- 8 hours ago
Antarctica hasn’t always been the frozen пустота we see today. Beneath miles of ice, researchers are finding anomalies that don’t fit natural explanations — patterns, structures, and traces that raise uncomfortable questions. If they’re real, they suggest human history may have begun far earlier… and in a place no one expected.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00A vast expanse of white snow, freezing winds, lifeless landscapes, and weird, eerie signals seemingly coming from within Earth.
00:10These radio pulses occur in Antarctica, and no one can figure out what they are and where they're coming from.
00:18You see, scientists are running an experiment called ANITA, short for Antarctica Impulsive Transient Antenna.
00:25Basically, it's a bunch of detectors strapped to giant balloons and floating way up above the South Pole.
00:31Their job is to detect extremely high-energy neutrinos.
00:36How do they spot them?
00:38Right at the moment when neutrinos come into contact with ice and produce an intense, short burst of radio waves.
00:46Now, neutrinos are these tiny, almost massless particles that don't have an electric charge.
00:52They're everywhere, and billions of them are flying through you every second, even while you're watching this video.
01:00Neutrinos come from all over the place.
01:03From the Sun, exploding stars, deep space, even from under your feet.
01:08The Sun pumps them out non-stop as it fuses hydrogen into helium.
01:13Stars that are going off blast out huge bursts of neutrinos during supernova explosions.
01:19When high-energy cosmic rays hit our atmosphere, they make new neutrinos that rain down on us, too.
01:26And some even come from radioactive stuff decaying inside Earth.
01:31The oldest neutrinos have been flying through the universe since the Big Bang.
01:36But they're practically invisible, because they almost never react with anything.
01:42That's why scientists use unbelievable experiments like ANITA to try and catch even a few of them.
01:49But let's get back to that fateful day when everything changed.
01:54Normally, the radio signals produced by neutrinos bounce off the ice and fly upward.
02:00That's where ANITA can catch them.
02:03This is the whole point of the experiment.
02:05To study neutrinos and learn more about distant cosmic events, like supernovas or whatever's happening light-years away.
02:13But then something really weird happened.
02:16The detectors picked up radio waves that weren't bouncing off the ice at all.
02:20They looked like they were coming from below the horizon.
02:23From under the ice.
02:24Now, this shouldn't even be possible.
02:28According to everything we know about physics, signals can't just travel upward through solid rock and ice.
02:35One of the researchers, Stephanie Wiesel from Penn State, also said that those radio waves were coming in at super
02:42-steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface.
02:46The only way that could happen is if the signal had passed through thousands of miles of solid rock before
02:52hitting the detector.
02:53But if that were true, the rock would have completely absorbed it.
02:57So something just didn't add up.
02:59The team ran all the numbers and still got no clear answer.
03:03But for them, it was an interesting problem, since they didn't actually know what those anomalies were.
03:10What they did know was that they were probably not neutrinos.
03:15That's because if the team does detect a neutrino, that means it's traveled an insane distance without bumping into anything,
03:22possibly all the way from the edge of the observable universe.
03:27So, whatever Anita has picked up, it's not behaving like anything scientists have seen before.
03:32It might mean there's some totally new type of particle out there, or maybe something else is going on that
03:37we just don't understand yet.
03:39They published the findings in physical review letters, but the mystery remains unsolved.
03:45No one really knows what's going on under that Antarctic ice.
03:48Just that something out there isn't playing by the rules.
03:52Now, if scientists actually manage to detect and trace where those crazy fast particles come from, they can learn tons
03:59of stuff about the universe.
04:01Way more than even the biggest, most expensive telescopes allow us to see.
04:06You see, neutrinos basically zip through space almost at the speed of light, barely bumping into anything.
04:13It means they can carry untouched data about events that happened millions or even billions of light years away.
04:19That's why WISL and a bunch of other researchers around the world have been building these insanely sensitive detectors to
04:27catch neutrino signals.
04:29Even the tiniest ones are super important.
