- 2 days ago
A groundbreaking discovery in Antarctica revealed a hidden lake beneath the ice that’s teeming with life in total darkness, ice-cold temperatures, and crushing pressure, completely changing what we thought we knew about where life can exist on Earth. Scientists drilled through miles of ice to reach this lake, and when they analyzed the water, they found microbes that don’t use sunlight at all, but instead survive off chemicals deep underground — proof that life doesn’t need light to thrive. This lake stayed sealed off from the surface for millions of years, creating an ecosystem that evolved completely apart from the rest of the planet, like a secret biological laboratory frozen in time. Animation is created by Bright Side.
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This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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00:00Scientists just discovered a lake in Antarctica that flips everything we thought we knew about life on Earth.
00:07They drilled through thick ice and found liquid water where everything should be frozen solid.
00:12And inside this water, there is life.
00:15I mean actual living organisms thriving in the dark, untouched for ages.
00:21The story starts with an expedition that added a new, super important spot to the Antarctica map.
00:27Between November 2019 and January 2020, researchers trekking across the frozen desolation reached an area called Enigma Lake.
00:37They thought they were walking over a huge slab of solid ice, but their gear showed something different.
00:43So they used a powerful drill to get through the ice, peered beneath layer after layer, and detected at least 40 feet of liquid water trapped under the surface.
00:52They came looking for a rock, but found a hidden world under ice in this Antarctica lake, where they would least expect it.
01:01The scientists were shocked and didn't stop at this discovery.
01:04They wanted to know where all this water came from, because in this part of Antarctica, the climate is ruthless.
01:11Extreme temperature, low precipitation, punishing winds, and solar evaporation aren't exactly perfect conditions for a lake.
01:18Any freshwater was supposed to have dried up long ago, so there had to be a source for refills for a subglacial lake in Antarctica like this one.
01:28The researchers looked at the chemical composition of the salts and dissolved materials in the water.
01:33They noticed some patterns that pointed to a source.
01:36It looked like the nearby glacier was feeding the lake via some underground pathway nobody expected to exist.
01:43So there it is, an amazing Antarctica discovery, hidden beneath ice, fed not from rain or surface melting, but from an underground flow that circles the earth in silence.
01:55And because of that, when the team drilled deeper, they didn't just find water, they found a secret ecosystem.
02:03Life, where they thought there couldn't be any.
02:06Now, by life, here, I don't mean the kind that waves at us.
02:10I mean tiny creatures, tiny structures, microbial communities that evolved in isolation, shielded by the ice, and pretty restricted to their hidden home.
02:20They cover the lake bed in microbial mats, not just blobs of algae, but complex, carpet-like mats of microorganisms.
02:28Some mats look like thin, spiky coverings, others like thick, crumpled carpets, or even tree-like structures up to 15 inches tall.
02:37And these formations, looking straight out of a sci-fi movie about life on distant planets, aren't random specks of DNA floating in water.
02:45They are thriving, building structures, layering, changing over time.
02:49So the lake bed is kind of like a forest floor, only it's dark, cold, and covered by ice.
02:55If life can flourish under 45 feet of ice in near darkness, maybe our ideas of where it can exist need updating.
03:04And we don't know what happens when we disturb this hidden lake ecosystem.
03:09What if we inject humans, machinery, or even our breath into the mix?
03:14These microbes have lived isolated for who knows how many millennia, maybe even millions of years, without any exposure to the world above.
03:22If humans mess with them, these organisms could be at serious risk when they meet microbes they had never met before.
03:29The lake could get contaminated, and its ecosystem could change for good.
03:35As we step into this new territory, we must be extra cautious.
03:39After all, the entire Antarctica is like a book of secrets of evolution, adaptation, and survival that we must read carefully.
03:47This continent keeps surprising us.
03:50Animals that were never seen before turn up in its remote corners, from bizarre sea creatures to ice-loving insects you didn't know existed.
03:59For example, the ice-loving sea anemone scientists spotted hanging upside down from the underside of the Ross ice shelf.
