Scientists Just Dropped A Camera In The Deepest Hole In Antarctica & Found A Terrifying Secret

Scientists Just Dropped A Camera In The Deepest Hole In Antarctica & Found A Terrifying Secret

Our Planet that Fears Scientists Under Antarctica is home to new and ancient living species, some discovered and many yet to be seen. Scientists and explorers find new species emerging every day on land, and especially in Earth's vast, unexplored oceans. Even after years of disruption, the seas still remain mysterious, especially beneath the ancient ice sheets of Antarctica. Piercing the Antarctic ice used in recent years has revealed poorly understood ecosystems and never-before-seen creatures that both astound and depress distribution. Join us as we show you the fifteen things that lie beneath Antarctica that are bringing scientists down.

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, shrimplike 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, which they described in a statement. 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.

When the researchers sent a camera down through the icy tunnel and into the cavern, hundreds of tiny, blurry flecks in the water obscured the video feed. Initially, the team thought their equipment was faulty. But after refocusing the camera, they realized that the lens was being swarmed by tiny crustaceans known as amphipods. This caught the team off guard, as they had not expected to find any type of life this far below the icy surface.

Antarctica is the southernmost continent of the Southern Hemisphere and includes the South Pole. It is the only continent south of Africa and Oceania that does not contain a country. It is the driest place in the world, some parts of the continent have not rained for 2 million years. Finding the legendary continent in the south after a 200-year search; however, it was successfully concluded in 1840. Charles Wilkes, who sailed about 2,000 km along the coast in his sailboat, proved that there is indeed a large continent where the South Pole is, unlike the North Pole, which consists of seas. With a surface area of 14.4 million km², this continent is almost half the size of Africa. This region also includes several archipelagos such as South Shetland and South Georgia. Its name means “across the Arctic” (Greek: Antarctica). An average 2,000 m thick layer of ice covers Antarctica like armor. At the polar point, which was once called "inaccessible", the thickness of the ice reaches 4,335 m. This ice mass, with its volume of 24 million km³, constitutes 92 percent of all ice on earth. 350-600 m thick pieces of ice that break off its shores move at a speed of 1-3 m per day and pile on top of each other. One such floating mass, the Ross Ice Shelf, is almost the size of France, with an area of 540,000 square kilometers. The large pieces of ice that the tide takes off from the ice float and disperse to the environment. Among such icebergs, there are some that reach a size of 20,000 km². The South Pole has the coldest and stormiest climate on earth. The average temperature is -20°C in the summer, which can drop to -70°C when storms blow from the south. In the measurements made at the US observation station located at the geographical South Pole, it was determined that the annual average of the temperature is -50 °C, but it rises to -29 °C in the hottest month. In other words, the temperature of this largest refrigerator on earth is 22 degrees lower than the North Pole.