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Get ready to have your mind blown by nature's most incredible secrets! Join us as we explore the most stunning natural wonders that have only recently been discovered by scientists and explorers. From rainbow-colored mountains to underwater caves with their own weather systems, these remarkable findings will leave you speechless!
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00:00In a world where nature is under relentless attack, there are still places that have been
00:06left untouched. Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most stunning,
00:13mystifying natural wonders that we only found out about relatively recently. I felt like a pirate
00:19in the Caribbean when they discovered a treasure, because it was something new.
00:23Number 10. Rainbow Mountain, Peru. Just on the other side of those trees,
00:31when the sun hits that ridge just right, these hills sink. No, this is not a fairy tale. This
00:37is very much real. Rainbow Mountain, also known as Vinicunca, can be found in the Andes of Peru.
00:44With its stunning seven colors, it challenges everything we thought we knew about mountains.
00:49A unique mineralogical composition is what makes this color scheme possible.
00:54And as time passed, the sediments would change color if they were exposed to weather conditions
00:58such as snow, wind, and water. And while other mountains in the Andes are likely to have a
01:03similar pattern of colors beneath their exteriors, Rainbow Mountain is unique because the exterior
01:08has actually been wiped away. Rainbow Mountain, as we now know, wasn't visible until the mid-2010s.
01:15Prior to that, it had always been covered by glacier ice caps. Once the snow melted,
01:20we were reminded that something beautiful can be hidden below the surface.
01:24See your true colors, that's why I love it.
01:31Number 9. Hitchma Hydrothermal Vent Field, Pescadero Basin.
01:35All right! Cool! An underwater field trip!
01:44Ready to dive, Ms. Frizzle!
01:47In 2018, scientists set out on a deep-sea mission in the Pescadero Basin,
01:53located in the southern end of the Gulf of California.
01:56There, they investigated a previously unexplored hydrothermal vent field.
02:01Hydrothermal vents are basically hot springs on the ocean floor.
02:04The superheated water flowing from these vents starts deep underground.
02:09As the hot water rises, it flows through and reacts with surrounding bedrock,
02:14becoming saturated with carbonate minerals.
02:16The team discovered multiple vents releasing steaming hot fluids,
02:20including one particularly awe-inspiring example in a spot named Taiuha,
02:25which translates to Big Cave.
02:27The cavern houses a pool of shimmering water, which pours into an upside-down waterfall.
02:32Yes, we're talking about all this going on underwater.
02:36It's a marvel that few will ever see.
02:39There's one of those nice, magical, reflecting pools of hydrothermal fluid.
02:44Number 8. Erwang Dong Cave, China.
02:48This cave is so big and so deep that it contains clouds and fog within its upper half.
02:53They can't escape.
02:54I've never seen anything like it anywhere.
02:56On the surface, I can't compare it to anything.
03:00It's unique.
03:01The Erwang Dong Cave in the Chongqing province of China is so enormous
03:05that it has its own weather system.
03:08But it was only recently that the world was made aware of this natural wonder.
03:12The cavern was first lit and photographed successfully in 2012.
03:16It made headlines as the poetically named Cloud Ladder Hall.
03:24The rock formations, the water, the greenery, the clouds.
03:28It's all nothing less than extraordinary.
03:30The team of explorers, consisting of expert cavers and photographers,
03:35were taken aback after finding the entrance
03:37and subsequently climbing down to the site of something so magical.
03:41They must navigate their way through many obstacles in the pitch black.
03:49Their headlamps illuminating only tantalizing glimpses of the cave floor.
03:57You'd never know they were inside the biggest cave chamber on earth.
04:02Number 7. Boiling River of the Amazon, Peru.
04:06This is the stuff of legends.
04:09Imagine a river.
04:11Hot enough to kill you.
04:15Said to be the home of a powerful Amazonian water spirit.
04:19Growing up, Andres Ruzo's grandfather told him about a boiling river in the Amazon.
04:25Might have just sounded like a wild story, right?
04:27A myth, you could even say.
04:29Well, Ruzo grew up to become a geothermal scientist.
04:32And in 2011, he set out to find out if the tale was actually true.
