Ghost mountains in Antarctica
By tony leather, 24th Mar 2011 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutTravelOther
There has long been a suspicion that the Antarctic ice-shelf covered a continent size land mass, but there was little known about it until ground penetrating radar revealed some amazing images.
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It has been no secret, for hundreds of years now, that there lies, beneath the miles-thick ice of Antarctica, a large, continent-size land mass, though how it might look was always a puzzle. A massive mountain range, buried under millions of tones of ice of ice, has been puzzling scientists, since first being discovered fifty years ago. The very remoteness, and inaccessibility of the Gamburstev Sub-glacial Mountain range, are the reason for it being the least understood mountain range on the planet, at least before now.
Surveys of this range were always going to be very challenging, but would potentially lead to major new findings, about landscape, geology and ice sheet of the East Antarctica region, the finding of many large ice structures, within the continent is quite unexpected, water being pushed up ice-covered river valleys, on reaching the end freezing on to the base part of the ice sheet itself.
During the years 2008/9, ground-penetrating radar results, from exhaustive surveys, have at last provided geologists with the most detailed images yet of the Gamburtsev Mountain, surprisingly serrated , as mountain ranges go, according to the experts. These startling images show a slightly exaggerated view of the approximately 8,500-foot-tall peaks., in all their jagged glory, probably formed millions of years before Antarctic ice covered them, according to geophysicist Robin Bell, of Columbia University, who led an expedition, to study the range, as part of the science program, for the International Polar Year of 2008.
Dr Bell maintained that, In size and shape, the Gamburtsevs resemble the United States' Cascade Range of mountains, and that the expedition, with colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey, had led to the discovery of the growth of ice sheets, at the base of the ice covering, which helped shed light on how the Earth works, and the effects that global warming is having ob Antarctica generally. Just getting an idea of how this mountain range would look when fully exposed is quite fascinating, showing how different ancient earth must have been.
Comments
27th Mar 2011 (#)
wow fantastic, I also know they have found some fossils in Antartica, but who really wants to work down there, I am struggling enough with Canadian winters and snow!
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