04:31Because in this field, one tiny blip of data can hold a treasure chest of information.
04:38So, researchers have been designing setups in both Antarctica and South America to catch these rare particles.
04:46ANITA is one of those detectors, and Antarctica's the perfect spot for it.
04:51There's hardly any radio noise, there are no cities, no traffic, and no random interference.
04:57The setup is actually pretty cool.
05:00They attach a cluster of radio antennas to a giant balloon, send it a few dozen miles up into the
05:06sky,
05:07and make it float over the endless stretches of white ice.
05:10From up there, it points downward, listening for faint radio signals coming from deep inside the ice.
05:16When one of those super-rare neutrinos, specifically a tau neutrino, hits the ice,
05:22it creates another particle called a tau lepton.
05:25That lepton then shoots out of the ice and starts breaking down, losing energy and turning into smaller bits.
05:31That decay process gives off what's called an air shower,
05:34kind of like a spray of invisible sparks flying through the air.
05:38If we could actually see those air showers with our eyes,
05:42they'd look like someone waving a sparkler through the dark,
05:45bright streaks trailing behind as it moves.
05:49Studying the direction and pattern of these signals,
05:52the ones from the ice, ice showers,
05:55and the ones in the air, air showers.
05:58Scientists can figure out where the original particle came from.
06:02Usually it's super precise,
06:04kind of like bouncing a ball off the ground.
06:06You can predict where it'll go.
06:09But these weird new signals don't bounce the way they're supposed to.
06:14The angles are all wrong way steeper than anything the models can explain.
06:19So, the team dug deeper.
06:21First, they looked at all the data from ANITA's multiple balloon flights.
06:25Then they compared it against tons of computer simulations of cosmic rays and neutrinos
06:30and filtered out all the usual background noise.
06:33They even cross-checked their results with other experiments like the ice cube detector,
06:38which is also located in Antarctica,
06:41and the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina.
06:44They wanted to see if anyone else had picked up similar upward-going air showers.
06:49And guess what?
06:51Things got even weirder.
06:52They found...
06:54nothing.
06:55No other detectors had picked up anything that could explain what ANITA had seen.
06:59That's why the researchers ended up calling the whole situation anomalous.
07:03It basically means,
07:05yeah, we have no idea what this is,
07:07but it sure isn't behaving like a neutrino.
07:10Whistle explained that the signals just didn't fit into the usual picture
07:13of how particles were supposed to act.
07:15Some people have floated ideas,
07:17like maybe it's some new kind of physics,
07:20or a hint of dark matter.
07:22Dark matter is basically that invisible stuff
07:25that keeps the universe from falling apart.
07:27It's everywhere.
07:28We just can't see it.
07:30Scientists have been trying to figure out what it actually is for almost a century,
07:34and it's still one of the biggest mysteries out there.
07:38Everything we can see,
07:39like stars, planets, people, dogs,
07:42makes up only about 5% of the universe,
07:44and dark matter makes up around 27%.
07:47The rest is something even stranger,
07:50called dark energy.
07:52Scientists think dark matter is what gives galaxies their shape,
07:56and holds everything together like cosmic glue.
07:59Without it, the universe would look totally different.
08:02It would be totally amazing to find out that this theory is true.
08:06But since Ice Cube and Augur haven't caught the same thing,
08:09that really limits the possibilities.
08:12Penn State has been in the neutrino-detecting game for almost a decade now,
08:17building detectors and analyzing all kinds of cosmic signals.
08:20And the team is already working on their next big project,
08:24a brand new detector called Pueo.
08:26It's going to be bigger, more sensitive,
08:28and way better at spotting those elusive neutrino signals.
08:32For now, this remains just one of those long-running cosmic mysteries
08:36that keep scientists awake at night.
08:38But the team is optimistic.
08:40When Pueo goes up, it'll have better sensors,
08:43which means if there really are more of these anomalies out there,
08:47this time, they'll catch them.
08:49And maybe then, we'll finally figure out what's behind them.
