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Last Chance Lake: The unusual 'soda lake' with conditions that may have given rise to life on EarthScientists consider Last Chance Lake to be an analog for lakes that may have existed on Earth 4 billion years ago and contained the ingredients for early life on our planet.
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Norway's Dragon's Eye: The fantastical 'pothole' that emerged from ice 16,000 years agoNorway's photogenic "Dragon's Eye" likely formed around 20,000 years ago, when all of Scandinavia sat beneath an enormous mass of ice called the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet.
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Shark Bay: Home to Earth's largest plant — an immortal, self-cloning seagrass meadow stretching 112 milesA 77-square-mile seagrass meadow at the bottom of Shark Bay in Western Australia is both Earth's largest plant and largest clone.
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Gates of Hell: Turkmenistan's methane-fueled fire pit that has been burning since 1971Geologists set Turkmenistan's Darvaza gas crater ablaze in 1971, thinking the fire would die down within a few weeks, but the pit is still burning 53 years later.
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Hot Tub of Despair: The deadly ocean pool that traps and pickles creatures that fall inThis stagnant brine pool at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is so toxic it kills and embalms any crabs and amphipods that are unlucky enough to stumble into it.
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Blood Falls: Antarctica's crimson waterfall forged from an ancient hidden heartIron-rich waters buried beneath Taylor Glacier in East Antarctica are sporadically released in what looks like a bloody mess — but the so-called Blood Falls aren't as gruesome as they first appear and sound.
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Eye of the Sahara: Mauritania's giant rock dome that towers over the desertThe Eye of the Sahara, also known as the Richat structure, stands out like an oversized ammonite among the sand dunes of the Sahara desert in Mauritania.
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China's 'heavenly pits': The giant sinkholes that have ancient forests growing withinChina's southwestern karst landscape is pockmarked with dozens of enormous sinkholes that look like they were made with a cookie cutter — and scientists keep finding new ones.
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Snake Island: The isle writhing with vipers where only Brazilian military and scientists are allowedSnake Island was isolated from the Brazilian mainland at the end of the last ice age, trapping Earth's only known population of highly venomous golden lancehead pit vipers on a rock in the Atlantic.
