Mysterious Mountains Hidden Beneath Antarctic Ice Revealed

[Gita]

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Mysterious Mountains Hidden Beneath Antarctic Ice Revealed


The first detailed pictures of one of the planet's last unexplored frontiers — a vast mountain range that rivals the Alps in majesty buried underneath the ice of Antarctica — were revealed by scientists this week.

The rugged peaks soar to more than 8,000 feet (2,400 meters). They are buried beneath solid ice more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick, deep within Antarctica's eastern interior.

The existence of this mountain range, called the Gamburtsev Mountains, shocked the Russian scientists who first discovered it more than 50 years ago, and mystery still shrouds the nearly 750-mile- (1,200-km-) long series of subglacial peaks.

At the International Polar Yearconference in Oslo, Norway, scientists unveiled new radar images of an area of the mountains the size of the state of New York.

http://i.livescience.com/images/antarctica-mountains-100610-02.jpg

The image illustrates the ice surface (transparent top layer with contour lines) imaged from NASA's ICESat satellite and below that the rugged bedrock topography of the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains mapped from airborne geophysical data from the AGAP project showing a surprisingly rugged mountain range with deeply incised valleys beneath the ice sheet. Credit: Michael Studinger


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Source (http://www.livescience.com/environment/antarctica-hidden-mountains-oap-100610.html)

[777]

Crickey!

Shangri La anyone?!:peep:

[Operator]

What amazes me is that scientist will tell how much sea level would rise when the ice melts ... but when there are mountains underneath the volume
is a lot less .... Also the the tales of ice plates melting at the bottom and then sliding into the ocean seems harder to accept when this is true.

Just a couple of observations that might change perception ...

[NewParadigmGuy]

In one of his recent interviews (sorry, I cannot remember which one), Clif High mentioned that he was gifted, and has in his possession, photographs of several pyramids in Antarctica.

[Celine]

Thank you Gita!

Great info..

The north has always been a place that calls to me...we travelnorth all the time..

And it seems there is a potential for political unrest in the north..

Canada is boosting its defense up there ...

Oil and Land.. two big motivators for war

[Gita]

You are most welcomed Celine. :hug: Managed to find a little more information on it.

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Mysterious Mountains Hidden Beneath Antarctic Ice Revealed

The first detailed pictures of one of the planet's last unexplored frontiers - a vast mountain range that rivals the Alps in majesty buried underneath the ice of Antarctica - were revealed by scientists this week.

The rugged peaks soar to more than 8,000 feet (2,400 meters). They are buried beneath solid ice more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick, deep within Antarctica's eastern interior.

The existence of this mountain range, called the Gamburtsev Mountains, shocked the Russian scientists who first discovered it more than 50 years ago, and mystery still shrouds the nearly 750-mile- (1,200-km-) long series of subglacial peaks.

At the International Polar Yearconference in Oslo, Norway, scientists unveiled new radar images of an area of the mountains the size of the state of New York.

"What we'd shown before was an estimate based on gravity data - a little bit of a coarse resolution tool," said

Robin Bell, a senior research scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. "What we showed at this meeting was the radar data. It's like going from using a big, fat sharpie to using a fine-tipped pencil."

What the pictures reveal,

Bell said, is spectacular: a dramatic landscape of rocky summits, deep river valleys, and liquid, not frozen, lakes, all hidden beneath the ice.

Bell was among a team of scientists from seven countries who spent two frigid months collecting geophysical data in the remote antipodean wilderness via sophisticated, aircraft-mounted instruments in late 2008 and early 2009.

The expedition provided researchers with several terabytes of information - just one terabyte could hold two days worth of songs or one million pictures. Although it will take years to process all that data, Bell hopes the numbers will answer some of the questions surrounding the Gamburtsev Mountains. A big one is how they formed in the first place.

"We now know it's not a volcanic mountain range," said study team member Kathryn Rose, of the British Antarctic Survey. "And uplift by a hotspot in the mantle is probably out in terms of a mechanism of formation." (The mantle is the scorching hot, molten rock that underlies Earth's crust and is the source of volcanic magma.)

Rose said the data are also providing invaluable insight into the evolution of the colossal East Antarctica Ice Sheet - the 6 million square miles (15.5 million square km) of ice that conceals the Gamburtsev Mountains and is important to understand in terms of its potential to melt in a warming world.

"Scientists need to improve our understanding of ice sheets and their dynamics because it impacts sea level everywhere," Bell told OurAmazingPlanet, emphasizing that new insights are guaranteed for years to come.

"We're still scratching our heads as to how the mountains were made and why they're still there," she said. "But I think we have the data we need to solve the puzzle."

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Continued here. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100611/sc_livescience/mysteriousmountainshiddenbeneathantarcticicerevealed)

[SteveX]

Thank you Gita!

Great info..

The north has always been a place that calls to me...we travelnorth all the time..

And it seems there is a potential for political unrest in the north..

Canada is boosting its defense up there ...

Oil and Land.. two big motivators for war

I know I'm being picky but the ANTarctic is south.

[Latti]

Since the Alps has peaks almost twice as high as the 2,400 meters mentioned in this article, it'd not clear how they are considered rivals: "... a vast mountain range that rivals the Alps in majesty."
Latti