08:55Welcome to one of the most mysterious and unexplored places on Earth.
09:00Um, but what's so special about that?
09:03It's just some icy peaks and the endless snowy expanse of Antarctica.
09:07Yeah, that's right.
09:09But there's still a planetary scale mystery here.
09:12No matter how hard you try, you won't see a hidden mountain range,
09:16giant, unexplored land where no human has ever set foot.
09:20And it lies under another layer of mountains.
09:24It's like a nesting doll, but the size of a continent.
09:28These mountains hide Antarctica secrets.
09:31And these secrets can tell us something awesome
09:34about the ancient history of our planet.
09:38This gigantic, unexplored territory in Antarctica
09:41is called the Gambritsev Subglacial Mountains.
09:44And the layer of ice above keeps this place untouched by nature and people.
09:50It's like a land inside another land.
09:53And it hides more than just mountains.
09:55There are valleys, hills, and plains.
09:58The whole area is similar to the European Alps.
10:01But unfortunately, we can't enjoy the view.
10:05Those mountains were first discovered in 1958 using seismological instruments.
10:10More than half a century has passed since then.
10:14And this place still remains one of the most poorly studied tectonic objects on Earth.
10:19Why?
10:20Because it's ice.
10:21A lot of ice.
10:24Who knows?
10:25Maybe there are some unknown ancient artifacts lying there.
10:28What if they're hiding a secret city or spaceships?
10:31It's unlikely, of course, but it would still be interesting to look there.
10:35Think about it.
10:36Hundreds or even thousands of miles of land that have remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.
10:44Even if no new species of animals or remains of an ancient civilization are there, this place still has a
10:51history.
10:52The history of the formation of continents on our planet.
10:56And scientists have already figured out some of this story.
11:01The mountains buried in Antarctica were originally like ordinary mountains.
11:06But as a result of a planetary scale event, they just...
11:09Wait a minute.
11:10Have you ever wondered how mountain ranges are formed?
11:13We see them in real life.
11:15In movies.
11:16In photos on the internet.
11:18We climb them.
11:19But how did they appear?
11:21Mountains have not always existed on the planet in this form.
11:24They appeared as a result of a large-scale collision of tectonic plates.
11:28Two giant solid chunks of ground are moving toward each other, then crash, and boom!
11:35Millions of tons of the Earth's crust pile on top of each other, mix, and form ledges and gorges.
11:43And all this can last for millions of years.
11:47Yes, it's a disaster, but it's very slow.
11:51Some tectonic plates are still colliding.
11:53For example, the Himalayas continue to grow because the Indian and Eurasian plates are still ramming into each other.
12:00And this process began about 50 million years ago.
12:05The Gambertsev Mountains under ice experienced a similar event, only much earlier.
12:10An article in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters says that they appeared during the formation of the supercontinent
12:17Gondwana.
12:19Two giant pieces of land were separated by a boundless ocean.
12:24But then, about 700 million years ago, they collided and formed Gondwana.
12:30This supercontinent included the territories of modern Africa, South America, Australia, India, and Antarctica.
12:38The giant pieces crashed into each other and released a stream of hot, partially molten rock.
12:45This mess grew bigger and bigger, forming mountains.
12:48The temperature of those mountains grew, their mass increased, and at some point, Gondwana became unstable.
12:55The supercontinent began to collapse under its own weight.
13:00The hot rocks below the surface began to flow sideways as a result of a process called gravitational spreading.
13:07Take toothpaste and start squeezing it out of the tube.
13:11Approximately the same thing happened with billions of tons of red hot rock.
13:16Ancient mountains in Antarctica appeared right during this catastrophic event.
13:21You've just watched a visual simulation of global events that took place hundreds of millions of years ago.
13:28It looks cool, but how did scientists figure it out?
13:31How did they see this planetary scale destruction?
13:35If the Gambertsev Mountains under ice is one of the most unexplored places in the world,
13:40then how could people find out its origin?
13:43The answer is simple.