04:06It looks like a delicate flower glued to the ceiling, waving its tentacles into water as cold as a bad breakup.
04:14Researchers steered a robot under the ice and found a brand new species.
04:18Then, there's the celebrity newcomer with serious red carpet energy, the Antarctic Strawberry Feather Star.
04:26This floating pom-pom can have up to 20 arms.
04:29It got its nickname because the body looks, you guessed it, strawberry-ish.
04:34And, oh, I guess Antarctica is the last place where you'd expect to see a fish nursery, but it has the largest known one in the whole world.
04:43Researchers were there towing their cameras along the Weddell Sea seabed to map it when they spotted thousands, then millions of identical bulls in the sediment.
04:53The nests covered 93 square miles of seafloor, and there were a total of 60 million of them, one every 10 inches.
05:00All the nests belonged to ice fish.
05:03These creatures are white-blooded, meaning they don't have hemoglobin, the stuff that makes blood red, and somehow, they still manage to survive in water cold enough to shatter your soul.
05:15Every nest had a parent fish sitting guard over about 1,700 eggs.
05:20Turns out, Weddell seals feast on ice fish.
05:23So this massive breeding ground isn't just a nursery.
05:26It's also a buffet for the neighborhood predators.
05:29And speaking of buffets, the ice fish themselves feed from a warm upwelling that pulls up nutrients and microscopic zooplankton.
05:39It's all pretty cool that the ice fish colony has a hard edge, a literal line in the sand.
05:44The edge of that border matches perfectly with the outer rim of the warm upwelling, which looks like a carefully crafted evolutionary trick.
05:52Another Antarctica discovery that shocked scientists wasn't a cool-looking fish or a dinosaur bone, but something probably even more important for science.
06:03Bubbles
06:03Tiny ancient bubbles trapped inside what might be the oldest ice ever brought up to daylight, nearly 1.2 million years old.
06:12Before this discovery, researchers had recorded climate history going back 800,000 years, but they wanted more.
06:20They spent years searching for the perfect spot where ice could tell the story straight through.
06:24Some Antarctic regions hold ice even older, maybe 3 or 4 million years.
06:30But it's patchy, and they needed a continuous record.
06:34When they finally drilled into the right spot, they found crystal-clear ice cores with bubbles that trapped the atmosphere of Earth as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago.
06:44When scientists analyze the air inside, they're not just studying gases.
06:49They can tell what our distant ancestors inhaled, what the planet exhaled, and how the rhythm of life and climate played out long before us.
06:58The period around 900,000 years ago, the same time sealed inside this ice, may have been one of humanity's closest calls.
07:06According to genetic studies, the human population shrank to about 1,300 individuals on the entire planet.
07:15Nobody knows what exactly led to this, but it could have been the climate.
07:19So these ancient bubbles might hold the clues we need to understand how our ancestors survived one of the toughest chapters in Earth's story.
07:28And maybe how we can survive the next.
07:31Because, you know, the planet keeps repeating itself in new and uncomfortable ways.
07:35And Antarctica has lessons to teach us.
07:39One lesson we might learn the hard way has to do with what's under its ice.
07:44Scientists recently found that there's something brewing beneath Antarctica that's anything but chill.
07:50There might be volcanoes there, quietly waiting for their moment.
07:54Yeah, you heard it correctly.
07:56Volcanoes, the hot, fiery kind sitting under miles of ice.
08:00The team used computer simulations and found that when parts of the ice melt, the pressure holding those volcanoes down eases up.
08:08And boom!
08:09They could start melting even more ice from below.
08:12It's like a self-feeding loop of chaos.
08:14The ice melts, volcano wakes up, then more ice melts.
08:17Even if humans stopped affecting the climate conditions on the planet tomorrow, that chain reaction could keep going.
08:24Because it's not just about the air.
08:26It's about the fire hiding underneath.
08:29The scariest part is that this kind of melt could raise sea levels way more than we thought.
