How we measure a feeling.

We don’t claim to have felt every one. We assess each experience against defined, evidence-based criteria — astronomical data, access rarity, conservation status, and the peer-reviewed science of what moves people. The Awe Index is a research index, not a review: closer to an economics or a safety index than a star rating. No one expects the authors of such an index to have personally lived every data point — they expect the method to be sound, the inputs to be verifiable, and the reasoning to be shown. That is what we publish here.

Four of the six dimensions — vastness, novelty & rarity, exclusivity, and worldview shift — rest largely on that public evidence. The two most experiential — sensory intensity and meaning — draw on documented accounts and expert input, not our personal say-so. Each experience is assessed by the Nukaza editorial panel against the six dimensions; this is version 1.0, editorial and evidence-based, with a formal expert review panel — including specialists in the psychology of awe, astronomy and expedition travel — now being formed to review future editions.

On independence: we earn nothing from most of the rankings. The Index is not a sales list, a high score is never bought, and several top-ranked experiences we don’t and can’t sell. A score is a composite assessment of six weighted dimensions, not a measurement to the decimal — read 84 as “high, and here is why,” never as laboratory precision. Every entry carries an evidenced note explaining its placement.

Every experience is scored against six dimensions, each drawn from the psychology of awe, peak experience and transformation. Each dimension is rated 0–100 against defined anchors by our curation panel; the weighted sum is its Awe Score, out of 100. We publish the method in full because a ranking is only worth trusting if you can see how it was made.

Across a large and growing body of peer-reviewed work, awe — the response to something vast that transcends your current understanding — has been shown to change the body and the mind in measurable ways. Four findings anchor our rubric:

A randomised controlled “awe walk” intervention measurably increased prosocial positive emotion and wellbeing in older adults over eight weeks (Sturm et al., 2020), and awe experiences in nature reduced stress and PTSD symptoms in military veterans and at-risk youth (Anderson, Monroy & Keltner, 2018). Foundational to all of it: experiences deliver more lasting happiness than possessions (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).

This science informs the score. It is never the sales pitch. On an experience page you’ll find a story and a feeling — the research stays here, in the engine room, where it belongs.

The most extraordinary places on Earth are often the most fragile. We won’t pretend that visiting them is free of cost — so we do four things, in the open:

A gorilla permit funds the rangers that saved the species; a regulated whale swim supports the community that protects the bay; a scientist-led voyage pays for the research. These are the experiences we lean into. Where the footprint is genuinely high — a private flight to the Antarctic interior — we say so plainly, we favour operators who offset, and we’re honest that no contribution fully erases the cost. Some things, we simply won’t sell.

The world’s rarest moments move. A total eclipse arrives; a colony becomes reachable; a retreat proves itself. Every quarter we re-score the Index and publish the movement — what rose, what fell, and what entered for the first time. The definitive edition is published once a year.

See the Index →