13:45Tiny particles of rock have told us about the changing landscape of the planet.
13:51These are zircons, but scientists also call them time capsules.
13:56This mineral is very handy and resistant to mechanical and chemical influences.
14:01It's difficult to crush, it doesn't get affected by erosion, and it doesn't dissolve in water.
14:07And there's uranium inside it.
14:10This chemical element shows scientists the age of the rock.
14:14The fact is that uranium always decays into lead at the same rate.
14:19Scientists look at the ratio of uranium and lead and determine the age of minerals with great accuracy.
14:26Okay, this sounds a bit complicated.
14:29Here's a simple example.
14:30Imagine that each mountain belt is a clock that starts ticking at the moment of its formation.
14:36That is, after the collision of tectonic plates.
14:39After the rock forms, uranium begins its slow decay.
14:43The more time passes, the more uranium turns into lead.
14:48The rate of this decay is always the same.
14:51This decay can last for billions of years.
14:54The less uranium is in zircons and the more lead, the older the rock is.
14:59And this is how it happens in practice.
15:02Geologists take several rock samples.
15:05In a lab, they crush it to extract crystalline zircons.
15:10Geologists then dissolve the particles in acid to separate uranium from lead.
15:15Then, they use a special device.
15:17A mass spectrometer that accelerates atoms and sorts them by mass.
15:21This is a rather complicated process, but the bottom line is that this device shows scientists the amount of uranium
15:29and lead.
15:30They look at the ratios of these two elements and calculate the age of the rock.
15:36Geologists took zircons from sandstones near the Gambertsev Mountains, studied those particles,
15:42looked at the level of uranium, and calculated the chronology of mountain formation.
15:47Then, they compared the data obtained with the history of our planet and realized that the mountains buried in Antarctica
15:54appeared during the formation of the supercontinent Gondwana.
15:58But how did they find out that the supercontinent included Australia, India, and Africa?
16:04Zirconia from those Antarctic rocks turned out to be very similar to zirconium from those countries.
16:10That is, a long time ago, these three continents were together.
16:15So, the Gambertsev Mountains began to grow about 650 million years ago.
16:21About 580 million years ago, they reached the height of the Himalayas.
16:25And 80 million years later, they experienced the melting of the Earth's crust.
16:30And while most of the mountain ranges on the planet were changing and collapsing,
16:35the Gambertsev Mountains under ice remained untouched.
16:40Water, soil, wind, earthquakes, gravity, and other natural forces destroy mountain belts.
16:47This process is called erosion.
16:49But mountains buried in Antarctica haven't experienced anything like this.
16:53The cold temperature and the ice sheet around them kept this range unchanged.
16:58It's one of the best-preserved ancient mountain belts on the planet.
17:01Okay, but why do we need to explore these mountains?
17:05What difference does it make that the supercontinent Gondwana collapsed in the past?
17:10It's possible that plants, frozen bodies of insects, or ancient bacteria have remained preserved under thick layers of ice.
17:18What about ancient animals?
17:20Many species could have lived on Gondwana.
17:23Studying ancient mountains in Antarctica can show us what the planet looked like about a half a billion years ago.
17:30When Antarctica was a green continent, what lived on it?
17:33What happened to this life?
17:35Is it possible to revive those ancient creatures after so many years?
17:40If scientists were able to calculate the date of the supercontinent's appearance using tiny particles,
17:45then imagine what they could find after examining this hidden mountain range.
17:50It all sounds very interesting.
17:53But there's one problem.
17:55To take a small piece of this unknown world, you need to drill through a lot of ice.
18:00You need to deliver heavy equipment to one of the most inaccessible continents in the world,
18:05build stations, obtain an energy source, and conduct large-scale research.
18:10It sounds incredibly expensive, so this hidden territory will probably remain a mystery for a long time.
18:17Let's just hope that some billionaire will want to find out Antarctica's secrets and arrange a large-scale expedition there.