08:34And since Antarctica has over 70% of all the freshwater reserves on Earth, you can imagine the drama level it could lead to.
08:42So you see now that Antarctica map is like a real-life board game for humans.
08:47And we must be careful studying and playing it.
08:50The South Pole is more than penguins and endless snow.
08:56There's a hidden ghost world within it.
08:58Look, it's right here on the globe.
09:00Don't confuse Antarctica with the Arctic, which is at the top of our maps.
09:04Much smaller in size, and let's face it, way less mysterious.
09:09The ice sheet covering Antarctica is about 1 to 3 miles thick, which is up to 16 Eiffel Towers stacked on each other.
09:17This massive blanket hides the true features and contours of Antarctica's land.
09:24We still don't know much about this mysterious continent.
09:27And it is ice and snow that are to blame.
09:30We still don't even know the true shape and size of this continent.
09:34Mapping Antarctica without some huge shovels is an incredibly hard task.
09:39But satellites learned to penetrate the ice with their cameras.
09:43And now we know there's actually an enormous, dramatic, ancient landscape beneath the snow.
09:49The ghost of the past.
09:53About 90 million years ago, Antarctica was a much warmer place.
09:58It was actually a lush rainforest with tons of plants and probably teeming with life.
10:03It even had rivers flowing through it.
10:05Then the ice came.
10:07This happened about 34 million years ago, during the transition from the Eocene to the Oligocene,
10:13when our planet cooled significantly.
10:16It was the beginning of one of our several ice ages.
10:19The land remained, but now was hidden under ice and snow that got thicker and thicker.
10:26To a regular eye, Antarctica turned into a white desert.
10:30Vast.
10:31Flat.
10:31And featureless.
10:34Time went on.
10:36This massive ice sheet moved around, smoothing and shifting the ground beneath it.
10:41Over the millions of years, it changed what the land looked like.
10:45Now, if we looked under the ice, it wouldn't hold any signs of the original South Pole.
10:50Except for one place.
10:52In areas where the ice is especially thick and doesn't move much, like in East Antarctica,
10:58it has actually worked the other way around.
11:00It became like a super-thick blanket that protects the land.
11:06Normally, things like wind or rain slowly wear away the ground over time, changing its shape.
11:12But since we have this protective ice blanket, it prevents these natural processes from reaching the stuff underneath.
11:18So, the ground stayed almost the same for millions of years, like it's been frozen in time.
11:25This special area near the Aurora and Schmidt subglacial basins has become the ghost of Antarctica's landscape.
11:32This place was barely touched, even since it was first covered in snow 34 million years ago.
11:39This is a historical footprint.
11:41A place that can tell us what Antarctica's ground looked like before it became a freezing nightmare.
11:47As scientists peered under East Antarctica, they saw an amazing ghost.
11:53The traces of the rivers that were flowing there millions of years ago, various valleys, and some weird little islands, as well as three big chunks of land, shaped like the letter U.
12:05You see, the continents on our planet are moving constantly, sliding along the red-hot lava mantle like cereal on milk.
12:17Over history, they came together and broke apart several times.
12:21Hundreds of millions of years ago, several continents were a part of one enormous Gondwana.
12:28Antarctica was one of them.
12:30It used to be one huge landmass.
12:33But when Gondwana broke apart, the poor continent got stretched by tectonic forces.
12:39Parts of land were pulled away from each other.
12:42Whoosh!
12:43And they got torn apart.
12:45And that's how we got these big chunks or blocks of land under thick layers of ice.
12:50In any case, scientists now want to explore this ghost a bit more.
12:56But to study it deeply, they need to actually drill down through the ice, like using a straw to get to the bottom of a thick shake.
13:03This will help them pick up some rocks and dirt from way below to learn more about the Earth's history and climate.
13:10Antarctica is the fifth largest continent in the world, approximately bigger than the entirety of Europe or Australia,
13:17competing with the entire South America in size.
13:21Aside from East Antarctica, we discussed there are several more regions.
13:26Antarctica Peninsula, South Pole, West Antarctica, and the Ross Sea.
