Blurs

Antarctica appears to be one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. A vast continent buried beneath an ice sheet several kilometres thick, with temperatures capable of falling far below freezing and enormous regions untouched by direct sunlight. Yet beneath all that ice lies something extraordinary. Water. Not simply isolated pockets of melted ice, but an interconnected environment containing hundreds of known subglacial lakes, channels and rivers. Some of these hidden bodies of water have been sealed beneath the Antarctic ice for extraordinarily long periods. And scientists are beginning to discover that the world beneath Antarctica may be far more dynamic—and potentially far more biologically interesting—than previously imagined. Antarctica's Hidden Landscape When we picture Antarctica, we usually imagine a frozen continent. But the surface of the ice tells only part of the story. Beneath it lies a complex landscape of mountains, valleys, canyons, basins and ancient geological...

When most people think of archaeology, they imagine buried cities, ancient temples or long-forgotten tombs.  Antarctica, a frozen continent covered by kilometres of ice, seems an unlikely place for archaeological discovery. Yet some of the most important clues about humanity's past—and the history of our planet—are being uncovered not from ruins, but from deep within Antarctica's ancient ice. These frozen archives contain a remarkable record stretching back hundreds of thousands of years.  By drilling deep into the Antarctic ice sheet and extracting cylindrical samples known as ice cores, scientists can effectively travel backwards through time, examining atmospheric conditions, volcanic eruptions and climate changes that occurred long before written history began. While not archaeology in the traditional sense, ice-core research functions as a form of planetary archaeology, revealing a hidden record of Earth's past preserved in layer upon layer of ancient ice. Nature's...