18:26If you wander about 1,800 miles from Madagascar into the middle of, well, basically nowhere, you'll reach the Karagalan
18:35Islands.
18:35This remote French territory is one of the most isolated places on Earth.
18:40There's no airport, no native population, not even Wi-Fi.
18:44Just brutal winds, freezing rain, and rough seas.
18:47But this place also hides a massive secret beneath the water.
18:52Because what you perceive above sea level is only the tip of something far bigger.
18:57The peaks of an enormous landmass that mostly sank into the ocean.
19:01We're talking about the Karagalan Plateau, a lost, sunken continent.
19:06This is a big, mostly submerged volcanic plateau in the southern Indian Ocean.
19:11It sits about 1,900 miles southwest of Australia and is nearly three times the size of Japan.
19:19But don't bother trying to spot it on a world map.
19:22Because to really see it, you'd have to dive deep.
19:25And I mean that literally, since big chunks of it now lie more than 6,000 feet under the ocean.
19:32Now, it wasn't always like this, though.
19:34For long stretches of time, large parts of the Karagalan Plateau were above sea level,
19:40forming a huge microcontinent.
19:42That was roughly between 100 million and 20 million years ago.
19:46Back then, scientists think this land was covered in dense forests,
19:50packed with trees like erokarias and cypresses.
19:54But it wasn't exactly peaceful.
19:56Active volcanoes were everywhere, with lava flows probably spilling across the land.
20:01And not to mention the dinosaurs.
20:03There's some evidence that lizards and dinosaurs once lived there.
20:07But they were likely the smaller ones, not the big scary kind.
20:11Another cool theory is that the Karagalan Plateau once acted like a long land bridge connecting Antarctica and India.
20:18People believed that for a long time.
20:21But more recent research suggests it's probably not true.
20:24Even back then, there were still huge stretches of open water separating these landmasses.
20:30But anyway, today, the trees are gone, and those ancient volcanoes are quiet, hidden underwater.
20:37So, you might be wondering, how did this whole chunk of continent sink and basically disappear?
20:42Well, we'll get to that in a second.
20:44But first, we need to answer a basic question.
20:47How did the Karagalan Plateau form in the first place?
20:50Well, our story starts about 130 million years ago.
20:54Back then, Earth had Gondwana, a giant supercontinent that included what are now South America, Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica.
21:04But eventually, it began to break apart.
21:06And during that long, dramatic breakup that happened over millions of years, the Karagalan Plateau was born.
21:13And it basically exists thanks to something called the Karagalan Hotspot.
21:19The Karagalan Hotspot is a region deep inside Earth where superhot, melted rock slowly rises toward the surface.
21:27You can think of it like a steady underground burner, melting rock in the same spot for a very, very
21:33long time.
21:33And even though the hotspot stays put, Earth's outer shell keeps moving above it.
21:39So, as the seafloor drifted over the Karagalan Hotspot, huge amounts of melted rock spilled out, cooled down, and stacked
21:47up, layer after layer.
21:49Over about 30 million years, that process built a massive mound of volcanic rock on the ocean floor.
21:55At the peak of the eruptions, it may have added around 7 to 8 inches of lava every year.
22:01To put that into perspective, that's enough new lava to fill about 184,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, if there
22:09were that many.
22:10And little by little, that volcanic pile kept growing, bigger and bigger, higher and higher, until it finally rose above
22:18sea level and became the Karagalan Plateau.
22:21But then, something strange happened.
22:24Over the last 20 million years, this landmass started to sink, slowly but steadily.
22:30Today, most of it sits roughly 3,300 to 6,600 feet below sea level.
22:36And only a couple of spots have managed to stay above water.
22:40One of them is the Karagalan Islands, that French territory we mentioned earlier.
22:44And the other is the Macdonald Islands, which belong to Australia.
22:48Okay, but how did all the rest of it sink?
22:52Well, continents don't end up underwater because they suddenly drop like stones.
22:56Instead, this process happens because Earth's surface slowly bends, stretches, and shifts over very long periods of time.
