They Found In Antarctica What No One Was Supposed To See!

Antarctica is the world's southernmost continent. It is also the driest, windiest, coldest, and iciest continent in the world, and yet, the continent is home to numerous discoveries. Join us, as we look at 20 things, they found in Antarctica that no one was supposed to see.

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Pound Meteorite

During a trip to Antarctica's icy plains, an international team of researchers discovered five new meteorites, including one of the largest ever discovered on the continent. The meteorite is roughly the size of a cantaloupe and weighs 17 pounds. The specimen is one of only about 100 of its kind discovered in Antarctica, a prime meteorite hunting ground where over 45,000 space rocks have been discovered. The extraordinary find is now on its way to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, where it will be studied.

Meteorites are used by scientists to study the origin and evolution of the solar system using chemical methods. Strong acids are used to dissolve samples before using a process known as calibrated chemistry to isolate the various elements that make up the rock. Then experts can consider the rock's origin, evolution over time, what kind of parent body it came from, and where in the solar system that parent body formed. These are the big questions that experts try to answer.

Ancient Landscape Preserved Beneath Ice Sheet

The ancient, river-carved terrain beneath East Antarctica's undulating ice sheet, provides a stunning image of the region before glaciers blanketed the continent. Even though most of the land buried beneath the ice sheet has been destroyed over millennia by moving masses of ice, satellite data suggest that a patch next to the Aurora and Schmidt subglacial basins has remained essentially undisturbed for up to 34 million years, however, it's unclear whether the terrain has remained fully unchanged for 34 million years. The warming that occurred in sections of East Antarctica until around 14 million years ago may have caused some of the ice above it to melt. Understanding what lurks beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet will ultimately aid academics in forecasting its oscillations in a warming world.