Curious places in Ukraine

A 36,000-ton steel arch, taller than the Statue of Liberty, was slid into place over Chernobyl's destroyed reactor - the most complex engineering project ever attempted on a radioactive site.

Some birds can see ultraviolet reflections from radioactive patches and avoid them. Evolution may be selecting for radiation perception in just 40 years.

Black fungi on the walls of the Chernobyl reactor use melanin to convert gamma radiation into chemical energy, essentially eating the nuclear disaster. They grow toward radiation the way plants grow toward light. Scientists are studying them for use as radiation shields for astronauts.

These 2.5-billion-year-old rock bands record the moment cyanobacteria rusted the oceans. Each red stripe is a pulse of oxygen in an anoxic world.

Soviet mainframes the size of rooms stand outdoors in Kyiv. Relics of a parallel computing history where Ukrainian engineers built machines that rivaled IBM.

A 10-million-year gap in the geological record when almost no coal formed anywhere on Earth. The gap appeared about 300 million years ago when fungi evolved the ability to break down lignin, rotting dead trees before they could become coal.

The most radioactive forest on Earth is thriving. Without humans; wildlife populations exploded despite mutations. Challenging assumptions about radiation damage.