time until we reach net-zero carbon.

Trillions of tons of hydrogen gas are likely buried in rocks and reservoirs beneath Earth's surface, but researchers aren't sure where it is yet.

The Marble Caves sit on the shores of a turquoise glacial lake in southern Chile. Light bounces off the water onto the walls, creating a magical, ever-changing display inside the caverns.

A male humpback whale swam 8,106 miles (13,046 km) from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, mingling with other whale populations and potentially having sex with them along the way.

The Fossil Forest in Dorset is a stretch of southern English coastline peppered with living mounds of limestone that hide the remains of cypress trees from the late Jurassic period.

The Hailin impact crater is a newly-discovered scar in the mountains of Northeast China left behind by a meteor impact, but geologists aren't sure exactly when this happened.

Orcas off the coast of Washington State are balancing dead fish on their heads like it's the 1980s, but researchers still aren't sure why they do it.

Squirting cucumbers shoot their seeds up to 33 feet (10 m) away from the mother plant to avoid overcrowding and competition, but exactly how they do it has long remained a mystery.

The ISS performed its 39th ever space junk collision avoidance maneuver on Nov. 19. Although it was the first such maneuver in 2024, it may not be the last, experts say.

The Indian Ocean "gravity hole" is a region where Earth's mass is reduced, leading to weak gravitational pull, lower-than-average sea levels and a puzzle scientists have only just begun to solve.

Mapping in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska has uncovered a 1,640-foot-tall structure on the seafloor, but scientists say it's too early to determine the nature of the discovery.

New modeling research reveals that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is particularly vulnerable to shifts in the Irminger Sea from increasing Arctic meltwater.

Stunningly preserved fossils of reptilian footprints and underbellies discovered last year in the Italian Alps have helped researchers unearth a tropical lakeside ecosystem that predates dinosaurs.

Researchers have analyzed mummified remains pulled from Siberia's permafrost in 2020 and determined they belong to a 3-week-old saber-toothed kitten that died at least 35,000 years ago.

Argentina's El Ojo is said to harbor UFOs and the ghosts of ancient deities, but as far as scientists can tell, the island is simply a fluke of nature that formed through erosion and water currents.

Pando is a giant aspen clone in central Utah that has been regrowing parts of itself for up to 80,000 years — but new threats mean the plant is now in decline.

Startup Clone Robotics has created an ultra-creepy humanoid torso with artificial muscles that are activated through a battery-powered hydraulic system and covered in ghostly-white "skin."

Vietnam's Son Doong cave is so large, you could squeeze 15 Great Pyramids of Giza inside it and fly a Boeing 747 airplane through some of its passages.