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Name : Tristan da Cunha
localisation : South Atlantic Ocean
View of Tristan da Cunha and its only settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas.
Coordinates:-37.10837644054316 , -12.287346670465638
Why it ’s incredible : The mathematical group of islands is the most distant inhabited emplacement on Earth .
Tristan da Cunha is a radical of island in the South Atlantic Ocean that is home to the world ’s most isolated human closure . Around 250 people hold British Overseas Territories citizenship live on the archipelago ’s only inhabited island , also call Tristan da Cunha , in a residential area do it as Edinburgh of the Seven Seas .
A sign on Tristan da Cunha acknowledging the island’s remoteness.
Tristan da Cunha , or Tristan for unretentive , comprises six volcanic island that sit 1,500 miles ( 2,400 kilometers ) southwest of St. Helena island , another British outpost in the Atlantic . Together with Ascension Island , Tristan and St. Helena form a British Overseas Territory that spans more than 2,000 miles ( 3,250 km ) of the Atlantic Ocean , from a full point west off the coast of Gabon in Africa to a point farther to the south than the steer of South Africa .
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The chief island stretch 7.5 miles ( 12 km ) across and its cone - shaped volcano , called Queen Mary ’s Peak , rises 6,765 feet ( 2,062 meters ) above sea level . The vent ’s key crater isfilled with a bosom - determine lakethat freezes over in the wintertime and thaws in the summer , providing a inhuman bath for hikers that struggle up to the tip . The island is also a wildlife - witness ’s heaven , with seals , albatrosses and northerly rockhopper penguins ( Eudyptes moseleyi ) engender on its shore .
Tristan is accessible only by a six - Clarence Shepard Day Jr. boat journey from South Africa , andmost of its inhabitantsare farmers , harmonise to the BBC .
Evidence of past geologic activity deep in Earth’s mantle
Tristan ’s six islands are evidence of past geological bodily process deep in Earth ’s mantle , each organize from point in the oceanic crust . They are located about 250 mi ( 400 km ) E of the mid - Atlantic ridgepole , where the North and South American home meet those of Eurasia and Africa . Over fourth dimension , these plates have slowlymoved apart , allowing molten rocks to bubble up into the gaps between them . Tristan ’s islands are not connected to the ridge , but they similarly work as a result of magma gush from deep within Earth ’s layers .
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The archipelago was forge aeon ago from what scientistscall a hotspot — a orotund plume of hot stuff that rises from late within the Mickey Mantle , Earth ’s middle layer , and forms vent in the gall above it . The hot spot in interrogative sentence , known as the Walvis Ridge Hotspot , formed between South America and Africaroughly 132 million years ago , when these Continent were break up after million of years spent locked together in the ancientsupercontinentGondwana .
As the continent tore apart and Earth ’s crust began grinding westward over the Walvis Ridge Hotspot , vent grow one by one in a horizontal wrinkle beneath the open up Atlantic Ocean . These volcanoes grew to become islands and eventually went nonextant as they ramble farther away from their author of magma ( the hot spot ) .
The master island of Tristan da Cunha is the second - utmost east of the archipelago , meaning it go extinct shortly after four of the islands — Inaccessible , Nightingale , Middle and Stoltenhoff islands — and shortly before the farthest - east island of Gough .
chance on moreincredible places , where we play up the fantastic history and scientific discipline behind some of the most striking landscapes on Earth .
