Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is a prime candidate for life in our solar system beyond Earth. It contains water and is also the only known solar system body to have plate tectonics.

Plastic may be with us a lot longer than we thought! A new type of rock made from plastic, volcanic rock, sand, seashells, and corals has begun forming on the shores of Hawaii. The discovery adds to the debate about whether humanity’s heavy hand in natural processes warrants the formal declaration of a new epoch of Earth history.

This is all the water on Earth and the air in our atmosphere, to scale. That's 1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of water and 5,140 trillion tonnes of air.

Dallol in Ethiopia is not only the hottest inhabited place on Earth, it's also one of the weirdest. Between 1960 and 1966, the average annual temperature was a toasty 35°C (96°F), but the temperature can regularly creep to over 46°C (115°f).

At 48 metres below sea level, Dallol is Earth's lowest land volcano, and its last recorded eruption was in 1926. Its craters contains hot springs that boast a whole range of otherworldly colours - including neon yellow - thanks to the hot magma bubbling below the surface. This magma heats the groundwater that flows into the area from the nearby highlands, and as the heated groundwater moves up towards the surface, it dissolves salt, sulphur, potash and other minerals and deposits them in the Dallol crat ...

This beautiful photograph of the aurora borealis lighting up a glacial lagoon in Iceland has won James Woodend the top prize in the 2014 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.