hidden world

the South Pole is more than penguins and

endless snow there's a hidden Ghost

World within it look it's right here on

the globe don't confuse Antarctica with

the Arctic which is at the top of our

Maps much smaller in size and let's face

it way less

mysterious the ice sheet covering

Antarctica is about 1 to 3 Mi thick

which is up to 16 eiel Towers stacked on

each other this massive blanket hides

the true features and cont tours of

Antarctica's land we still don't know

much about this mysterious continent and

it is ice and snow that are to blame we

still don't even know the true shape and

size of this continent mapping

Antarctica without some huge shovels is

an incredibly hard task but satellites

learned to penetrate the ice with their

cameras and now we know there's actually

an enormous dramatic ancient landscape

beneath the snow the ghost of the past

about 90 million years ago Antarctica

was a much warmer place it was actually

a lush rainforest with tons of plants

and probably teeming with life it even

had Rivers flowing through it then the

ice came this happened about 34 million

years ago during the transition from the

eocene to the aligos scene when our

planet cooled significantly it was the

beginning of one of our several ice

ages the land remained but now was

hidden under ice and snow that got

thicker and thicker to a regular eye

Antarctica turned into a white desert

vast flat and

featureless time went on this massive

ice sheet moved around smoothing and

Shifting the ground beneath it over the

millions of years it changed what the

land looked like now if we looked under

the ice it wouldn't hold any signs of

the original South Pole except for one

place

in areas where the ice is especially

thick and doesn't move much like in East

Antarctica it has actually worked the

other way around it became like a super

thick blanket that protects the

land normally things like wind or rain

slowly wear away the ground over time

changing its shape but since we have

this protective ice blanket it prevents

these natural processes from reaching

the stuff underneath so the ground

stayed almost the same for millions of

years like it's been frozen in time this

special area near the Aurora and Schmid

subglacial basins has become the ghost

of Antarctica's

landscape this place was barely touched

even since it was first covered in snow

34 million years ago this is a

historical footprint a place that can

tell us what Antarctica's ground looked

like before it became a freezing

nightmare as scientists peered under

East Antarctica they saw an amazing

ghost the traces of the rivers that were

flowing there millions of years ago

various valleys and some weird little

Islands as well as three big chunks of

land shaped like the letter U hey what's

that all

about you see the continents on our

planet are moving constantly sliding

along the red hot lava mantle like

cereal on milk over history they came

together and broke apart several times

hundreds of millions of years ago

several continents were a part of one

enormous

gondwana Antarctica was one of them it

used to be one huge landmass but when

gondwana broke apart the poor continent

got stretched by teonic

forces parts of land were pulled away

from each other whoosh and they got torn

apart and that's how we got these big

chunks or blocks of land under thick

layers of ice in any case

scientists now want to explore this

ghost a bit more but to study it deeply

they need to actually drill down through

the ice like using a straw to get to the

bottom of a thick shake this will help

them pick up some rocks and dirt from

way below to learn more about the

Earth's history and climate Antarctica

is the fifth largest continent in the

world approximately bigger than the

entirety of Europe or Australia

competing with the entire South America

in size a aside from East Antarctica we

discussed there are several more regions

Antarctica Peninsula South Pole West

Antarctica and the Ross

sea the continent is basically a frozen

sandbox and all its hidden mysterious

landscape is actually less explored than

Mars's

terrain we only know for sure that

without ice it wouldn't just be flat and

empty but an entire world full of big

mountains huge Canyons and even fiery

volcanoes some of these volcanoes are so

huge that they Peak above the layers of

snow in West Antarctica alone there are

at least 138 volcanoes though only about

eight or nine are active today one of

the craziest ones is Mount arabus the

southernmost volcano and the tallest one

on the continent about 12 and a half

th000 ft high and deep beneath the ice

sheet this guy hosts incredible

beautiful subvolcanic

caves the temperatures there are warm

enough for

t-shirts the Antarctic Peninsula or

lesser Antarctica looks like a bunch of

mountainous Islands deeply underground

it has newer volcanic rocks that are

part of the Pacific Ring of Fire which

is like a giant circle of volcanoes and

earthquake zones around the Pacific

Ocean the greater Antarctica is a huge

part almost as big as Australia it

consists consists of East Antarctica and

the South Pole beneath the ice it's a

place of rocks that have been around for

a very very long time including the

special Zone we

mentioned you probably know that

Antarctica is nearly devoid of humans no

wonder with a mean temperature of about

- 46°

F but even though this place is

horrifyingly cold and deserted life

still clings on you guessed it in the

Underworld

in 2017 scientists found DNA traces of

algae moss and even possibly unknown

small animals in the Deep caves that

means that even in such crazy conditions

there are still unique ecosystems

thriving in little isolated warm Pockets

beneath the snow there was another

incredible find beneath Antarctica's

Ross ice shelf a lively ecosystem vibing

within an underground

river scientists have long suspected

that Antarctica's underworld should have

some freshwater lakes and rivers one day

a satellite spotted a Groove there they

decided to explore it and used a hot

water drill to melt their way through

the ice as they reached the underworld

they dropped a camera into one of those

hidden fresh rivers and at first they

thought they'd find just some rocks or

something but instead they stumbled upon

hundreds of amphipod tiny shrimp-like

creatures

little ones instantly swarmed around the

lens shrimps blocked the camera and

scientists couldn't check out what they

wanted to pretty funny but at least that

means that there really is an important

ecosystem deep within Antarctica now

they're going to explore

it and all this is just the beginning of

the mysterious underworld Antarctica

snow also hides the deepest canyon on

Earth under the Denman Glacier well

Mariana Trench is still the deepest

point on Earth

but it's a part of the oceanic crust

geologically

speaking also in 1958 explorers found a

huge mountain range under the ice as big

and tall as the famous Alps mountains

the range stretched for about 745 Mi

with Peaks as high as 1.7 mil and all

this magnificence is buried under tons

of ice who knows what else we might find

there Antarctica holds about 60% of our

entire planet's freshwater which means

it would be pretty bad if it melted for

example there is this doomsday Glacier

officially known as Thwaites Glacier

it's a huge ice formation about the size

of Florida and it's melting right now

every year the sea levels rise by 4%

because of it if this guy melts away

completely the sea levels all around the

world will increase by 2 ft which might

not sound like a lot but it would be

catastrophic for coastal areas luckily

researchers have found that even if its

ey shelf were to collapse in the next 50

years the glacier itself wouldn't

Retreat as quickly as they feared it's

still losing ice rapidly but it would be

quite a slow

process that's it for today so hey if

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