Four Year Old Island in South Pacific is Teeming with Life

The miracle outcrop known as Hunga Tonga has only existed for four years, yet creatures including hundreds of seabirds and flowering plants whose seeds were dropped there in bird poo.

Hunga Tonga emerged from a hidden underwater volcano lodged between two existing islands of the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific.

It still has no official name, but locals have branded it Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, or "Hunga Tonga" for short.

The island is only the third volcanic pop-up like this to have arisen in the last 150 years, and Nasa has been attempting to uncovers its mysteries since it arose from the sea in 2015.

Most research has involved taking snaps from satellites or aircraft, but space boffins recently got a rare chance to explore Hunga Tonga on foot.

Mysterious island that didn’t EXIST four years ago is ‘now teeming with life’ – after being created by rare sea volcano eruption

The island is only expected to last at the most 30 years and could be gone in six. NASA is interested in the island because comparisons can be made between the island and what earlier Mars may have been like.

The comparisons made by NASA concerning Mars are volcanic and not the teeming with life part. However, studying this new island could help NASA understand if/how life came to be on Mars and how it could survive.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Interesting and very cool!

It would be amazing if those god awful dandelions somehow found their way into our atmosphere and caught a ride on one of the rovers we sent to Mars.

Imagine working at NASA and looking at satellite feeds to discover quarter of the planet turned yellow over night lol

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Nice find and thanks for sharing...

If it's THAT easy - planets with similar conditions, indeed the universe, should be also teeming with life. Is it?