You probably picture the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a floating island of bottles and bags you could walk across. But sail right through it or look down from a satellite, and you would not see a thing. The most famous environmental phenomenon on Earth is virtually invisible.

This deep dive unpacks how the patch formed, where the trash really comes from, and the strange mutant ecosystem it spawned. From the physics of ocean gyres to a paradigm-shifting study on the patch's true origins, the reality is far stranger and more complex than the myth.

• How the North Pacific gyre and Ekman flow trap debris into a dispersed microplastic confetti soup
• The scale: about 1.6 million square kilometers, roughly three times the size of France
• The 2022 finding that 75% to 86% of the floating plastic is abandoned industrial fishi ...