Null Island is located at a latitude and longitude of 0°

Null Island: the most real fictional island you can almost visit

This article explores Null Island, which can be found on most maps at exactly 0° latitude and 0° longitude. If someone were to paddle out to those coordinates, they'd find themselves in front of a buoy named Soul off the west coast of Africa. User...

NASA plans to bring down the ISS at a location farthest from land

Point Nemo is located in the South Pacific Ocean at coordinates 48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W, approximately 2,688 kilometers (1,670 miles) from Ducie Island, Motu Nui, and Maher Island. The location has served as an underwater graveyard for hundreds of satellites and is expected to be harbor the International Space Station in 2030.

Railroads and long-distance communication led to the development of time zones

Noon had been determined independently at each location based on when the sun was highest in the sky, but this became impractical for standardizing transportation. British star-mapping and navigation advancements established Greenwich as the prime meridian through Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT.

What is the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea?

The Isle of Man sits between Ireland to the west and Wales and England to the east. It is a self-governing British Crown dependency. This means it creates its own laws and collects its own taxes and currency, but is subject to the United Kingdom's defense systems and international treaties. Roughly 85,000 people live on the island, known as a tax haven for its attractive tax rates.

Pheasant Island is controlled by both the Spanish and the French

The two-acre plot of land is a condominium—a territory shared by two countries. Pheasant Island (which, curiously, is not home to pheasants) is a holdover from the end of the Thirty Years' War between France and Spain, when it was designated as a neutral area dividing the countries.

Around 380 underwater cables power the Internet across the world.

On July 29, 1858, two steam-powered battleships met in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There, they connected two ends of a 4,000 kilometer (2,500 mile) long, 1.5 centimeter (0.6 inch) wide cable, linking for the first time the European and North American continents by telegraph.

Explore a world map of coral reefs and the extent of coral bleaching

The Allen Coral Atlas provides imagery of shallow water reefs, along with maps of potential bleaching events, bleaching alert areas, and bleaching hotspots derived from satellite imagery of whitening. Coral reefs are most prevalent in the Indo-Pacific, the Caribbean, the Red Sea, and the tropical coasts of South America and Africa.

Geodesists define sea level using gravity rather than the ocean's height

The sea level is not the same everywhere because the Earth isn't perfectly spherical or has a uniform composition and density. Earth's gravitational field is carefully measured to determine where the sea level would be, even in places with no water.

How did Polynesian wayfinders navigate the Pacific Ocean?

Ancient Polynesian navigators used the sun, moon, stars, clouds, currents, and more to sail the seas. People of Southeast Asia began their voyages to the region now known as Polynesia in roughly 1500 BCE. They would settle a vast area of 15 million square miles, including hundreds of islands, moving from islands due to overpopulation or war. Such voyages dwindled in 1300 CE as societies became more rooted.

Grosse Île, the quarantine island of the Port of Quebec

As tens of thousands of Irish emigrated to North America to escape the Great Famine in the mid-19th century, many port cities set up quarantine areas amid an epidemic of cholera. In Quebec City on the St. Lawrence River, one island became a mass graveyard where over 3,000 Irish immigrants died over a decade as they waited in quarantine. Listen to the history here.

The UN in NYC is an international zone belonging to all member-states

The four primary buildings are located on an 18-acre site on the East Side of Manhattan. The complex has its own postal administration, fire department, and security forces.

What is a singularity?

It's hard to imagine a singularity, which are described as an infinitely tiny point, created by gravity, until it has zero volume. The definition feels impossible, though perhaps not at the center of a black hole or at the beginning of the universe. Even then, singularities may be something else entirely. Singularities are a mathematical quandary that challenge us to better understand physics and the universe.

The history of deep-sea mining and its governance by the International Seabed Authority

The British HMS Challenger research vessel identified metal-rich seafloor rocks between Hawaii and Mexico in the 1870s, but rules governing which nations control which parts of the ocean were not established until 1958 by the UN. It later established the ISA to oversee mineral-related operations in international waters.

Explaining why animals don't cross this invisible line in Indonesia

Although the distance separating the two regions is small, East and West Indonesia have starkly different species, puzzling scientists for decades. Biogeographers use the theory of plate tectonics to explain the phenomenon, arguing the two regions...

The US tried to buy Greenland in 1867 and after World War II

Denmark first took possession of the large, ice-covered island in the northern Atlantic in the 1700s. The local population is a mix of native Inuit, Norwegians (from the medieval era), and Danes, though the population is only 56,000. The US has seen the defensive and economic potential of the island for over 150 years.

Compare the true size of any country

This interactive lets you drag any country across the conventional Mercator projection to compare its true size to others. Africa, which appears similar in size to Greenland on standard maps, is actually close to 15 times larger. It's a great way to recalibrate your assumptions about world geography.

A small island nation built the largest empire in history

See how Britain grew from a small kingdom into a global empire ruling nearly a third of the world, then unraveled through war, nationalist movements, and declining power—leaving just 14 overseas territories as remnants of its once-vast domain.

Establishing an independent Haiti: a timeline

This map and timeline shows the history of the Caribbean Island nation of Haiti and its fight for independence. In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and crashed one of his ships, the Santa Maria, along reefs near the island nation...

How scientists use data to anticipate the phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation

Sea-surface temperatures across various regions of the equatorial Pacific Ocean can be compared with ocean temperatures elsewhere in the tropics to identify anomalies that indicate where in the ENSO cycle Earth finds itself. The "Niño 3.4" region in particular—known as the Ocean Niño Index—is a key indicator of ENSO phase and intensity.

The 1941 Atlantic Charter was a World War II alliance and model for the UN

The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal 1941 agreement between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, outlining shared goals for a post-World War II world rooted in freedom and self-determination. These ideals later inspired the founding principles of the United Nations.

Moon's visibility is determined by its declination, equivalent to Earth latitude

The Moon's declination varies between approximately +28.7 degrees and -28.7 degrees, ensuring it rises and sets between latitudes of approximately 61.3 degrees north and south. This means there are places on Earth where the Moon is never visible above the horizon and places where it temporarily does not set.

The difference between solstice and equinox, explained

A solstice marks the extremes in the amount of day or night, while the equinoxes come on days with a balance between the two. Learn why with this brief video.

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Hawaii is the only US state with no incorporated municipalities

Unlike every other state, Hawaii has no cities or towns. Its four county governments manage all local services—the functions that municipalities provide elsewhere in the US—across the entire state.

What "National Treasure" got right—and wrong—about the Declaration

The 2004 film "National Treasure" imagines a secret map hidden on the Declaration of Independence. This article breaks down which plot points reflect real history—and where Hollywood took liberties with the document, its preservation, and the people it portrays.

The 'Goldilocks zone' is the region around a star where liquid water can exist

Also referred to as the habitable zone, this region varies based on the properties of a planetary system's host star, including its size and luminosity, which measure the rate at which the star radiates energy per unit area.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Ebola species have historically been named after where they were discovered, stigmatizing residents who live there, including Bundibugyo, in Uganda.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight