Antarctica



Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent. It contains the geographic South Pole and is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14,200,000 square kilometres (5,500,000 square miles), it is the fifth-largest continent and nearly twice the size of Australia. At 0.00008 people per square kilometre, it is by far the least densely populated continent. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 km (1.2 mi; 6,200 ft) in thickness, which extends to all but the northernmost reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula. Continue reading




Exploration and History

Belief in the existence of a Terra Australis - a vast continent located in the far south of the globe to "balance" the northern lands of Europe, Asia and north Africa - had existed since Ptolemy suggested the idea in order to preserve symmetry of landmass in the world. Depictions of a large southern landmass were common in maps such as the early 16th century Turkish Piri Reis map.

Even in the late 17th century, after explorers had found that South America and Australia were not part of "Antarctica," geographers believed that the continent was much larger than its actual size. However, as Antarctica has no indigenous population, it was mostly unexplored until the 19th century.

European maps continued to show this land until Captain James Cook's ships, Resolution and Adventure, crossed the Antarctic Circle on January 17, 1773 and again in 1774.

The first confirmed sighting of Antarctica can be narrowed down to the crews of ships captained by two individuals. According to various organizations (the National Science Foundation, NASA, the University of California, San Diego, and other sources, ships captained by three men sighted Antarctica in 1820: Fabian von Bellingshausen (a captain in the Russian Imperial Navy), Edward Bransfield (a captain in the British Navy), and Nathaniel Palmer (an American sealer out of Stonington, Connecticut).

Von Bellingshausen supposedly saw Antarctica on January 27, 1820, three days before Bransfield sighted land, and ten months before Palmer did so in November 1820. On that day the expedition led by Fabian von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev on two ships reached a point within 32 km (20 miles) of the Antarctic mainland and saw ice fields there.

In 1841, explorer James Clark Ross sailed through what is now known as the Ross Sea and discovered Ross Island. He sailed along a huge wall of ice that was later named the Ross Ice Shelf. Mount Erebus and Mount Terror are named after two ships from his expedition: HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

During an expedition led by Ernest Shackleton, parties led by T. W. Edgeworth David became the first to climb Mount Erebus and to reach the South Magnetic Pole.

On December 14, 1911, a party led by Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen from the ship Fram became the first to reach the South Pole, using a route from the Bay of Whales and up the Axel Heiberg Glacier. This area previously colonized by the famous "Claus Expedition".

Richard Evelyn Byrd led several voyages to the Antarctic by plane in the 1930s and 1940s. He is credited with implementing mechanized land transport and conducting extensive geological and biological research.

However, it was not until October 31, 1956 that anyone set foot on the South Pole again; on that day a U.S. Navy group led by Rear Admiral George Dufek successfully landed an aircraft there.




In the News





Deep sea and sediments bring iron to Antarctic waters, finds researcher   PhysOrg - March 6, 2024

Deep sea and sediments bring iron to Antarctic waters. The iron that fertilizes the waters around Antarctica mostly comes from the deep, upwelling waters and the sediments around the continent. Deep sea and sediments bring iron to Antarctic waters. The iron that fertilizes the waters around Antarctica mostly comes from the deep, upwelling waters and the sediments around the continent.




The lows and lows of Antarctic sea ice   PhysOrg - March 5, 2024

Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have revealed another summer of exceptionally low sea-ice extent around Antarctica. Sea-ice extent around the frozen continent was measured at 1.99 million square kilometers, with scientists suggesting a "regime shift" could be underway. It's the third year in a row Antarctic sea-ice extent has dropped below the long-term summer average of 2-4 million square kilometers, since satellite records began in 1979.




Antarctica's coasts are becoming less icy, researchers find   PhysOrg - March 4, 2024

An increase in pockets of open water in Antarctica's sea ice (polynyas) may mean coastal plants and animals could one day establish on the continent, University of Otago-led research suggests.




An El Nino Some 80 Years Ago Sparked The Retreat of Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier'   Science Alert - February 27, 2024

Substantial ice loss has been observed in the Antarctic region since the 1970s, but a new study suggests for at least some significant regions it actually started as far back as the 1940s, and perhaps even earlier.




Video: A pilotless aircraft (drone) has recently taken to the skies above Antarctica in a test flight that could revolutionize the way scientific data is gathered on the worldÕs ice-covered continent

Under the command of the British Antarctic SurveyÕs (BAS) Rothera Research Station, the Windracers ULTRA UAV is a fully autonomous plane with a 10-meter (32-feet) wingspan, capable of carrying 100 kilograms of cargo and recruitment for up to 1,000 kilometers (621 miles). Thanks to its high-tech autopilot system, it can take off, fly, and land safely with little input from a human operator. ItÕs been specially designed by Windracers, an autonomous drone operator, to deal with the tough Antarctica environment. For instance, if one of its two engines fails, the plane will still be able to fly and make it back to base. Likewise, it's been designed to still function even if certain components are damaged or fail.




Incredible 'Fibonacci' Spiral Was Made by a Pair of Ocean Creatures off Antarctica   Science Alert - January 10, 2024
The unfurling coil of light blue bubbles created a shape on the ocean surface that looked remarkably like a Fibonacci spiral - the famous mathematical pattern that often appears in the natural world, from plant to animal life.






The world's biggest iceberg is on the move after decades of being grounded on the seafloor in Antarctica   Science Alert - November 24, 2023

The huge mass of ice broke away from the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf in 1986, calved and grounded on the AntarcticÕs Weddell Sea floor almost immediately. The iceberg, named A23a, is about 400 meters (1,312 feet) thick, and almost 4,000 square kilometers (1,544 square miles) in area. Greater London, by way of comparison, is 1,572 square kilometers (607 square miles).




Collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is 'unavoidable,' study finds   Live Science - October 25, 2023

The rate at which the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting will accelerate over the coming decades and is now an "unavoidable" consequence of climate change, a new study finds.




'Frozen in time' landscape discovered under Antarctic ice   PhysOrg - October 24, 2023
Scientists revealed Tuesday that they had discovered a vast, hidden landscape of hills and valleys carved by ancient rivers that has been "frozen in time" under the Antarctic ice for millions of years.


'Ghost' of ancient river-carved landscape discovered beneath Antarctica   Live Science - October 24, 2023
Satellite data have revealed an ancient landscape that may have escaped erosion and been preserved beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet since the continent froze over 34 million years ago.


Scientists Discover Ancient River System Hidden Under Antarctic Ice   Science Alert - October 24, 2023
With ice-penetrating radar and satellite data, Durham University glaciologist Stewart Jamieson and colleagues mapped the topographic features of the landscape hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, to get a better understanding of how the ice sheet has fluctuated over time.


Ancient Landscape Not Seen For 14 Million Years Discovered Beneath Antarctic Ice   IFL Science - October 24, 2023
According to the researchers, the preservation of this primordial scenery attests to the fact that the EAIS has remained relatively unchanged for eons, yet this stability could soon be threatened by an unprecedented rise in global temperatures.




'One of the biggest on record': Ozone hole bigger than North America opens above Antarctica   Live Science - October 6, 2023

This year's hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica is one of the biggest ever seen, satellite data shows. Experts believe the huge gap in Earth's protective shield may have been caused by the eruption of Tonga's underwater volcano in early 2022. The ozone layer is a band of Earth's atmosphere between 9 and 18 miles (15 and 30 kilometers) above the surface, where there is a high concentration of ozone - a type of oxygen molecule with three atoms instead of two. The ozone layer blocks out harmful levels of ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun, which is necessary for various life forms, including humans, to survive.




As Antarctic sea ice continues its dramatic decline, we need more measurements and much better models   PhysOrg - September 26, 2023

A layer of frozen seawater that surrounds the Antarctic continent, sea ice cycles from maximum coverage in September to a minimum in February. The summer minimum has also continued to diminish, with three record low summers in the past seven years. Some scientists have suggested this year could mark a regime shift for Antarctic sea ice. The consequences could be far-reaching for Earth's climate, because sea ice keeps the planet cooler by reflecting solar energy back into the atmosphere and insulating the ocean. Its formation also generates cold, salty water masses that drive global ocean currents. The annual freeze-thaw cycle of Antarctic sea ice is one of Earth's largest seasonal changes, but is a major challenge for climate models to predict accurately. Since the 1970s, satellites have been tracking a quantity known as "sea ice extent," which is the total surface area where at least 15% is covered by sea ice.




Flowers Are Spreading in Antarctica as Summer Temperatures Soar   Science Alert - September 26, 2023

Antarctica is looking less and less recognizable with each passing year. On land, scientists have found flowering plants, moss, and algae spreading like never before, and at sea, the extent of floating sea ice has hit record lows.




Study finds Antarctica's glacial border migrates for miles with the tide   PhysOrg - September 26, 2023

The grounding line of the southern Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica can shift up to 15 km with changing tides, new analysis shows. The research, published today in The Cryosphere, examines the key region where land-based Antarctic ice spills over into the surrounding ocean. Observing and understanding the dynamics of this region can help scientists predict Antarctica's response to climate change, and so how much global sea levels will rise.




Antarctic sea-ice at 'mind-blowing' low alarms experts   BBC - September 17, 2023

The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming.




Heat waves are hitting Antarctica too now   PhysOrg - September 9, 2023

While Antarctica may seem isolated from the rest of the world, changes to the icy continent could significantly impact the rest of the world.




Ancient Mud in Mississippi Reveals Dramatic Saga of Antarctic Ice   Science Alert - September 3, 2023

Unearthing information from the Mississippi mud to answer a key question about how Antarctic ice massively expanded to continental scale




Icequakes in Antarctica linked to ocean tides   PhysOrg - August 28, 2023

When the ground rumbles in Antarctica, it may be an icequake - like an earthquake but caused by the movement of ice, not rock. A new study by Penn State researchers found that these seismic events are driven by ocean tides at a major ice stream in West Antarctica.




Scientists witnessed the first stages of a common accent developing in Antarctica among its ever-changing population of scientists who spend months together at research stations on the isolated continent   IFL Science - August 17, 2023
Antarctica has no native population or permanent residents, but it does have a transitory community of scientists and support staff who live there for part of the year on a rotational basis. In the summer months, there are typically around 5,000 people living in Antarctica, but that drops to just 1,000 in the winter. While most scientists are there to study things like climate and biodiversity, this extreme living environment has created the perfect petri dish to research certain aspects of human behavior, culture, and sociolinguistics.




Scientists Just Discovered a Strawberry-Like Antarctic Invertebrate With 20 Arms   Gizmodo - August 12, 2023

The Antarctic strawberry feather star is one of four new related species believed to have been discovered by a team of marine scientists.




Antarctica is missing an Argentina-sized amount of sea ice - and scientists are scrambling to figure out why   CNN - July 30, 2023

As the Northern Hemisphere swelters under a record-breaking summer heat wave, much further south, in the depths of winter, another terrifying climate record is being broken. Antarctic sea ice has fallen to unprecedented lows for this time of year. Every year, Antarctic sea ice shrinks to its lowest levels towards the end of February, during the continent's summer. The sea ice then builds back up over the winter. But this year scientists have observed something different. The sea ice has not returned to anywhere near expected levels. In fact it is at the lowest levels for this time of year since records began 45 years ago.




The Eerie Mystery of 'Blood Falls' in Antarctica Is Finally Solved   Science Alert - July 4, 2023

In 1911, during a British expedition to Antarctica, researchers were shocked to notice a glacier 'bleeding' from its tongue onto an ice-covered lake. The crimson drool is known as Blood Falls, and it's taken experts more than a century to figure out what is actually causing the eerie coloring. Minuscule particles come from ancient microbes and are a hundredth of the size of human red blood cells. They are highly abundant in the meltwaters of Taylor Glacier. Along with iron, the nanospheres also contain silicon, calcium, aluminum, and sodium, and this unique composition is part of what turns the briny, subglacial water red as it slips off the glacier's tongue and meets a world of oxygen, sunlight, and warmth for the first time in a long time.




Ice Sheet Collapse at Both Poles to Start Sooner Than Expected, Study Warns   Science Alert - February 27, 2023

Even if we manage to stabilize Earth's temperatures by peaking at 2°C, Greenland's and Antarctica's vast ice sheets are on track for irreversible melting, a new study warns.




17-pound meteorite found in Antarctica, likely hidden for millennia, is perfectly intact   Live Science - February 3, 2023

On a recent expedition to Antarctica, researchers discovered five perfectly-preserved meteorites that have likely been hiding beneath the ice for thousands of years. Scientists recently scooped up one of the heaviest meteorites ever discovered in Antarctica, as well as four other frozen space rocks that likely crashed into the icy continent thousands of years ago. The researchers found the minihoard of meteorites on the surface of the Nils Larsen blue ice zone near the Belgian-owned Princess Elisabeth Antarctica station. Of the five meteorites, the standout was a cantaloupe-size rock that weighed a whopping 16.7 pounds (7.6 kilograms). Of the 45,000 meteorites discovered in Antarctica, only around 100 have been as heavy as this cosmic cannonball.




Drilling campaign reaches a depth of 808 meters in the Antarctic ice sheet   PhysOrg - February 1, 2023
In Antarctica, the second drilling campaign of the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project, at the remote field site Little Dome C, has been successfully completed. This project is an unprecedented challenge for paleoclimatology studies and its goal is to go back 1.5 million years in time to reconstruct past temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations through the analysis of an ice core extracted from the depths of the ice sheet.




10 amazing discoveries from Antarctica in 2022   Live Science - December 30, 2022

A large number of scientific discoveries emerged from Earth's most southerly continent this year: 1 million-year-old DNA, Unprecedented rising temperatures at both poles, Doomsday glacier in danger, World's largest iceberg says farewell, Enormous underground river, Massive lake under the ice, Hidden World under the ice, New deepest point mapped, Logic-defying seemingly impossible phytoplankton blooms, Millions of fish nests




Logic-defying 'bottom blooms' could sustain hidden ecosystems in Arctic and Antarctica   Live Science - November 18, 2022
A pair of new studies has revealed 'highly unlikely' phytoplankton blooms appearing near the seafloor and under sea ice at both Earth's poles. Logic-defying phytoplankton blooms have been discovered lurking beneath the ocean's surface in both of Earth's polar regions, two unrelated new studies have revealed. The highly unlikely "bottom blooms," which grow near the seafloor in the Arctic and below sea ice in Antarctica, could support hidden ecosystems that scientists know nothing about.




Enormous river discovered beneath Antarctica is nearly 300 miles long   Live Science - November 2, 2022
A river longer than England's Thames flows beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, draining an area the size of France and Germany combined, new research reveals. This under-ice river was discovered using ice-penetrating radar mounted on aircraft. In a series of aerial surveys, researchers discovered a river system snaking 285 miles (460 kilometers) and draining into the Weddell Sea.




Ancient DNA From 1 Million Years Ago Discovered in Antarctica   Science Alert - October 10, 2022
As we're a species with ever-shrinking attention spans, it can be difficult to comprehend just how long life has been around on Earth. However, try to get your head around this one: Scientists have dug up fragments of DNA dating back 1 million years ago.




Researchers find 1 million-year-old marine DNA in Antarctic sediment   PhysOrg - October 5, 2022
A new study discovered the oldest marine DNA in deep-sea sediments of the Scotia Sea north of the Antarctic continent. The material could be dated to one million years. Such old material demonstrates that sedimentary DNA can open the pathway to study long-term responses of ocean ecosystems to climate change. This recognition will also help with assessing current and future change of marine life around the frozen continent.




The Thwaites Glacier 'Doomsday Glacier' in Antarctica Is Holding on 'By Its Fingernails', Scientists Warn   Science Alert - September 15, 2022
The melting of the Thwaites Glacier - which is around the size of Florida - could raise sea levels by up to two feet. It's that, and the fact that it acts as a buffer between warming seas and the much larger West Antarctic ice sheet, that gives it its ominous nickname. However, the new study, led by the University of South Florida (USF), found that the Thwaites glacier has melted far faster in past centuries than has been observed in recent years Ð meaning that a similar brisk pace of retreat could be triggered in the future. The researchers learned this by using underwater drones to map the sea floor under the glacier for the first time.




Discovery of 'hidden world' under Antarctic ice has scientists 'jumping for joy'. The secret ecosystem was found more than 1,600 feet below the surface.   Live Science - June 10 , 2022
A never-before-seen ecosystem lurks in an underground river deep below the icy surface in Antarctica. Researchers recently brought this "hidden world" into the light, revealing a dark and jagged cavern filled with swarms of tiny, shrimp-like creatures. The scientists found the secret subterranean habitat tucked away beneath the Larsen Ice Shelf - a massive, floating sheet of ice attached to the eastern coast of the Antarctic peninsula that famously birthed the world's largest iceberg in 2021. Satellite photos showed an unusual groove in the ice shelf close to where it met with the land, and researchers identified the peculiar feature as a subsurface river. The team drilled down around 1,640 feet (500 meters) below the ice's surface using a powerful hot-water hose to reach the underground chamber.




Vast Sonar Map Reveals The Seabed Around Antarctica as Never Seen Before   Science Alert - June 10 , 2022




Newly discovered lake may hold secret to Antarctic ice sheet's rise and fall   PhysOrg - May 11, 2022

Scientists investigating the underside of the world's largest ice sheet in East Antarctica have discovered a city-size lake whose sediments might contain a history of the ice sheet since its earliest beginnings. That would answer questions about what Antarctica was like before it froze, how climate change has affected it over its history, and how the ice sheet might behave as the world warms.




'Giant MRI of Antarctica' reveals 'fossil seawater' under ice sheet   Live Science - May 5, 2022
Beneath a fast-flowing ice stream in West Antarctica, scientists have discovered a vast aquifer brimming with seawater that's likely been locked down there for thousands of years. This is the first time scientists have detected groundwater beneath an ice stream in Antarctica, and the discovery could reshape our understanding of how the frigid continent reacts to climate change and what kinds of mysterious organisms lurk beneath its many ice shelves.




Antarctica: Ice lost, island found?   PhysOrg - May 5, 2022
The eastern coast of Antarctica has lost most of the Glenzer and Conger ice shelves. In the process, it gained what is likely an island. If confirmed, the unnamed island would be one in a series of islands exposed in recent years as portions of the floating glacial ice hugging the continent's coast have disintegrated.




The Quest to Save an Antarctic Kingdom Before It Falls Into Ruin. At the bottom of the world, scientists work to protect the kingdom of krill   CNET - May 5, 2022
In the world of Antarctic krill, the 6-foot-6 Rob King is a giant - literally and figuratively.




Underwater volcano in Antarctica triggers 85,000 earthquakes - the strongest seismic outburst ever recorded in Antarctica   Live Science - April 27, 2022

The quakes were likely caused by hot magma poking into the crust, new research finds.


Record-Breaking Earthquake Swarm Hits Antarctica as Sleeping Volcano Awakens   Science Alert - April 28, 2022
The swarm occurred around the Orca Seamount, an inactive volcano that rises 2,950 feet (900 meters) from the seafloor in the Bransfield Strait, a narrow passage between the South Shetland Islands and the northwestern tip of Antarctica. In this region, the Phoenix tectonic plate is diving beneath the continental Antarctic plate, creating a network of fault zones, stretching some portions of the crust and opening rifts in other places




In an Unexpected First, an Ice Shelf in Antarctica's "Coldest Region" Has Collapsed   Science Alert - March 26, 2022


Ice shelf collapses in previously stable East Antarctica   PhysOrg - March 26, 2022
An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change. The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer than normal in some spots of East Antarctica. Satellite photos show the area had been shrinking rapidly the last couple of years, and now scientists wonder if they have been overestimating East Antarctica's stability and resistance to global warming that has been melting ice rapidly on the smaller western side and the vulnerable peninsula..




Alarming heat waves hit Arctic and Antarctica at the same time. Temperatures peaked at least 50 degrees higher than average in both polar regions   Live Science - March 23, 2022

Both of Earth's polar regions recently experienced unprecedented simultaneous heat waves that caused temperatures to briefly skyrocket to never-before-seen heights in some areas. While experts say such extreme temperatures cannot be solely attributed to climate change, the unusual phenomenon is nonetheless "dramatic" and "alarming."




Record-breaking heatwaves hit both Antarctica and the Arctic simultaneously this week, with temperatures reaching 47¡C and 30¡C higher than normal   Science Alert - March 23, 2022
Record-breaking heatwaves hit both Antarctica and the Arctic simultaneously this week, with temperatures reaching 47¡C and 30¡C higher than normal. Heatwaves are bizarre at any time in Antarctica, but particularly now at the equinox as Antarctica is about to descend into winter darkness. Likewise, up north, the Arctic is just emerging from winter.




Hot poles: Antarctica, Arctic 40 and 30 degrees Celsius above normal   PhysOrg - March 19, 2022
Earth's poles are undergoing simultaneous freakish extreme heat with parts of Antarctica more than 70 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) warmer than average and areas of the Arctic more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) warmer than average. Weather stations in Antarctica shattered records Friday as the region neared autumn. The two-mile high (3,234 meters) Concordia station was at 10 degrees (-12.2 degrees Celsius),which is about 70 degrees warmer than average, while the even higher Vostok station hit a shade above 0 degrees (-17.7 degrees Celsius), beating its all-time record by about 27 degrees (15 degrees Celsius), according to a tweet from extreme weather record tracker Maximiliano Herrera. The coastal Terra Nova Base was far above freezing at 44.6 degrees (7 degrees Celsius).




Endurance


Endurance, the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was found at the bottom of the Weddell Sea appearing as if frozen in time, where it will remain.

Scientists have found and filmed one of the greatest ever undiscovered shipwrecks 107 years after it sank.   BBC - March 9, 2022


Shackleton's lost Endurance ship discovered beneath Antarctic sea - the wreck discovery is a milestone in polar history   Live Science - March 9, 2022
The wreck of the steam-yacht Endurance, which famously sank in 1915 during an Antarctic expedition by the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, has been rediscovered by searchers using autonomous underwater vehicles.


Endurance Expedition: Shackleton's Antarctic survival story   Live Science - March 9, 2022
The Endurance Expedition was a failed mission to cross the Antarctic on foot, leaving 28 explorers stranded.


Shackleton's Endurance shipwreck teeming with extreme creatures   Live Science - March 9, 2022
The extraordinary underwater photographs of the newly-found wreck of the Endurance have also revealed some equally extraordinary creatures lurking in the dark and freezing depths of Antarctica's Weddell Sea. Marine biologists that viewed the photographs have already spotted about half-a-dozen animal species, which underscores the wealth of life that can be found in even the most extreme environments.




Researchers find 1 million-year-old marine DNA in Antarctic sediment   PhysOrg - October 5, 2022
A new study discovered the oldest marine DNA in deep-sea sediments of the Scotia Sea north of the Antarctic continent. The material could be dated to one million years. Such old material demonstrates that sedimentary DNA can open the pathway to study long-term responses of ocean ecosystems to climate change. This recognition will also help with assessing current and future change of marine life around the frozen continent.




Scientists discover Antarctica's hidden geological past   PhysOrg - March 10, 2022
East Antarctica is the least known region of Earth. Studying this remote part of the continent is extremely difficult, requiring researchers to look beneath kilometers of blanketing ice. Data gathered provides new insights into the hidden geology of the South Pole that helps constrain the extent and the shape of the edge of East Antarctica.




Shockingly Abundant Life Found Thriving in Darkness Under an Antarctic Ekstrom Ice Shelf   Science Alert - December 21, 2021
Complete darkness and a thriving ecosystem that's existed for thousands of years




Wildfires burned Antarctica 75 million years ago, charcoal remnants reveal   Live Science - October 26, 2021
Raging wildfires tore through Antarctica 75 million years ago, back when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, a new study finds. During the late Cretaceous period (100 million to 66 million years ago), one of the warmest periods on Earth, Antarctica's James Ross Island was home to a temperate forest of conifers, ferns and flowering plants known as angiosperms, as well as to a slew of dinosaurs. But it wasn't a total paradise; ancient paleo-fires burned parts of those forests to a crisp, leaving behind charcoal remnants that scientists have now scooped up and studied.




Antarctica's last 6 months were the coldest on record   CNN - October 9, 2021
In a year of extreme heat, Antarctica's last six months were the coldest on record. For the polar darkness period, from April through September. The last six months is also the darkest period at the South Pole, which is where the name polar darkness (also called polar night) comes from. Here, the sun sets for the last time around the spring equinox, and does not rise again until near the autumn equinox six months later.




South Pole froze over in coldest winter on record   Live Science - October 5, 2021
Between April and September, a research station sitting on a high plateau in Antarctica, registered an average temperature of minus 78 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 61 degrees Celsius). That's the coldest temperature recorded since record keeping began in 1957, and about 4.5 F (2.5 C) lower than the most recent 30-year average.




Amid a record hot summer in large parts of Northern Hemisphere, beset by devastating fires, floods and hurricanes, Antarctica was mired in a deep, deep freeze   Seattle Times - October 4, 2021

Amid a record hot summer in large parts of Northern Hemisphere, beset by devastating fires, floods and hurricanes, Antarctica was mired in a deep, deep freeze. That's typically the case during the southernmost continent's winter months, but 2021 was different. The chill was exceptional, even for the coldest location on the planet.




Missing Antarctic microbes raise thorny questions about the search for aliens   Science News - August 11, 2021
Even in the harshest environments, microbes always seem to get by. They thrive everywhere from boiling-hot seafloor hydrothermal vents to high on Mt. Everest. Clumps of microbial cells have even been found clinging to the hull of the International Space Station. There was no reason for microbial ecologist Noah Fierer to expect that the 204 soil samples he and colleagues had collected near Antarctica's Shackleton Glacier would be any different. A spoonful of typical soil could easily contain billions of microbes, and Antarctic soils from other regions host at least a few thousand per gram. So he assumed that all of his samples would host at least some life, even though the air around Shackleton Glacier is so cold and so arid that Fierer often left his damp laundry outside to freeze-dry.




NASA Space Lasers Discover New Lakes Under Antarctic Ice   Science Alert - July 10, 2021




UN confirms 18.3C (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit) record heat in Antarctica   PhysOrg - July 1, 2021
The Antarctic Peninsula is among the fastest-warming regions of the planetÑalmost 3C over the last 50 years.




Antarctic lake suddenly disappears   PhysOrg - June 25, 2021
A global team of scientists discovered the sudden demise of a large, deep, ice-covered lake on the surface of an Antarctic ice shelf. This rare event, chronicled in a study occurred during the 2019 Antarctic winter on Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, and it is estimated that 600-750 million cubic meters (21-26 billion cubic feet) of water, about twice the volume of San Diego Bay, were lost to the ocean.




New Research Shows Maori Traveled to Antarctica at Least 1,000 Years Before Europeans   Science Alert - June 7, 2021
The first confirmed sighting of mainland Antarctica was attributed to a Russian expedition in 1820, while the first landing on the mainland is attributed to an American explorer in 1821. Now researchers suggest that the indigenous people of mainland New Zealand - Maori - have a significantly longer history with Earth's southernmost continent.




An enormous Antarctic iceberg A68 whose journeys were probably the most well-documented in history has now melted away to nothing in the Atlantic ocean   Science Alert - April 21, 2021
A68 cracked off the Larsen C ice sheet on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2017 as one of the biggest icebergs ever. At the time, it measured 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers), about the size of the state of Delaware. In the time since, the berg has been buffeted about the South Atlantic, curving up toward South Georgia Island. There, warm temperatures and waves broke it into large chunks. Those chunks have since fragmented into pieces too small to track. The U.S. National Ice Center tracks icebergs that are at least 10 nautical miles (18.5 kilometers) in length or that have an area of at least 20 square nautical miles (68.5 sq km). The largest piece of Larsen C no longer qualifies as of April 16, according to the Center's database: It measured only 3 nautical miles by 2 nautical miles (5.5 km by 3.7 km).




Evidence of Antarctic glacier's tipping point confirmed for first time   PhysOrg - April 2, 2021
Researchers have confirmed for the first time that Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica could cross tipping points, leading to a rapid and irreversible retreat which would have significant consequences for global sea level. A68 cracked off the Larsen C ice sheet on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2017 as one of the biggest icebergs ever. At the time, it measured 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers), about the size of the state of Delaware.




Particles of a Meteor Explosion From 430,000 Years Ago Found Hidden in Antarctic Ice   Science Alert - March 31, 2021
Roughly 430,000 years ago, an incandescent ball of hot gas came barreling out of the sky and slammed into Antarctica - and now, scientists have found tiny bits of debris formed by that impact.




Scientists uncover Antarctic sea creatures 'trapped under ice' for 50 years   Live Science - March 19, 2021
The first images from the seafloor reveal an amazing level of biodiversity in a region that was covered by thick ice for decades. Somehow, nutrients - either in the form of phytoplankton or organic particles flushed to sea with the ice above - are being dragged thousands of feet below the ice shelves of Antarctica to feed the bottom-dwelling creatures there, according to the AWI researchers. To learn more about the region's ecosystem, the research team gathered sediment samples from the sea floor, which will help reveal the water's nutrient content.




Antarctic seafloor exposed after 50 years of ice cover   BBC - March 17, 2021
German scientists have inspected an area of seafloor newly exposed by the calving of mega-iceberg A74 and found it to be teeming with animals. Video cameras tracked abundant filter feeders thriving among the soft muds. It was a remarkable opportunity for the team as their ship, RV Polarstern, threaded the still narrow gap that exists between A74 and the Brunt Ice Shelf, which produced the giant berg.




ICESat-2 satellite reveals shape, depth of Antarctic ice shelf fractures   PhysOrg - March 5, 2021
When a block of ice the size of Houston, Texas, broke off from East Antarctica's Amery Ice Shelf in 2019, scientists had anticipated the calving event, but not exactly where it would happen. Now, satellite data can help scientists measure the depth and shape of ice shelf fractures to better predict when and where calving events will occur, according to researchers.




Watch this giant iceberg break off from Antarctica   Space.com - March 3, 2021
New radar images captured from space reveal a giant iceberg breaking off in Antarctica.




Brunt Ice Shelf: Big iceberg calves near UK Antarctic base   BBC - February 26, 2021
A big iceberg approaching the size of Greater London has broken away from the Antarctic, close to Britain's Halley research station. Surface instruments on the Brunt Ice Shelf confirmed the split early on Friday. There is currently no-one in the base, so there is no risk to human life. The British Antarctic Survey has been operating Halley in a reduced role since 2017 because of the imminent prospect of a calving. The berg has been measured to cover 1,270 sq km. Halley is positioned just over 20km from the line of rupture. BAS has an array of GPS devices on the Brunt. These relay information about ice movements back to the agency's HQ in Cambridge.




Scientists find unexpected animal life far beneath Antarctica's floating ice shelves. The discovery of what appear to be sponges in the pitch-black seawater beneath almost half a mile of ice has biologists baffled   NBC - February 15, 2021

Strange creatures accidentally discovered beneath Antarctica's ice shelves   Eureka Alert - February 15, 2021

Mystery Lifeforms Have Been Found in The Hostile Darkness Beneath Antarctica   Science Alert - February 15, 2021




Researchers find 1 million-year-old marine DNA in Antarctic sediment   PhysOrg - October 5, 2021
A new study discovered the oldest marine DNA in deep-sea sediments of the Scotia Sea north of the Antarctic continent. The material could be dated to one million years. Such old material demonstrates that sedimentary DNA can open the pathway to study long-term responses of ocean ecosystems to climate change. This recognition will also help with assessing current and future change of marine life around the frozen continent.




Antarctic lava yields clues to Earth's past magnetic field   PhysOrg - February 4, 2021
The movement of molten metals in Earth's outer core generates a vast magnetic field that protects the planet from potentially harmful space weather. Throughout Earth's history, the structure of the magnetic field has fluctuated. However, data suggest that averaged over sufficient time, the field may be accurately approximated by a geocentric axial dipole (GAD) field - the magnetic field that would result from a bar magnet centered within Earth and aligned along its axis of rotation.




Antarctica Is Melting in a Way Our Climate Models Never Predicted, Scientists Say   Science Alert - February 4, 2021
The Antarctic ice sheet is not melting in the linear way our climate models predicted it would. Instead, a more detailed model shows that while the rate of ice loss in the South Pole is rapidly accelerating, there are bumps of snowfall and brief reprieves from melt along the way.




There is much to discover as the ice melts
Martian mineral, rare on Earth, found locked in Antarctic ice   Live Science - January 27, 2021
The yellow-brown mineral, called jarosite, requires both water and acidic conditions to form, according to NASA - conditions that are hard to find now on the Red Planet. Nonetheless, after the Opportunity rover first discovered jarosite on Mars in 2004, the mineral turned up in several Martian locations, leaving scientists to wonder how the mineral became so common


A Mineral That Keeps Showing Up on Mars Has Been Found Deep in The Antarctic Ice   Science Alert - February 1, 2021




Chileans receive mistaken tsunami warning following 7.1 Antarctic quake   PhysOrg - January 24, 2021
An unrelated 5.8-magnitude earthquake meanwhile struck near Santiago at 9:07 pm, which was felt in resorts along the central and northern Pacific coast, where tourists were enjoying the country's summer season.




Are strange space signals in Antarctica evidence of a parallel universe?   Astronomy.com - December 20, 2020
Last spring, a report from the world's largest neutrino telescope - a sprawling grid of detectors woven into Antarctica's ice - coincided with a blaze of hyperbolic headlines. They teased the possibility of an anti-universe where, from our point of view, time runs backward and the Big Bang represents an end, not a beginning. While it's too soon to start searching for our reverse-aging, other-handed doppelgangers, physicists are still wrestling with strange signals coming in from space that, to date, have defied easy explanation.




Antarctica rocked by 30,000 tremors in 3 months, Chilean scientists say   Reuters - December 16, 2020
More than 30,000 tremors have rocked Antarctica since the end of August, according to the University of Chile, a spike in seismic activity that has intrigued researchers who study the remote, snowbound continent. Scientists with the university's National Seismological Center said the small quakes - including one stronger shake of magnitude 6- were detected in the Bransfield Strait, a 60-mile wide (96-km) ocean channel between the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. Several tectonic plates and microplates meet near the strait, leading to frequent rumbling, but the past three months have been unusual, according to the center.




Are strange space signals in Antarctica evidence of a parallel universe?   Astronomy.com - December 20, 2020
Last spring, a report from the world's largest neutrino telescope - a sprawling grid of detectors woven into Antarctica's ice - coincided with a blaze of hyperbolic headlines. They teased the possibility of an anti-universe where, from our point of view, time runs backward and the Big Bang represents an end, not a beginning. While it's too soon to start searching for our reverse-aging, other-handed doppelgangers, physicists are still wrestling with strange signals coming in from space that, to date, have defied easy explanation.

At the heart of this mystery are neutrinos: ghostly, high-energy particles that can stream through almost any material unscathed but can produce the telltale radio pulses that ANITA catches. To further investigate the unusual signals, physicists turned to IceCube, a neutrino telescope made up of long strings of detectors buried near the South Pole. A neutrino passing through the ice may produce other particles that emit tiny flashes of light that IceCube's sensors can detect.

Scientists reasoned that ANITA's anomalies should also have produced signals in IceCube, and those signals could reveal the deep-space source of the particles. But after eight years' worth of data was searched, the mystery remained: The exhaustive analysis turned up no matches.





NASA Just Detected a Parallel Universe Where Time Runs Backwards After an Experiment in Antarctica   Alien Star - September 2020
Antarctica is ground zero for both theories and experiments nowadays. Most of the shocking discoveries of our generation were all made in Antarctica, and the more we look into it the stranger the land becomes, and the less we know about it. To be precise, this is NASA themselves confirming this, this is them stating that this parallel universe is unlike anything that we've seen or heard of before, and that time itself seems to run backward in it.




Half of Antarctic ice shelves could collapse in a flash, thanks to warming   Live Science - August 27, 2020

Antarctic ice shelves can disappear astonishingly fast - sometimes in minutes or hours - as meltwater surges through cracks in their surface. And as the atmosphere warms, this phenomenon may become more commonplace; at least half of the ice shelves on the continent are vulnerable to this process.




Scientists discover the fastest-melting spot in East Antarctica   Live Science - August 26, 2020
Located hundreds of feet below the Shirase Glacier in East Antarctica, the trough appears to be funneling warm ocean water directly against the base of the glacier's ice shelf (known as the Shirase Glacier Tongue), which juts out into the nearby bay like a frosty peninsula. This pipeline of warm water is causing the tongue to melt from the bottom up at an alarming rate - the base of the Shirase Glacier Tongue is losing 22 to 52 feet of ice per year (7 to 16 meters) - potentially making it the fastest-melting region in East Antarctica.




New study shows retreat of East Antarctic ice sheet during previous warm periods   PhysOrg - July 22, 2020
Questions about the stability of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet are a major source of uncertainty in estimates of how much sea level will rise as the Earth continues to warm. For decades, scientists thought the East Antarctic Ice Sheet had remained stable for millions of years, but recent studies have begun to cast doubt on this idea. Now, researchers at UC Santa Cruz have reported new evidence of substantial ice loss from East Antarctica during an interglacial warm period about 400,000 years ago.




Mysterious Particles Found in Antarctica Came From a Supermassive Black Hole   Mysterious Universe - July 4, 2020
Remember the stories just a few months ago about NASA allegedly finding a parallel universe over Antarctica where time appears to run backwards? Those stories originated with a frustrating fact that has baffled scientists at a loss for an answer - what are the strange subatomic particles known as neutrinos doing in Antarctica and where did they come from? As we suspected in reporting that seemingly unbelievable story, it wasn't from a reverse parallel universe. However, the real place it appears they may have originated from is just as unbelievable - a supermassive black hole.




How a hidden ocean circulates beneath the Antarctic ice   Live Science - July 2, 2020

Jules Verne sent his fictional submarine, the Nautilus, to the South Pole through a hidden ocean beneath a thick ice cap. Written 40 years before any explorer had reached the pole, his story was nevertheless only half fiction.There are indeed hidden ocean cavities around Antarctica, and our latest research explores how the ocean circulates underneath the continent's ice shelves - large floating extensions of the ice on land that rise and fall with the tides.




South Pole warming three times faster than rest of Earth: study   PhysOrg - June 29, 2020
The South Pole has warmed three times faster than the rest of the planet in the last 30 years due to warmer tropical ocean temperatures Antarctica's temperature varies widely according to season and region, and for years it had been thought that the South Pole had stayed cool even as the continent heated up. Researchers in New Zealand, Britain and the United States analyzed 60 years of weather station data and used computer modeling to show what was causing the accelerated warming. They found that warmer ocean temperatures in the western Pacific had over the decades lowered atmospheric pressure over the Weddell Sea in the southern Atlantic. This in turn had increased the flow of warm air directly over the South Pole - warming it by more than 1.83C (about 3.3F) since 1989..




Remains of 90 million-year-old rainforest discovered under Antarctic ice   Live Science - April 2, 2020

About 90 million years ago, West Antarctica was home to a thriving temperate rainforest, according to fossil roots, pollen and spores recently discovered there, a new study finds. The world was a different place back then. During the middle of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 65 million years ago), dinosaurs roamed Earth and sea levels were 558 feet (170 meters) higher than they are today. Sea-surface temperatures in the tropics were as hot as 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius).




Traces of ancient rainforest in Antarctica point to a warmer prehistoric world   PhysOrg - April 2, 2020
Researchers have found evidence of rainforests near the South Pole 90 million years ago, suggesting the climate was exceptionally warm at the time.




Antarctica's Denman Glacier is sinking into the world's deepest canyon   Live Science - April 1, 2020
The glaciers of Antarctica are melting at unprecedented rates, and a giant canyon in the continent's rocky underbelly could make matters much worse.




Spooky 'blood snow' invades Antarctic island   Live Science - February 26, 2020
It's summer in Antarctica, which means record-high temperatures, jarring glacial melt and - in a very metal symbol of our changing climate - a bit of blood-red snow spattered across the Antarctic Peninsula. Over the past several weeks, the ice around Ukraine's Vernadsky Research Base (located on Galindez Island, off the coast of Antarctica's northernmost peninsula) has been coated in what researchers are calling "raspberry snow." A Facebook post by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine shows the scene in full detail: streaks of red and pink slashing across the edges of glaciers and puddling on the frosty plains.




As Glaciers Melt, a New Island Popped Up in Antarctica   Smithsonian - February 26, 2020
High temperatures in Antarctica earlier this month have caused ice caps to melt to an unprecedented degree. As the glaciers retreat, they release pressure on the continent, allowing the ground itself to rise up. Sometimes, this effect stabilizes the ice by anchoring it in place, but rebounding ground could accelerate the glacial breakup by causing more cracks. When the latter happens and a glacier quickly sheds ice as the ground rises up, the land underneath maybe start to appear. Such is the story of how a never-before-seen island emerged off the coast of Antarctica recently.




Surprisingly warm water found on underside of Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier'   Live Science - January 30, 2020
An underwater robot named Icefin that has gone where no submersible has gone before - to the underbelly of Antarctica's "Doomsday Glacier" - has uncovered unusually warm temperatures there. The hunk of ice, officially known as the Thwaites Glacier, earned its ominous nickname because it is one of Antarctica's fastest melting glaciers. Even so, scientists were surprised to learn that waters at the ground line, the region where the glacier meets the sea, are more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the normal freezing temperature, according to news reports.



Scientists find record warm water in Antarctica, pointing to cause behind troubling glacier melt   PhysOrg - January 30, 2020
A team of scientists has observed, for the first time, the presence of warm water at a vital point underneath a glacier in Antarctica - an alarming discovery that points to the cause behind the gradual melting of this ice shelf while also raising concerns about sea-level rise around the globe.




Mysterious particles spewing from Antarctica defy physics   Live Science - January 24, 2020
Our best model of particle physics is bursting at the seams as it struggles to contain all the weirdness in the universe. Now, it seems more likely than ever that it might pop, thanks to a series of strange events in Antarctica. The death of this reigning physics paradigm, the Standard Model, has been predicted for decades. There are hints of its problems in the physics we already have. Strange results from laboratory experiments suggest flickers of ghostly new species of neutrinos beyond the three described in the Standard Model. And the universe seems full of dark matter that no particle in the Standard Model can explain.




Scientists Found the Deepest Land on Earth Hiding Beneath Antarctica's Ice   Live Science - December 13, 2019
A new map of the mountains, valleys and canyons hidden under Antarctica's ice has revealed the deepest land on Earth, and will help forecast future ice loss. The frozen southern continent can look pretty flat and featureless from above. But beneath the ice pack that's accumulated over the eons, there's an ancient continent, as textured as any other. And that texture turns out to be very important for predicting how and when ice will flow and which regions of ice are most vulnerable in a warming world. The new NASA map, called BedMachine Antarctica, mixes ice movement measurements, seismic measurements, radar and other data points to create the most detailed picture yet of Antarctica's hidden features.




This Antarctic Meteorite Holds a Tiny Speck of Stardust That's Older Than the Solar System   Live Science - April 30, 2019
A tiny speck of stardust, hidden within a meteorite from Antarctica, is likely older than our sun - and was catapulted into our celestial neighborhood by an ancient star explosion that predates the formation of our solar system. This ancient grain is only 1/25,000 of an inch, sports a "croissant-like shape," and could tell us a thing or two about the origins of our solar system




Uncovering Polynya - a body of unfrozen ocean that appeared within a thick body of ice during Antarctica's winter almost two years ago - Research unravels 43-year-old mystery in Antarctica   PhysOrg - April 24, 2019
The Maud-Rise Polynya was spotted in mid September 2017 in the center of an ice pack in Antarctica's Lazarev Sea, causing researchers to question how this phenomenon occurred during Antarctica's coldest, winter months when ice is at its thickest. Due to its difficult access location, NYUAD scientists used a combination of satellite observations and reanalysis data to discover that cyclones (as intense as category 11 in the Beaufort Scale) and the strong winds that they carry over the ice pack cause ice to shift in opposite directions, which leads to the opening of the Polynya.




Antarctica's Bizarre Green Icebergs Are More Than a Quirk of the Southern Ocean   Live Science - March 9, 2019
Scientists think they might know why some Antarctic icebergs are green. The reason could be iron oxide dust ground down by glaciers on the Antarctic mainland. If the theory holds, it means that the green 'bergs are more than just a quirk of the Southern Ocean. In fact, they might be crucial to the movement of ocean nutrients.




Scientists Pin Down Cause of Mysterious 'Icequakes' Shaking Antarctica   Live Science - March 5, 2019
For part of the summer in parts of Antarctica, the ice melts into a swampy, slushy stew and refreezes as the temperatures rise and fall. As it melts, it generates hundreds of thousands of tiny little "icequakes."




Human 'footprint' on Antarctica measured for first time   PhysOrg - March 4, 2019
Buildings alone cover more than 390 000 square metres of land while the visual footprint - the areas from which human activity can be seen - extends to more than 93,000 square kilometres.




Before There Were Dinosaurs, Triassic 'Lizard King' Ruled Antarctica   Live Science - January 31, 2019
Millions of years before the ground trembled under the footfalls of T. rex - the so-called "king of the dinosaurs" - a forested Antarctica was home to an iguana-size "lizard king." This ancient reptile was an archosaur - part of the same group that would later include dinosaurs, pterosaurs and crocodilians. Scientists recently discovered a partial skeleton of the lizard dating to 250 million years ago, a time when Antarctica was bursting with plant and animal life. Not only does the fossil of this former "king" provide a sharper picture of the forest landscape in long-ago Antarctica, it also helps to explain the evolutionary landscape following the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, scientists reported in a new study.




Antarctica is losing 6 times more ice a year than it was in the 1970s and experts predict climate change will cause 'multi-meter sea level rise' in the next few centuries   Daily Mail - January 14, 2019

Antarctica is shedding ice at a staggering rate. Scientists have discovered global warming has caused the melting of the ice on the continent to increase sixfold since 1979. This phenomenal rate of melting has seen global sea levels rise by more than half an inch - and experts predict it will get worse. Scientists have predicted a 'multi-meter sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries' as a result of the vast loss of ice.




Ancient Antarctic ice sheet collapse could happen again, triggering a new global flood   PhysOrg - December 25, 2018
t's happened before, and it could happen again. Tens of thousands of years ago, a giant ice sheet in Antarctic melted, raising sea levels by up to 30 feet around the world. This inundated huge swaths of what had been dry land. Scientists think it could happen again as the world heats up because of man-made global warming, new research suggests. Such a collapse would again cause seas to rise dramatically, which would lead to a global flood.




Antarctic Island Exploded 4,000 Years Ago   Live Science - November 29, 2018
Horseshoe-shaped Deception Island in Antarctica has finally revealed one of its most closely held secrets - when it exploded. The island, an active volcano, got its unusual shape during a long-ago eruption that ejected massive amounts of rock and magma to form a bowl-shaped depression called a caldera. Now, researchers know that the massive eruption happened around 4,050 years ago. This information will help volcanologists understand the volcano bette. The findings will also help scientists like Antoniades, who studies ancient climate, figure out how Deception Island's eruption affected Antarctica's climate.


Deceptive and Dangerous: A Gallery of An Antarctic Volcano   Live Science - November 29, 2018
The watery caldera of Deception Island, Antarctia, formed when the island (an active volcano) erupted. Now, for the first time, scientists have a good estimate of when this caldera-forming eruption occurred.




Beneath Antarctica's Ice, Intriguing Evidence of Lost Continents   Live Science - November 13, 2018
A new map reveals the remnants of ancient continents that lurk beneath Antarctica's ice. The map shows that East Antarctica is made up of multiple cratons, which are the cores of continents that came before. This observation leads back to the break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana and the link of Antarctica to the surrounding continents




Huge Lakes Thought to Be Hiding Beneath Antarctica's Ice Seem to Have Vanished   Live Science - November 10, 2018
An icy mystery brewing under Recovery Glacier in Antarctica has scientists scratching their heads. Where researchers once thought there was a network of under-ice lakes, there now seem to be none. Antarctic researchers have long believed that large lakes lie hidden beneath the glacier in East Antarctica, trapped between the base of the ice and the bedrock of the Antarctic continent. A new study, though, failed to find any evidence of such large bodies of water.




NASA spots massive new iceberg three times the size of Manhattan in Antarctica   Daily Mail - November 9, 2018
A close-up view of the rift separating Pine Island Glacier and iceberg B-46, as seen on an Operation IceBridge flight on November 7, 2018. Wednesday's flight plan took the IceBridge team over Pine Island Glacier as part of the long-running campaign to collect year-over-year measurements of sea ice, glaciers, and critical regions of Earth's ice sheets. The giant berg may not last long - NASA said 'satellite imagery and the IceBridge flight showed that the main iceberg is already beginning to break up.




Relics of 'lost continents' hidden under Antarctica are revealed by satellite images after scientists track 200 million years of tectonic plate shifts   Daily Mail - November 9, 2018
Satellite images reveal a timeline of the ancient landmasses buried a mile (1.6 km) beneath the icy continent. Scientists said the snaps shed new light on Antarctica, the 'least understood continent on Earth'. They used data from the long-dead Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), which plummeted into Earth after it ran out of fuel in 2013.




An Antarctic ice shelf is singing, and it sounds like an eerie sci-fi soundtrack   NBC - October 18, 2018
One of the world's biggest slabs of ice is singing. Wind blowing over the rough surface of Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf causes the frigid, France-sized expanse to produce a nearly continuous series of tones, according to research published Tuesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The tones are too low to be heard by humans, but sped-up renditions have been likened to everything from the haunting drone of a didgeridoo to the soundtrack of a 1950s movie about space aliens.




Antarctica as you've never seen it before: Scientists release the most accurate, high-resolution terrain map ever created   Daily Mail - September 7, 2018
The new map shows a much better look at the icy continent's surface features, with a crisp resolution of 2 to 8 meters Ð compared to the previous standard of 1,000 meters. The massive 150 terabyte file will provide much more precise information for scientists planning to explore the region.




Volcano under ice sheet suggests thickening of West Antarctic ice is short-term   PhysOrg - September 6, 2018
A region of West Antarctica is behaving differently from most of the continent's ice: A large patch of ice there is thickening, unlike other parts of West Antarctica that are losing ice. Whether this thickening trend will continue affects the overall amount that melting or collapsing glaciers could raise the level of the world's oceans.




Researchers discover volcanic heat source under major Antarctic glacier   PhysOrg - June 25, 2018
A researcher from the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography and five other scientists have discovered an active volcanic heat source beneath the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet lies atop a major volcanic rift system, but there had been no evidence of current magmatic activity




Giant canyons discovered in Antarctica   BBC - May 24, 2018
The biggest of the canyons is called Foundation Trough. It is over 350km long and 35km wide. To put that on a more recognizable scale - think of a deeply incised valley running between London and Manchester. The two other troughs are equally vast. The Patuxent Trough is more than 300km long and over 15km wide, while the Offset Rift Basin is 150km long and 30km wide. And all of this relief is buried under many hundreds of metres of ice. To get to the floor of Foundation Trough, for example, you would need to drill through over 2km of ice cover. The three troughs together lie under and cross the so-called "ice divide" - the high ice ridge that runs from the South Pole out towards the coast of West Antarctica. This divide can be thought of as a kind of watershed. Ice flows away on either side, through the channels - towards the Weddell Sea in the east and the Ross Sea in the west.




Antarctica's: Scientists Rush to Explore Underwater World Hidden for 120,000 Years Below Ice   Live Science - February 12, 2018
A huge, trillion-ton iceberg about the size of Delaware broke free from Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf in July 2017. As it moved away from its chilly birth mom and into the Weddell Sea, a vast expanse of water saw the light for the first time in up to 120,000 years. And this month, a team of scientists will venture to the long-ice-buried expanse to investigate the mysterious ecosystem that was hidden beneath the Antarctic ice shelf for so long. The newly exposed seabed stretches across an area of about 2,246 square miles (5,818 square kilometers), according to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which is leading the expedition. The scientists consider their journey "urgent," as they hope to document the system before sunlight begins to change at least the surface layers.




Antarctica's Larsen C Iceberg Will Tower 600 Feet Over the Ocean   Live Science - February 12, 2018
It hasn't calved yet, but scientists already have a pretty good idea of what the iceberg splitting from Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf will look like. Using satellite measurements from the European Space Agency (ESA), researchers have found that the new 'berg will tower 623 feet (190 meters) high over the ocean's surface and contain 277 cubic miles (1,155 cubic kilometers) of ice. The surface area of the ice threatening to break off is around 2,548 square miles (6,600 square km)




Life in Lake Vostok? The link between Antarctica and extra-terrestrials   The Conversation - February 13, 2012
What does a sub-glacial lake in Antarctica have in common with the alien moons of Jupiter? Late last week the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) announced they had successfully drilled into the elusive sub-glacial Lake Vostok, a body of water lying under nearly 4km of Antarctic ice. The breakthrough is the result of 20 years of drilling at one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Much of the interest in the 15,000 square-kilometre Lake Vostok revolves around the fact any micro-organisms within it have been isolated for anywhere up to 30 million years, trapped in an environment similar to that of the moons of Jupiter. So what does a sub-glacial lake in Antarctica have in common with the alien moons of Jupiter? And what's the significance of the Lake Vostok exploration when we consider the search for extra-terrestrial life?




Science & Pseudoscience


The truth about reality and planet Earth is buried beneath Antarctica which is rapidly melting down to reveal secrets linked to human creation and destiny. From alien underground bases to the answers to questions asked throughout eternity - it is not Atlantis that will rise - it is Antarctica. Each week we are presented with information about Antarctica's fast melting glaciers. As in most places around the world, UFOs and strange lights have been seen over Antarctica. Some people associate UFOs with Nazi Germany experiments in underground facilities. There is no verified physical evidence of this.






Mysterious Particles Found in Antarctica Came From a Supermassive Black Hole   Mysterious Universe - July 4, 2020

Remember the stories just a few months ago about NASA allegedly finding a parallel universe over Antarctica where time appears to run backwards? Those stories originated with a frustrating fact that has baffled scientists at a loss for an answer - what are the strange subatomic particles known as neutrinos doing in Antarctica and where did they come from? As we suspected in reporting that seemingly unbelievable story, it wasn't from a reverse parallel universe. However, the real place it appears they may have originated from is just as unbelievable - a supermassive black hole.




Landed in Antarctica For the first time, astronomers followed cosmic neutrinos into the fire-spitting heart of a supermassive blazar. July 12, 2018
On Sept. 22, 2017, a particle known as a neutrino zinged down from the sky and through the ice of Antarctica at nearly the speed of light, setting off a cascade of alarms in an array of detectors called IceCube. Within seconds IceCube had alerted an armada of astronomical satellites, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. That spacecraft traced the neutrino back to an obscure dot in the sky, a distant galaxy known as TXS 0506+056, just off the left shoulder of the constellation Orion, which was having a high-energy outburst of X-rays and gamma-rays. Astronomers said the discovery could provide a long sought clue to one of the enduring mysteries of physics and the cosmos. Where does the rain of high-energy particles from space known as cosmic rays come from? One thing is clear - the supermassive black hole provides the accelerator power










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