Geography

On a map, Antarctica reads like the final frontier, a place where the rules of the natural world work a little differently. The idea that an entire continent covered in ice qualifies as a desert doesn’t match how we use the word in everyday life. Most people imagine deserts as sun-bleached dunes and shimmering heat, not a frozen expanse stretching farther than the eye can measure. Yet scientists have a different definition, and once you hear it, the icy area starts to make more sense. It helps to think less about sand and more about scarcity, because dryness defines a desert far more than temperature ever could.

“I didn’t go up there to die. I went up there to live.” —Reinhold MessnerIt’s the world’s highest mountain (sort of), it’s a potential death-trap for thrill-seekers, and it attracts hundreds of hopeful climbers every...

The attempt to dig a canal through Panama was led by French diplomat and builder Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had earlier triumphed with the Suez Canal. Though the project had a promising start soon turned into one of history’s biggest engineering failures.

“I didn’t go up there to die. I went up there to live.” —Reinhold MessnerIt’s the world’s highest mountain (sort of), it’s a potential death-trap for thrill-seekers, and it attracts hundreds of hopeful climbers every...

Why is the ocean salty? It actually wasn’t always salty—but a few billion years and some basic chemistry made it that way. So how did it happen?

South Pole Editorial. Two men led the first expeditions to our planet’s southernmost point in 1912. But only one of those men made it back alive.