A ‘ghost’ island that all of a sudden appeared within the Caspian Sea in early 2023 is taking part in a centuries-long sport of peekaboo with scientists, and it is about to fade as soon as once more – if it hasn’t already slipped beneath the waves.
Photos from two NASA satellites present a time-lapse of the island’s disappearing act, from its sudden emergence between January and February of 2023 to the tiny fragment left on the finish of 2024.
The island is positioned on the tip of the Kumani financial institution mud volcano, positioned underwater off the coast of Azerbaijan. On random events, when this volcano blows, an island of mud breaks by means of the waves and reforms about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the mainland.
The non permanent land mass was first documented in Might 1861. However the subsequent yr, it was gone.
Within the twentieth century, the island got here and went at the very least six additional instances, in response to information. In truth, the blob of land not often sticks round for longer than two years, earlier than slipping beneath the waves.
Usually, mud volcano eruptions are marked by big, rocketing jets of fireplace, that are so intimidatingly violent, they’ll generally be mistaken for oil rig explosions.
In 2023, nevertheless, the ghost island peeked its head above the waves with out a lot of a fuss.
“A new island suddenly appeared last year, which is amazing,” wrote geophysicist and dirt volcano fanatic Mark Tingay on Threads in November of 2024.
“But what is even more amazing is that nobody seemed to notice!”
By no one, Tingay meant there have been no official information of the island’s look – simply satellite tv for pc pictures he had seen final yr whereas finding out the mud volcano hotspot that’s Azerbaijan. On the time, in 2023, Tingay mentioned he could not discover any information, social media, or web mentions of the island’s varied names in Azeri, Russian, or English.
On January 10, 2025, NASA picked an image of the ghost island as its picture of the day.
This wasn’t the one time that the Kumani island has caught scientists without warning, both.
Tingay says the Kumani mud volcano additionally fashioned an island with out a fireball in 1993, and it, too, went formally unreported. Satellite tv for pc pictures, nevertheless, clearly present it was seen at the moment.
“In this current information age, where everyone is so instantly connected, it is also rather incredible that an island can pop up just 20km off the coast and no one even says anything about it!” writes Tingay on Threads.