23:05The outer shell of the planet is broken into huge pieces, the tectonic plates.
23:10These plates float on a hotter, softer layer of rock beneath them, known as the mantle.
23:15When a continent gets pulled apart by forces deep inside Earth, its crust stretches out, gets thinner, so it starts
23:24to sit lower.
23:25And as it drops, the ocean doesn't come rushing in all at once.
23:29Instead, seawater slowly spills over the edges, flooding the lowest areas first and turning dry land into shallow seas.
23:36Meanwhile, the rock underneath cools down, and when it cools, it contracts and sinks, which pulls the surface down even
23:44more.
23:45On top of that, sediments keep piling up, almost like heavy blankets, adding extra weight and pushing the crust lower
23:53and lower.
23:53And that's basically what happened to the Karagalan Plateau.
23:57Parts of it once rose above sea level and even at forest, but the sheer weight of all that basalt,
24:03along with shifting tectonic plates, gradually pushed it back down into the deep ocean.
24:08In the end, only the highest volcanic peaks stayed above water, and those are the islands we see today.
24:15Now, here's a big question.
24:17If most of it is underwater, can we still call it a continent?
24:20Well, in a way, yeah.
24:23In fact, scientists have described it as a microcontinent since the 1970s.
24:28And that's because what really separates continents from ocean basins isn't whether they're above water.
24:34It's the type of crust underneath.
24:36Earth basically has two main kinds of crust, rising and deep dish.
24:41Wait a minute, that's pizza crust.
24:43Oops.
24:44The Earth's crust comes in either continental or oceanic.
24:48Continents are made of continental crust.
24:51It's thicker, lighter, and usually much older.
24:53So it tends to sit higher and form land.
24:56It's also more granite-like in composition, formed from magma that cools slowly deep underground before it hardens.
25:04Then there's oceanic crust.
25:06That's what the ocean floor is made of.
25:08It's thinner, heavier, and much younger.
25:10So it sits lower and stays underwater.
25:13And it's mostly made of basalt, formed when rock in the Earth's mantle melts and rises up.
25:19Now here's where the Kergalin Plateau gets really interesting.
25:22Even though the whole region is basically underwater, it isn't just normal ocean floor.
25:28And even though it's built from huge amounts of basalt, it doesn't behave like typical oceanic crust.
25:33Since this basalt was piled up over millions of years, the crust there became much thicker than normal oceanic crust.
25:41It also contains fragments of continental crust from the breakup of Gondwana.
25:46So that's basically why we consider it a continent.
25:49But you're not going to see the Kergalin Plateau listed as one of Earth's main continents, just like Europe or
25:56Africa.
25:57And honestly, it's mostly because it would be a headache.
26:00A lot of people don't realize this, but the way we label continents is based more on convention than on
26:07one strict scientific rule.
26:08Because if we started teaching that the Kergalin Plateau counts as a continent,
26:13we'd have to take a serious look at a bunch of other places too.
26:17Like Zealandia, this almost completely submerged chunk of continental crust in Oceania.
26:22And it doesn't stop there.
26:24There's Beringia, Doggerland, Mauritia, Sahul, and Sunda.
26:29All regions that were once dry land or made of continental crust, but are now partly underwater.
26:35So, imagine if we started calling all of them continents.
26:39Earth would go from having 7 continents to what, 10, 12, more?
26:44It would get confusing fast.
26:46That's why the Kergalin Plateau is usually described as a microcontinent or a sunken continent.
26:53Not like a full continent.
26:54And certainly never an incontinent.
26:57That doesn't make it any less interesting, though.
27:00These days, the area is still volcanically active.
27:03The eruption rate dropped a lot over time and has stayed relatively low ever since.
27:08But the system is still going.
27:10And that's already pretty wild, because activity like this usually only lasts 1 to 5 million years.
27:17So, in a way, the Kergalin Plateau behaves like one of Earth's longest-running supervolcano systems.
27:23And it's still not done.
Comments