The past year and a half have been nothing less than a roller coaster ride, it seems like there’s not a thing left that could impress us, yet here we are witnessing another unusual finding. Recently, a group of scientists have discovered what they believe is the world’s northernmost island off Greenland’s coast.
“It was not our intention to discover a new island,” polar explorer and head of the Arctic station research facility in Greenland, Morten Rasch, told The Guardian. “We just went there to collect samples.”
The scientists initially thought they had arrived at Oodaaq, an island discovered by a Danish survey team in 1978. Only later, when checking the exact location, they realised they had visited another island 780 metres north-west.
“We were six people in a small helicopter, and when we reached the position of Oodaaq Island, we could not find it,” Rasch said.
“So, we just started to search for the island. After a few very exciting minutes, we landed on a strange unvegetated bunch of mud, moraine deposits and gravel surrounded by sea ice on all sides – not a very friendly place.”
The news came out just after an underwater volcano formed a new island in Japan was observed. The new island is in a C shape and was discovered about 750 miles (1207 km) south of Tokyo near Iwo Jima. If the island remains there, it could be a part of Japan’s territory.
“It’s a bit like explorers in the past, who thought they’d landed in a certain place but actually found a totally different place,” Swiss entrepreneur Christiane Leister, creator of the Leister Foundation that financed the expedition, told The Guardian.
The team of scientists is currently anticipating whether the piece of land will stay or be gone in some time. To be identified as an authentic island, it needs to stay above water in high tide. If it does so, then it can surely be graded as the world’s northernmost land. It’s astonishing how nature never ceases to amaze us!
