Scientists Announce ‘Ancient’ Discovery Hidden Beneath Antarctica

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Scientists announce mysterious discovery lurking beneath Antarctica ice

A team of German scientists has announced an unprecedented discovery that has been hiding beneath the ice of Antartica for millions of years.  

Researchers from Kiel University in Germany say they have discovered that Antartica holds the secrets of continents that preceded the creation of the ice-covered South Pole.

Lead scientist Jörg Ebbing, said that the vast continent contains the cores of other continents that existed before Antartica was formed.

“This observation leads back to the break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana and the link of Antarctica to the surrounding continents,” Ebbing said in a statement.

Westernjournal.com reports: Scientists believe that at one time, all of the Southern Hemisphere’s continents were part of one vast super continent called Gondwana. Current theory suggests the continents split apart 180 million years ago.

Some of the evidence for that is found in an area known as the Mawson Craton, which has a matching piece of land that is geologically similar in southern Australia.

The new research did not come from digging into the ice that hold Antarctica captive, but through a sophisticated use of the Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite that generated data about gravity and software to look below the ice to see what stories the rock would tell. The satellite orbited the Earth from 2009 through 2013.

“The satellite gravity data can be combined with seismological data to produce more-consistent images of the crust and upper mantle in 3D, which is crucial to understand how plate tectonics and deep mantle dynamics interact,” Ebbing said.

“These gravity images are revolutionizing our ability to study the least understood continent on Earth, Antarctica,” said Fausto Ferraccioli, the science leader of geology and geophysics at the British Antarctic Survey, according to the European Space Agency.

Ferraccioli said that scientists now know the eastern and western halves of Antarctica are very different.

“The new images show us the fundamental difference in the lithosphere beneath East and West Antarctica in agreement with previous seismic findings,” Ferraccioli said, according to Smithsonian.

“We also found a greater degree of complexity in the interior of East Antarctica than is apparent from current seismic views, suggesting that this part of the continent is a mosaic of old cratons and orogens. Some of these regions have clear ties to formerly adjacent continents in the supercontinent Gondwana—such as Australia, India and Africa,” he said.

“In East Antarctica, we see an exciting mosaic of geological features that reveal fundamental similarities and differences between the crust beneath Antarctica and other continents it was joined to until 160 million years ago,” Ferraccioli said, according to Space.com.

What they found was that in addition to areas where once-similar regions are now divided, there are regions called orogens, where pieces of continents collided, causing mountains to form.

In one area where the crust was very thin, researchers found evidence for what’s known as a mantle plume, in which volcanic material from the Earth’s core strains against the Earth’s surface, sometimes causing volcanoes.

“It is exciting to see that direct use of the gravity gradients, which were measured for the first time ever with GOCE, leads to a fresh independent look inside Earth – even below a thick sheet of ice, said ESA scientist Roger Haagmans.

“It also provides context of how continents were possibly connected in the past before they drifted apart owing to plate motion,” he said.

17 Comments

  1. Hey Pony!

    I can but will not until Stan disavows the spam flagging of my account by Mat and the mods.

    How the hell have you been doing?

  2. Trolling a blog full of trolls by doing nothing more than up voting the biggest troll has a zen quality to it don’t you think. 🙂

  3. Despite his attacks and trolling the little bugger has grown on me. He has some interesting insights on groupthink mentality and other things but it is buried in too much manure for most to even notice much less appreciate.

    His “no virus” stance is a bridge too far for me but do find some of the issues it brings up interesting.

  4. I like Fred but he gets to emotionally involved. He would be much better served if when mocked by the foibles of his religion just to laugh it off.

  5. I stumbled across that following one of his links. He is a believer that 9/11 was an inside job. I don’t want to believe that but there are historical precedent and my response is mostly emotional.

    One of my podcasts was talking about how the CIA had plans to bomb cities in FL and sink a US Navy ship back during Kennedy’s Admin and blame it on Cuba to force us to go to war against Castro.

    • As a National Security scholar, who was promoting the ideas that 911, Cuba, cities in Florida are US government operations?

  6. I haven’t spent the time to go down that rabbit hole. I used to go by the philosophy of ” don’t blame conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence”. Unfortunately things that have happened over the past several years has put me on a different tact.

    There is a theory that the craziest conspiracy theories out there are supported if not created by the powers that be as a psyop so when any real conspiracies are exposed they can be dismissed with a wave of the hand as nut job fodder.

  7. It creates a chaotic environment where nothing can be trusted and provides perfect cover for those with nefarious intent.

    No longer are people governed by reason or facts but by superstition and dogma of “their side”.

  8. I hate to leave good company but its going on 5am and I have to work tonight.

    Tag me some time and we can chat again. I enjoyed it as always.

    I hope the blog owner doesn’t get upset with us using one of his back pages. 🙂

  9. Having continents collide, is also prevalent in the San Francisco Bay. The Northern side of the Golden Gate – Marin county, Angel Island, Buena Vista Island, Alameda Island, and the South side of San Francisco are all different continental plates. The result of their convergence is the San Francisco Bay.

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