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Expedition Discovers Island Believed World's Northernmost

An undated handout image of Henrik Lassen, chief logistician for the Leister Expedition, which discovered a tiny island off the coast of Greenland which they say is the world's northernmost point of land, in the process of collecting samples for later scientific analysis. Julian Charriere/via REUTERS
An undated handout image of Henrik Lassen, chief logistician for the Leister Expedition, which discovered a tiny island off the coast of Greenland which they say is the world's northernmost point of land, in the process of collecting samples for later scientific analysis. Julian Charriere/via REUTERS
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Expedition Discovers Island Believed World's Northernmost

An undated handout image of Henrik Lassen, chief logistician for the Leister Expedition, which discovered a tiny island off the coast of Greenland which they say is the world's northernmost point of land, in the process of collecting samples for later scientific analysis. Julian Charriere/via REUTERS
An undated handout image of Henrik Lassen, chief logistician for the Leister Expedition, which discovered a tiny island off the coast of Greenland which they say is the world's northernmost point of land, in the process of collecting samples for later scientific analysis. Julian Charriere/via REUTERS

A team of Arctic researchers from Denmark said Sunday they accidentally discovered what they believe is the world’s northernmost island located off Greenland's coast.

The scientists from the University of Copenhagen initially thought they had arrived at Oodaaq, an island discovered by a Danish survey team in 1978, to collect samples during an expedition that was conducted in July.

They instead wound up on an undiscovered island further north.

“We were convinced that the island we were standing on was Oodaaq, which until then was registered as the world’s northernmost island,” said expedition leader Morten Rasch of the university’s department of geosciences and natural resource management.

“But when I posted photos of the island and its coordinates on social media, a number of American island hunters went crazy and said that it couldn’t be true,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying in a statement on Friday.

“Island hunters” are known as adventurers whose hobby it is to search for unknown islands.

The yet-to-be-named island is 780 meters north of Oodaaq, an island off Cape Morris Jesup, the northernmost point of Greenland and one of the most northerly points of land on Earth.

The tiny island, apparently discovered as a result of shifting pack ice, is about 30 by 60 meters in size and rises to about three to four meters above sea level, the university said. The research team reportedly doesn't consider the discovery to be a result of climate change and has allegedly proposed naming the island Qeqertaq Avannarleq, which means “the northernmost island” in Greenlandic.

The island consists primarily of small mounds of silt and gravel, according to Rasch. He said it may be the result of a major storm that, with the help of the sea, gradually pushed material from the seabed together until an island formed. The island isn't expected to exist a long time, Danish researchers believe.

“No one knows how long it will remain. In principle, it could disappear as soon as a powerful new storm hits,” Rasch said.

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Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
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Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

Top minds at the world's largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for a much bigger successor that could vastly improve research into the remaining enigmas of physics.

The plans for the Future Circular Collider — a nearly 91-kilometer (56.5-mile) loop along the French-Swiss border and below Lake Geneva — published late Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The FCC would carry out high-precision experiments in the mid-2040s to study “known physics” in greater detail, then enter a second phase — planned for 2070 — that would conduct high-energy collisions of protons and heavy ions that would “open the door to the unknown,” said Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, The AP news reported.

“History of physics tells that when there is more data, the human ingenuity is able to extract more information than originally expected,” Chiarelli, who was not involved in the plans, said in an e-mail.

For roughly a decade, top minds at CERN have been making plans for a successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerate particles through a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground tunnel and slam them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.

“Ultimately what we would like to do is a collider which will come up with 10 times more energy than what we have today,” said Arnaud Marsollier, a CERN spokesman. “When you have more energy, then you can create particles that are heavier.”

The blueprint lays out the proposed path, environmental impact, scientific ambitions and project cost. Independent experts will take a look before CERN's two dozen member countries decide in 2028 whether to go forward, starting in the mid-2040s at a cost of some 14 billion Swiss francs (about $16 billion).

CERN officials tout the promise of scientific discoveries that could drive innovation in fields like cryogenics, superconducting magnets and vacuum technologies that could benefit humankind.

Outside experts point to the promise of learning more about the Higgs boson, the elusive particle that has been controversially dubbed “the God particle,” which helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang.

Work at the particle collider confirmed in 2013 the existence of the Higgs boson — the central piece in a puzzle known as the standard model that helps explains some fundamental forces in the universe.

“This set of reports represents an important milestone in the process, but a full sense of the likelihood of it being brought to fruition will only be known through careful studies by scientists, engineers and others, including politicians who must make difficult decisions at time when uncertainty rules the day,” Dave Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, said in an e-mail.

The new collider “provides an exciting opportunity for the particle physics community, and indeed all of physics, on the world stage,” said Toback, who was not affiliated with the plans, and who worked for years at the Fermilab Tevatron collider in the United States that was shut down in 2011.

CERN scientists, engineers and partners behind the plans considered at least 100 scenarios for the new collider before coming up with the proposed 91-kilometer circumference at an average depth of 200 meters (656 feet). The tunnel would be about 5 meters (16 feet) in diameter, CERN said.