National Geographic Magazine - UK November 2025

ONE OF THE MANY extraordinary things about humans is our capacity for dreaming. I don’t mean what we do when we sleep (although that’s pretty extraordinary too). I mean our ability to invent, to envision different and better futures, and to apply our brainpower—and our increasingly sophisticated technology—to turning ideas into reality. There’s a lot of dreaming on display in this issue. Our feature on the mega project known as ITER takes an in-depth look at a massive undertaking in southern France that, after decades of effort, is making new progress on the dream of nuclear fusion. Given fusion’s potential to generate massive amounts of energy without polluting the planet, the timing couldn’t be more critical. Another story heads into the lab and the field with the scientists dreaming up…

WILDLIFE “At first glance, their orange PLUMAGE might seem to make them an easy target for falcons and hawks. But when the birds FORAGE on a field like this, they’re invisible to predators.”MATEUSZ PIESIAK, photographer LANDSCAPES “We watched her smile bloom where NATURE had been erased. It felt like FUN to her.”MITHAIL AFRIGE CHOWDHURY, photographer OCEANS “Marine iguanas remind me how EVOLUTION sculpts life to meet the sea on the sea’s terms.”CRISTINA MITTERMEIER, photographer and National Geographic Explorer LIVELIHOODS “I wanted to capture the struggle between the man and the agave, where the man SUBDUES the agave to extract its juices. I envision it as a fight, almost.”RODRIGO ESTEVA, photographer…

A LIVING MEMORY UNESCO estimates that over three million shipwrecks, some dating back thousands of years, rest at the bottom of the oceans. Far from being mere relics, these submerged remains are true time capsules containing tangible traces of our collective memory. They bridge the past and the present, revealing the importance of maritime routes, the richness of intercultural exchanges, and valuable know-how that has now disappeared. Underwater archaeology allows us to uncover these ships, lost ports, submerged cities, and the treasures they hold. It plays a crucial role both in preserving our shared heritage and in contributing to the fight against climate change. A THREATENED HERITAGE Rising sea levels, coastal erosion, human activities, and climate change threaten underwater heritage, just as they do biodiversity and marine ecosystems. While some…

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORERS These contributors have received funding from the National Geographic Society, which is committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world. Learn more about the Society’s support of Explorers at natgeo.com/impact. Corey Arnold, p.112 At labs and field stations in Alaska, Oregon, and his home state of Washington, Arnold photographed scientists probing the secrets of animal hibernation, part of this month’s feature on how humans might be put into a state of torpor. He’s been an Explorer since 2019. Matt Black, p.92 Based in California’s Central Valley, Black has spent nearly three years photographing the landscapes of the American West using a thermal camera, creating the singular images on display in this issue, which show how wildfires are remaking the Sierra Nevada. Paolo Verzone, p.14 A…

REAL STARS, THE ONES IN SPACE, ARE SIMPLE BEASTS. Our sun formed some 4.6 billion years ago from a cloud consisting of essentially one ingredient: hydrogen, the most basic and abundant element in the universe. Gravity kneaded the cloud into a big, rotating ball and kept squeezing from there, density and warmth spiking, until its core reached about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. Hydrogen crumbles when collisions occur at this temperature and pressure, creating the soupy jumble of atomic parts known as plasma, the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid, and gas. Though rare on Earth outside of lightning bolts and neon signs, plasma accounts for over 99 percent of the solar system’s mass, most of it stored, highly agitated, in the sun. Throughout the sun’s soup, trillions of times…

THE BASICS OF FUSING ATOMS To capture the energy released during fusion, a reactor must confine plasma, an ionized gas that occurs when atoms have been stripped of their electrons. Fusion facilities are designed to channel and control that reaction for as long as possible, beginning with a multistep process to generate self-sustaining power. MAGNETIC CONFINEMENT ITER will rely on a large doughnut-shaped machine called a tokamak (below) to induce fusion. A central electromagnet creates an electric current that changes the deuterium and tritium gas into an ionized plasma. Then the electromagnet, working together with 24 other magnets, shapes and holds the plasma in place as it is bombarded with high-energy beams that raise its temperature to 270 million degrees Fahrenheit. SOURCE: ITER…