The Places on Earth No Human Has Ever Explored

These are nine places on Earth that people have barely touched. Some are too deep, some are too far, and one is off limits because somebody asked nicely. The bottom of the ocean is on the list, even though more people have been there than have walked on the Moon. The middle of the Earth is also on the list, and nobody is going there. Ever.

If you heard that only three people have reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep, that number is badly out of date. It is at least 27.

Which one would you actually go to? And if you want to suggest a place for the next one, leave it in the comments.

Chapters
0:00 Challenger Deep
1:43 Bouvet Island
3:25 Kangchenjunga
5:00 Mount Lico
6:35 The Clarion-Clipperton Zone
8:16 Lake Vostok
9:55 Kola Superdeep Borehole
11:32 The Transition Zone
13:14 The Inner Core

Disclosure: the narration voice is AI-generated (synthetic). The illustrations are original artwork made for this channel, and some props are AI-assisted. No AI image shows a real place or a real person. Real photographs are credited below.

SOURCES
Key studies: Sweetman et al. 2024, Nature Geoscience (dark oxygen, disputed); Rabone et al. 2023, Current Biology (CCZ species); Pearson et al. 2014, Nature (ringwoodite diamond); Lehmann 1936, "P'"; Vidale et al. 2024, Nature (inner core rotation).

PHOTO CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons; photos are cropped and resized)
- "Victor Lance Vescovo" by Richard Varcoe on behalf of Caladan Oceanic LLC, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Victor_Lance_Vescovo.jpg
- "Kangchenjunga, India" by My Discovery, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kangchenjunga,_India.jpg
- "The kangchenjunga" by Istiakuddin Ahmed, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_kangchenjunga.jpg
- "Mount Lico, Mozambique, March 15, 2020 SkySat" by Planet Labs, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Lico,_Mozambique,_March_15,_2020_SkySat.jpg (and its cropped version, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Lico,_Mozambique,_March_15,_2020_SkySat_(cropped).jpg)
- "Pelagite (deep seafloor manganese nodule) (Pacific Ocean) 2" by James St. John, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pelagite_(deep_seafloor_manganese_nodule)_(Pacific_Ocean)_2.jpg
- "2019-03-06 20-49-22 Sonne SO268-1 029ROV04" by ROV KIEL 6000, GEOMAR, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2019-03-06_20-49-22_Sonne_SO268-1_029ROV04_OnlyLogo_klein_original(1).jpg
- "Kola Superdeep Borehole" (Кольская сверхглубокая скважина) by Andre Belozeroff, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6079899
- "The borehole itself (welded shut), August 2012" (Сама скважина (заварена), август 2012) by Rakot13, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21029748
- "Kolskaya-sverhglubokaya-025" (thumbnail) by Alexander Novikov, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kolskaya-sverhglubokaya-025.jpg
- "DIAMOND HI RES PHOTO" by University of Alberta, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DIAMOND_HI_RES_PHOTO.jpg
Licences: CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ | CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ | CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Public domain: Bathyscaphe Trieste over the Marianas Trench, 1960 (US Navy NH 96797); Trieste with Piccard and Walsh (Steve Nicklas, NOS/NGS); Bathyscaphe Trieste (US Navy); Bouvet Island from the ISS (ISS crew); Bouvet discovery map, 1739 (Philippe Buache); Mount Mabu, ASTER (NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems); Location of the Clarion Clipperton Zone (USGS); Russian station Vostok (NSF/Josh Landis); Inge Lehmann (Even Neuhaus, 1932). Maps: Natural Earth (public domain).

#earth #mysteries #explained