A Scientific Tour to Antarctica

A scientific tour to Antarctica

Antarctica, the southernmost continent and site of the South Pole, is a virtually uninhabited, ice covered land mass. It covers an area of about 1.5 million kilometers. The depth of just snow is about 5 kilometers. It is believed at some time the surface of Antarctica was dry and was inhibited by many organisms lived there for about billions of years back.

Temperature of that continent is a real challenge to survive there, having temperature from -50 to -90 degree centigrade, which helped in preserving the scientific heritage of that region. Some of the scientific discoveries of that region are listed below.

The elongated skulls: These skulls were discovered in 2014 in the continent of Antarctica by a team of scientists at that time it was believed that it proves the existence of any alien but these type of skulls were also discovered in the areas of Egypt and Peru, and it was discovered that they were elongated by their own as their cultural heritage.

Jerosite: It is a type of mineral not found in any part of the earth this is only available on the surface of mars. It comes into existence when sulphur, potassium, and iron in soil comes under the pressure of snow. This discovery also revealed that the surface of mars and Antarctica must have something common and the surface of mars was also covered with snow which later melted due to core temperature of mars or sun

Meteoroids: 0.1 million meteoroids are discovered on the surface of Antarctica within the 50 years which contain a lot of elements in them. They will provide a new level of studies for our scientists.

Dinosaurs: 1980 till now many fossils of dinosaurs have been discovered in this region e.g. Plesiosaurus, Cryolophosaurus, mostly seen in Jurassic park movies which are about 0.7 million years old fossils. This also proves that at some time the temperature of that land was also habitable. The presence of life on this piece of land was verified when they found a 20 million years old fossil of a plant which was perfectly preserved which states that the life on this land was not same for years (it’s been changing).

Water: There is no rain due to very low temperature and dry weather conditions its air don’t absorb water. 70% water reserve is in the form of glacier, no time zone, no country, only researchers go there for the research work due to harsh weather surviving there is such a difficult thing(especially in winters).

Mcmurdo dry valley: This part is not covered by any snow or a very little snow. NASA astronauts, and space rover trainings are performed over here.

Blood Fall: This is a water fall but its color is like blood and it never freezes the reason behind this phenomena is that the water is 4 time more salty than the normal sea water that’s why it don’t freezes and due to a large amount of iron metals in it after its reaction to oxygen its color changes to blood red.

Some Random facts: It is considered that life at the depth of 2000+ feet is impossible but in 2014 a bore was done at the depth of 3000 feet and a sponge shaped organism was discovered. They are called Antarctica sponge organisms and are long lived animals and sensitive to disturbance.

At this depth there are 400+ lakes are present.

Mountains of 1200 kilometer of range and their heights are of about 10 thousand feet. And surprisingly some of them are still volcanic.

This continent is divided into two main parts one is the East Antarctica and one is the West Antarctica, Amazingly both have different heights. West part is a lot higher than the East.

Can cause another pandemic?

In 2015 scientists working over Tibetan glacier ice took some samples to their laboratory and discovered 15 thousand years old 30+ bacteria’s and viruses in which 28 were totally unknown.

In 2007 in the valley of bacon and miraculous 0.1 million years old bacteria came back to life when they came to the surface of Antarctica.

                                In this way climate change will not only effect the life of human beings by flooding, shortage of water but also it will spread new diseases.