A massive, detached coral reef the size of a skyscraper has been discovered in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, researchers announced Monday, marking the first such find in over a century.

The remarkable, 1,600-foot-tall underwater structure – the first to be discovered in 120 years – is taller than manmade buildings like France’s Eiffel Tower, New York City’s Empire State Building, and Britain’s tallest building, the 95-storey The Shard.

The unexpected discovery was made on Oct. 20 by a team of Australian scientists on the Schmidt Ocean Institute research vessel Falkor who were on a 12-month expedition conducting underwater mapping of the northern seafloor of the Great Barrier Reef.

On Sunday, the team used the institute’s underwater robot or remotely operated vehicle (ROV) SuBastian to explore the new reef. The institute live-streamed the robotic dive and subsequent “climb” up the reef, allowing viewers across the world to enjoy close-up views of the tremendous natural structure.

The blade-like reef measures nearly a mile wide at its base, and its tallest point extends to about 130 feet below the surface of the ocean.

“This unexpected discovery affirms that we continue to find unknown structures and new species in our ocean,” Wendy Schmidt, the institute’s co-founder, said in a statement. “The state of our knowledge about what’s in the ocean has long been so limited. Thanks to new technologies that work as our eyes, ears and hands in the deep ocean, we have the capacity to explore like never before. New oceanscapes are opening to us, revealing the ecosystems and diverse life forms that share the planet with us.”

The towering reef lies off the coast of North Queensland, in the area surrounding Cape York. Since the late 19th century, seven detached reefs have been found in the region.

“We are surprised and elated by what we have found,” said Robin Beaman, a marine geologist at James Cook University who is leading the expedition. “To not only 3D map the reef in detail, but also visually see this discovery with SuBastian is incredible.”

The expansive Great Barrier Reef comprises about 2,900 reefs and 900 islands. It is home to an incredible array of fish, shrimp, and various other reef denizens.

In recent years, dead coral reefs have become one of the major horrors resulting from the impact of human economic activities, with thousands of miles of coral ecosystem across the globe being transformed into bleached-out graveyards due to the devastating impact of fast-heating ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, pollution, marine pests, and overfishing.

The newfound reef is completely separate from the main shelf edge of the Great Barrier Reef, and very little is known about why such detached reefs exist.

And while the Great Barrier Reef has felt a devastating impact from recent coral bleaching, the newly-discovered reef appears to be mostly intact.

“To find a new half-a-kilometer tall reef in the offshore Cape York area of the well-recognized Great Barrier Reef shows how mysterious the world is just beyond our coastline,” said Jyotika Virmani, the executive director of Schmidt Ocean Institute. “This powerful combination of mapping data and underwater imagery will be used to understand this new reef and its role within the incredible Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.”

An international team of scientists have discovered evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean are starting to be released, potentially adding dangerous fuel to fast-changing global climate conditions.

According to the International Siberian Shelf Study (ISSS-2020), methane levels at the surface of the ocean are currently four to eight times higher than normal, while slope sediments extending across the continental shelf contain a wealth of frozen methane hydrates, reports The Guardian.

The frozen methane deposits are believed to be “sleeping giants of the carbon cycle,” because the release of the greenhouse gas could potentially expedite climate change  due to the fact that it has a warming effect that is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The release of methane into the atmosphere is believed to be one of the major contributors to global warming, scientists have warned.

“Climate warming is awakening the ‘sleeping giants’ of the carbon cycle, namely permafrost and methane hydrates,” Stockholm University Prof. Örjan Gustafsson, a leader of the ISSS-2020 expedition, said in a statement last month.

“How much this will lead to added emissions of the strong greenhouse gas methane is poorly understood,” he added. “This is one of the grand challenges in current climate change research and a central goal of the expedition to address.”

The new discovery of methane released in the Arctic Ocean is now raising major concerns that a new climate feedback loop may have just begun.

The ISSS-2020 explained:

“One of the greatest uncertainties surrounding climate warming [concerns] the emission of naturally occurring greenhouse gases, such as methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide (N2O) from Arctic thawing permafrost, and collapsing methane hydrates—crystals made of methane gas molecules ‘caged’ between solid water molecules—in the seabed north of Siberia will increase in the future.”

The chief scientist of the expedition, Prof. Igor Semiletov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called the methane discharges “significantly larger” than anything previously observed. The leader of the ISSS-2020 team also acknowledged that their findings are preliminary, and the actual scale of methane releases still need to be analyzed and confirmed.

“The discovery of actively releasing shelf slope hydrates is very important and unknown until now,” Semiletov said. “This is a new page. Potentially they can have serious climate consequences, but we need more study before we can confirm that.”

Likewise, any impact on the climate won’t be felt in the near future. However, in time the massive release of methane could very likely contribute to the changing climate.

“At this moment, there is unlikely to be any major impact on global warming, but the point is that this process has now been triggered,” Gustafsson said. “This East Siberian slope methane hydrate system has been perturbed and the process will be ongoing.”

Burger King locations in Sweden and Denmark are running a strange promotion in their restrooms for Halloween. For a limited time, customers who say the phrase “canceled clown” 3 times in the bathroom will trigger the lights to dim and cause an image of a creepy Ronald McDonald to appear in the mirror. The strange promotion is made possible by voice recognition software that was installed by a Swedish company called INGO Stockholm. The phrase triggers the lights to go off and also triggers visual effects on a two-way “smart mirror.”

“A few years ago, a particular clown got abruptly ‘canceled’ from his long-standing job at a certain hamburger chain. But this Halloween he is back — at Burger King restrooms. If you do dare to summon him, it might be worth your while,” Burger King said in an announcement of the promotion.

Burger King locations in the region have frequently taken shots at their top rival McDonalds. 

For one promotion in December of 2018, Burger King customers could get a Whopper for just $0.01 if they walked by a McDonald’s with it. Earlier this year, Burger King locations in Finland offered customers free delivery if they had their food sent to a McDonald’s location and ate it there. To add insult to injury, the company placed ads for the promotion outside of some McDonald’s locations.

The most recent promotion about the “canceled clown” is taking a shot at McDonald’s because the company was forced to cancel the famous character after it was determined that the mascot was promoting junk food to kids. A group of 550 doctors took out newspaper ads in 2011, insisting Ronald McDonald retire.

McDonald’s global business has been struggling in recent years.

In 2015, the company’s incoming CEO, Steve Easterbrook admitted that massive changes would be needed to improve McDonald’s struggling reputation.

“I think there is a hunger and an interest in our business to embrace change. McDonald’s management team is keenly focused on acting more quickly to better address today’s consumer needs, expectations, and the competitive marketplace,” Easterbrook said.

For the fiscal year of 2018, McDonald’s reported earnings of $5.9 billion, with an annual revenue of $21.0 billion, which is a decrease of 7.9% from the previous year. Meanwhile, Burger King has seen an increase in revenue in recent years after a few years of struggling starting in 2013.

It is not hard to see that decline of McDonald’s is happening, even in your own local neighborhood. Where once there were lines wrapped around the parking lot at multiple Mcdonald’s locations in every town, there are now very sparse crowds at the restaurant, even in high traffic areas and during busy times.