Researchers have always been interested in such a mysterious continent as Antarctica. Many years have passed since the discovery of this continent, but very little has been learned about it.
In March 2002, two NASA satellites under the GRACE program were launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, which were supposed to measure the Earth's gravitational field. These data are used in climatic research, in the search for minerals and the study of faults in the earth's crust, volcanic activity.
And then, during the flight over Antarctica, the satellites recorded an unexpected gravitational impulse. A powerful positive gravity anomaly was discovered. It emanated from a huge under-ice space with a diameter of about 500 kilometers. Above him stretched for thousands of kilometers the snow-covered plain of the Antarctic glacier up to 4 thousand meters thick.
An anomaly unique to Antarctica is located in an area called Wilkes Land. Here in 2006, a scientific group of Ohio University professor Ralph von Frese identified the presence of a giant crater, which is two and a half times larger than the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, which arose when a meteorite fell, which is believed to have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
With the help of radars in this crater, a huge, extremely dense, supposedly metallic mass was found about 300 kilometers wide and extending to a depth of 848 meters. At first, it was suggested that this "pancake" could be a concentration of magma splashed out from the bowels of the earth. But this hypothesis was soon rejected. Then scientists started talking about the likelihood of the remains of a huge asteroid under the ice of Antarctica. But how could the Earth survive when faced with such a monstrous mass?
Researchers in Antarctica are inclined to believe that there is a kind of cosmic body in Wilkes Land.
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But today it is almost impossible to get through to him. For this, it would be necessary to create a special station, to import tons of equipment, which, in terms of costs, could approach the estimated cost of a manned flight to Mars. Moreover, scientists would have to survive when the air temperature in winter is minus 80 degrees.
Someone says that one should not touch this potentially dangerous anomaly at all. And supporters of the theory of visiting Earth by alien civilizations believe that under the ice of Antarctica is hidden a massive spaceship that serves as a base for aliens, or even a portal to the "inner Earth".
The mysterious Antarctic anomaly was remembered again at the end of December, after US Secretary of State John Kerry unexpectedly visited Antarctica. Rumors immediately surfaced that Kerry allegedly visited a secret alien base located in the recently discovered pyramidal mountain.
In addition, in the new year at the Russian station "Vostok" they are going to resume studies of the largest Antarctic lake Vostok located under the station, which has a depth of 1200 meters. This is a kind of Antarctic Baikal. It is planned to break through to the lake again using new drilling technology.
Bacteria unknown to science have already been found in water samples from the lake, where hot springs flow. But no less intriguing is the significant magnetic anomaly recorded by scientists at Columbia University on the southeastern shore of the lake. It differs from the indices of the background magnetic field by more than a thousand nanotas.
Researcher Michael Stadinger suggested that this could be caused by the very thin earth's crust in the lake area, but his colleagues believed that the proximity of the hot earth's interior, on the contrary, would heat the rocks and thereby reduce the level of the magnetic field.
As a result of scientific disputes, a theory arose about the remains of an ancient city with its metal structures on the shore of the lake. They even began to talk about the fact that the legendary Atlantis was once on the site of Antarctica.
American scientists who worked at NASA with the outstanding German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun say that he was convinced that Hitler was right when he called Antarctica "Atlantis under the ice." Perhaps it was this information coming from the captured Germans that prompted the United States to undertake in 1946 a still unparalleled operation to seize Antarctica.
In 1946-1947, the US Navy's "High Jump" operation was launched. A flotilla of 13 ships with 33 aircraft, including an aircraft carrier, set out to consolidate American control over much of Antarctica.
Perhaps the US command believed the myths that Germany could equip its secret base in the bowels of the continent and transport some of its advanced military technology there. They say that American sailors were looking for disguised entrances to the under-ice world. By the way, caves with entrances resembling the profile of UFO saucers were seen at the tops of the peaks of a half-swept mountain range.
Some of the scientific data obtained from Antarctic research is not subject to disclosure. It is difficult to imagine the immensity of this gigantic uninhabited world with an area one and a half times the size of the United States, where only one unprotected breath of icy air burns the bronchi. Scientists suggest that there are unknown forces on this continent, which, for example, are moving an ice massif stretching for thousands of kilometers, containing 70 percent of the earth's fresh water.
Despite the extreme cold, bacteria live even in this ice, although there are very few of them compared to ordinary sea water - 300 per cubic meter. millimeter of ice. Scientists are also intrigued by the incomprehensible fires arising over the icy desert. They were also observed by our researchers at the Vostok station.
It is not clear why the most ancient Antarctic mountains on our planet still exist, almost entirely gone under ice and snow. The Gamburtsev Mountains have long outlived their geological time, according to a geophysicist and professor at Columbia University Robin Bell.
Robin, who has explored these mountains hidden under the ice for a long time, says that the Gamburtsev Ridge, discovered by Soviet scientists, is between 900 million and a billion years old. These mountains had to disintegrate. For example, the life of the Alps will be only about 100 million years. There is only one not very convincing explanation: the mountains experienced rejuvenation during tectonic cataclysms that tore apart ancient continents.
Professor John Priscu of the University of Montana spent 27 years in the Antarctic field and concluded that the Antarctic ice sheet behaves like a living organism. It is pierced by microscopic veins of liquid water, which serve as a refuge for amazing bacteria.
And ancient bacteria, 420 thousand years old, found in ice samples taken from three kilometers deep, startlingly quickly began to show signs of life. They began to grow in melt water. “We do not know if they were in a state of hibernation or if their process of life was just going very slowly,” said Priscu.
Biologists are wondering: why are the creatures living in the waters of Antarctica so different from everyone else on the planet? There are no many habitual inhabitants of the earth's seas and oceans. The ocean is almost unexplored, under the multi-meter ice sheet bordering the continent.
However, the more science comprehends Antarctica, the more questions arise.