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Yarlung Tsangpo: The deepest canyon on land hides a tree taller than the Statue of LibertyThe Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon is Earth's largest terrestrial canyon, stretching 314 miles long and almost 20,000 feet from top to bottom at its deepest point in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
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Salar de Uyuni: The world's largest salt desert and lithium reservoir surrounded by volcanoesThe Salar de Uyuni desert is famous for its gleaming surface waters and hexagonal salt crust patterns, but below this otherworldly landscape lie about 11 million tons of highly sought-after lithium.
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Lake Kivu: The ticking time bomb that could one day explode and unleash a massive, deadly gas cloudLake Kivu, one of the African Great Lakes, sits along a tectonic plate boundary called the East African Rift, which is dotted with hot springs that feed carbon dioxide and methane into the water.
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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.
