When a mysterious series of temblors emanated from the uninhabited South Sandwich Islands, scientists all over the world found themselves scratching their heads in confusion. 



First a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck under the islands, a British Overseas Territory in the frigid waters of the southern Atlantic Ocean. Three minutes later, a magnitude 8.1 quake shook the region again.

These rumblings, which occurred on August 12, 2021, were not unusual on their own, since the islands sit atop a combative meeting of tectonic plates. The odd part is that they were followed by a tsunami powerful enough to show up on distant shores along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Although the swell wasn’t destructive, it was the first since the