The giant orange icebreaker Aurora Australis left Australia for the final time on Saturday after more than 150 trips to Antarctica. Next stop: a shipyard in Dubai, where it will be refurbished and either leased or sold.

At this very moment a vast world exists that’s free of the coronavirus, where people can mingle without masks and watch the pandemic unfold from thousands of miles away.

Even the world's coldest continent is not immune to rising global temperatures, with scientists recording the first ever heatwave event in Antarctica over the 2019-20 summer period.

Record high temperatures reportedly measured in Antarctica will take months to verify, the U.N. weather agency said Sunday.

The temperature in northern Antarctica hit nearly 65 degrees (18.3 degrees Celsius), a likely heat record on the continent best known for snow, ice and penguins.