04:37Turns out, it was.
04:39It is.
04:39A real river, bubbling with water so hot.
04:43Ruzo said it felt like, quote, a sauna inside a toaster oven.
04:47Feeling that heat come into you.
04:49Breathing in this thick, hot air where you can feel the air heating you up inside your nose.
04:54You can feel it going into your lungs.
04:55You can feel the presence of your lungs because of the heat of the air.
05:00It still gives me goosebumps.
05:01Local indigenous people had long known about the boiling river of the Amazon, known locally as Shanae Tempiska, a sacred spiritual site.
05:10But because of its remote location, the rest of the world never knew about it.
05:14Not until Ruzo's journey brought it into the spotlight.
05:17I think once you've experienced something that's truly new with you, you love it.
05:22And you can't let that go.
05:24Off the coast of Tahiti, at a depth of more than 100 feet in the Pacific Ocean, scientists discovered an enormous coral reef with corals shaped like roses.
05:38Coral reefs like this are hard to find.
05:41Anything below 30 meters is called the twilight zone, an area low in oxygen and difficult to reach.
05:48But rare living walls like this keep drawing scientists down.
05:53The breathtaking finding occurred toward the end of 2021 and was further documented at the beginning of the following year.
06:00One of the divers called it a magical sight to witness and a work of art.
06:08We can see why he would use those words.
06:17It's like being in a field of roses, but on the ocean floor.
06:20The fact that the corals were in such pristine condition only added to the allure.
06:25As did the fact that they were unusually deep for a coral reef in a tropical region.
06:30You know, the reef is in a very good and healthy condition.
06:34It's been able to dodge the impact of climate change, of pollution and overfishing, which are the main coral reef cures.
06:44But it also opens up the fact that, you know, maybe we're not looking in the right places to find some of those.
06:48Number five, Tamja Blue Hole, Mexico.
06:52This underwater sinkhole in Chetumal Bay at the southeast corner of the Yucatan Peninsula is the deepest known blue hole on Earth.
07:01Scientific estimates published in 2024 suggest it plunges to over 1,380 feet below sea level.
07:09They encountered conditions similar to those of the Caribbean Sea and nearby coastal reef lagoons.
07:16This hinted at possible connections to the ocean through hidden tunnels and caves.
07:20While Tamja Blue Hole's existence was known before then, we had no idea it went that deep.
07:27It was discovered as far back as 2003 by a local diver.
07:31But most of the world didn't hear about it until scientists officially studied it years later, with intensive research occurring in the 2020s.
07:38The conditions in our oceans millions of years ago were similar to the hole now.
07:43Not a lot of oxygen in the water, limited light, large amounts of pressure.
07:48So it's a chance to see all these processes, close off in this unique space.
07:53On the surface, the shade of the blue hole is subtly darker than the water around it.
07:57As for what's all the way at the bottom, that's still a mystery.
08:00This blue hole could even tell us what life is like on other planets without the light and the oxygen that we have on Earth.
08:08And even perhaps how we and other species might survive there.
08:12Number 4. Mount Mabu's Hidden Rainforest, Mozambique.
08:17It's far from the same as actually being there, but these days you can explore places without even moving an inch.
08:23Google Earth is a prime example of that.
08:26And it's how the discovery of a rainforest in Mozambique's Mount Mabu came to be.
08:30The relative size of the forest compared to what's left in southern Africa, I think, was the discovery.
08:38Not that it was never seen or known by humankind before, because obviously the local people were here and they're hunting in it.
08:45That's right.
08:46In 2005, a biologist at London's Kew Gardens used Google Earth to spot an expansive, biodiverse area that was previously undocumented.
08:55Soon after, scientists visited the location in person.
08:59These are collectively known as islands in the sky, and they're high-altitude mountains with pockets of wet forest found at a high altitude near their summits.
09:08Because they've been isolated and separated for a very long time, the plants and animals we found inside them have had plenty of time to speciate and become endemic and become new and not found anywhere else in the world.
09:19Over years of research in the roughly 17,000-acre rainforest, they've uncovered dozens of new species of plants and animals.