13:32The continent is basically a frozen sandbox, and all its hidden, mysterious landscape is actually less explored than Mars' terrain.
13:42We only know for sure that without ice, it wouldn't just be flat and empty,
13:46but an entire world full of big mountains, huge canyons, and even fiery volcanoes.
13:53Some of these volcanoes are so huge that they peak above the layers of snow.
13:59In West Antarctica alone, there are at least 138 volcanoes, though only about 8 or 9 are active today.
14:08One of the craziest ones is Mount Erebus, the southernmost volcano and the tallest one on the continent, about 12,500 feet high.
14:17And deep beneath the ice sheet, this guy hosts incredible, beautiful sub-volcanic caves.
14:24The temperatures there are warm enough for t-shirts.
14:27The Antarctic Peninsula, or Lesser Antarctica, looks like a bunch of mountainous islands deeply underground.
14:35It has newer volcanic rocks that are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire,
14:39which is like a giant circle of volcanoes and earthquake zones around the Pacific Ocean.
14:44The Greater Antarctica is a huge part, almost as big as Australia.
14:51It consists of East Antarctica and the South Pole.
14:55Beneath the ice, it's a place of rocks that have been around for a very, very long time,
15:00including the special zone we mentioned.
15:03You probably know that Antarctica is nearly devoid of humans.
15:08No wonder, with a mean temperature of about minus 46 degrees Fahrenheit.
15:12But even though this place is horrifyingly cold and deserted, life still clings on.
15:19You guessed it, in the underworld.
15:22In 2017, scientists found DNA traces of algae, moss, and even possibly unknown small animals in the deep caves.
15:30That means that even in such crazy conditions,
15:33there are still unique ecosystems thriving in little isolated warm pockets beneath the snow.
15:39There was another incredible find beneath Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf,
15:45a lively ecosystem vibing within an underground river.
15:50Scientists have long suspected that Antarctica's underworld should have some freshwater lakes and rivers.
15:56One day, a satellite spotted a groove there.
15:59They decided to explore it and used a hot water drill to melt their way through the ice.
16:05As they reached the underworld, they dropped a camera into one of those hidden fresh rivers.
16:11And at first, they thought they'd find just some rocks or something.
16:15But instead, they stumbled upon hundreds of amphipods, tiny shrimp-like creatures.
16:20Little ones instantly swarmed around the lens.
16:25Shrimps blocked the camera and scientists couldn't check out what they wanted to.
16:29Pretty funny.
16:30But at least that means that there really is an important ecosystem deep within Antarctica.
16:36Now, they're gonna explore it.
16:38And all this is just the beginning of the mysterious underworld.
16:43Antarctica's snow also hides the deepest canyon on Earth, under the Denman Glacier.
16:47Well, Mariana Trench is still the deepest point on Earth.
16:52But it's a part of the oceanic crust, geologically speaking.
16:56Also, in 1958, explorers found a huge mountain range under the ice.
17:02As big and tall as the famous Alps Mountains.
17:06The range stretched for about 745 miles with peaks as high as 1.7 miles.
17:13And all this magnificence is buried under tons of ice.
17:16Who knows what else we might find there?
17:20Antarctica holds about 60% of our entire planet's freshwater.
17:25Which means it would be pretty bad if it melted.
17:28For example, there's this Doomsday Glacier, officially known as Thwaites Glacier.
17:34It's a huge ice formation, about the size of Florida.
17:37And it's melting right now.
17:39Every year, the sea levels rise by 4% because of it.
17:43If this guy melts away completely, the sea levels all around the world will increase by 2 feet.
17:49Which might not sound like a lot, but it would be catastrophic for coastal areas.
17:55Luckily, researchers have found that even if its ice shelf were to collapse in the next 50 years,
18:00the glacier itself wouldn't retreat as quickly as they feared.
18:04It's still losing ice rapidly, but it would be quite a slow process.
18:10That's it for today.
18:11So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
18:16Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
18:19So hey, let's go ahead.
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