09:26Let's just say this wasn't your typical discovery.
09:30This is a rare good news story for conservation.
09:33This is a conservation success story, yes.
09:35It's nice to have one.
09:36Yes, it is.
09:37Number 3.
09:38Underwater Volcanoes.
09:40Pacific Ocean.
09:41There are a lot of volcanoes on the ocean floor.
09:44Like, seriously, a lot.
09:46One of the more recent discoveries came near the Cook Islands in 2025.
09:49Among a chain of underwater volcanoes found there, one contained the youngest volcanic rocks ever recorded in the area.
09:57The younger rocks are much younger, with lavas as young as only 1.2 million years old on Rarotonga.
10:05This is the main reason why Rarotonga at least has such large mountains compared to the other islands.
10:12Beyond that, some of these volcanoes may even be active.
10:15Underwater volcanoes have also been spotted elsewhere, like three newly discovered ones off the coast of Sicily.
10:23According to the scientists, the newly discovered volcanoes are at least 6 kilometers wide and rise more than 150 meters above the surrounding seabate.
10:34There was also a 2023 finding that high-resolution radar satellites detected nearly 19,000 more across the ocean floor.
10:42We can only imagine how many undiscovered underwater volcanoes are still out there, where they are, and how long they've been hiding down there.
10:50The Mediterranean has been navigated for millennia, yet surprisingly very little is known about its seabate.
10:58Number 2.
10:59Sun Dong Cave.
11:00Vietnam.
11:01This is an absolutely amazing cave.
11:03It's huge.
11:04If we're just in the entrance now, it's going to get so much bigger.
11:06Although the entrance to this mammoth cave was first found by a local man in 1991, it wasn't until many years later that the rest of us learned about it.
11:16After mentioning it to two members of the British Cave Research Association, the man was asked to relocate the entrance, and he was able to do so in 2008.
11:25The following year, it was time for an expedition, and there was a lot to explore.
11:30You can see big formations, big stalagmites over there.
11:35Check that one out.
11:36This is an amazing cave.
11:38We came down those big slopes, we've come through the rocks, and we finally made it down to river level.
11:44Sun Dong Cave, located near the Laos-Vietnam border, later became recognized as the largest cave in the world.
11:52And as recently as 2018, we learned it's even bigger than previously thought.
11:56With its subterranean river, towering limestone formations, and sheer magnitude, it's truly a sight to behold.
12:04They named the first Doleen, Watch Out for Dinosaurs.
12:07And that's really the feeling you get when you walk inside that place, because you emerge from the darkness of the previous passage into this green landscape inside the cave,
12:17and you really feel like there could be dinosaurs or some prehistoric creatures living there.
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12:36Number 1. A giant sinkhole with an ancient forest at the bottom.
12:41China.
12:41It's one thing for there to be a sinkhole that's over 1,000 feet in length, nearly 500 feet wide, and 630 feet deep.
12:50That alone is pretty surreal.
12:51But for it to also have an ancient forest at the bottom, that's something straight out of a fairy tale.
12:57Yet, that's exactly what was found in southern China by a team of scientists in 2022.
13:02The dense undergrowth came up to the explorer's shoulders.
13:07Similar once-hidden caves have been found in China before, also in Mexico and Papua New Guinea.
13:13But most don't contain a secret forest at the bottom.
13:18This is avatar stuff here.
13:19To think that there are 100-foot-tall trees beneath the ground we stand on is a wonder.
13:25Not only that, but scientists believe the forest could be home to species of small animals we've never seen before.
13:31We often find new things here, and we ask the experts, what is this?
13:36And the experts say, we have studied this for decades, and we have no idea.
13:41We are all very excited to find something new.
13:44Just look at all that greenery way down there.
13:47Are you kidding?
13:48Another one of nature's many jaw-dropping surprises.
13:52We do so much exploring everywhere else outside of the earth.
13:55Why not explore more here?
13:57It's like nature's just trying to help us out every chance it can get.
14:00Is there an underrated natural wonder that you really enjoyed visiting?
14:04Let us know in the comments.
14:05This place has totally redefined what it means to be sacred for me.
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