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Antarctica is expanding — and scientists can’t fully explain why. Satellite data shows parts of the frozen continent growing in unexpected ways, challenging what we thought we knew about polar ice. As researchers dig deeper, the reasons behind this strange expansion remain unclear, raising new questions about Earth’s changing systems.
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00:00Ice piracy is like Pirates of the Caribbean, but you gotta swap those tropical seas for icy, freezing waters.
00:08And the captain here isn't Jack Sparrow, but a massive glacier in Antarctica.
00:13Meet the Kohler East Glacier. Its calm, sparkling surface might look innocent, but don't be mistaken, it is a pirate.
00:21And a pretty skilled one, too.
00:23Instead of gold, it's been stealing ice from its neighbors at record speed, and scientists can't believe what they're seeing.
00:30So, what exactly is ice piracy?
00:34This is a strange kind of glacier movement, where one glacier starts taking ice from another nearby.
00:40Instead of minding its own business and slowly sliding toward the sea, it suddenly changes course and begins pulling ice
00:48that used to belong to its neighbor.
00:50However, the pirate glacier speeds up, the victim slows down.
00:54The problem is that the balance of ice in the region might get completely thrown off.
00:59This isn't brand new information, though. Scientists have known about this quirky behavior for quite a while.
01:05But they used to think that this process took hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.
01:10Now, something really strange is happening in Antarctica.
01:14We're seeing, for the first time ever, a glacier pirate in action, and it's moving much, much faster than anyone
01:22expected.
01:23It all started when researchers from the University of Leeds began looking at satellite images taken between 2005 and 2022.
01:32They wanted to analyze the rates of flow from eight ice streams in West Antarctica.
01:37And yes, glaciers do move.
01:40Think of them as huge piles of snow that have turned into solid ice over time.
01:44This ice slowly changes shape, shifts, and moves.
01:49That's why glaciers are often called rivers of ice, because they flow, for real.
01:54Gravity is what makes it happen.
01:56But the ice slowly slides and deforms under its own weight, thanks to the pull of gravity.
02:01And when it comes to glacial movements, they can either advance or retreat.
02:06If more snow and ice build up and melt away, break off, or evaporate, a glacier will advance.
02:13But if it loses more than it gains, it will retreat.
02:17Oh, and glaciers also move at different speeds, depending on things like the slope of the land beneath them.
02:22But if that flow starts speeding up, well, that's bad news for coastal communities all over the world.
02:29Because that means more ice is moving from land into the ocean, which contributes to Antarctic ice loss and, eventually,
02:36sea level rise.
02:38Now, back to the recent ice research in Antarctica.
02:41The team calculated ice velocity using a tracking technique that measures how visible features, like cracks or rifts on the
02:49ice surface, shift over time.
02:51And they found that 7 of those 8 Antarctic glaciers had sped up.
02:56On average, they've doubled their speed since 2005.
03:00Given the impacts of how Antarctica's climate is changing, warming up more and more each year, this doesn't really come
03:07as a surprise.
03:08But here's something strange.
03:10One glacier, just one, slowed down.
03:13We're talking about the Kohler West Glacier.
03:16It slowed by about 10% over the study period.
03:19But how can a massive chunk of ice just hit the brakes, so to speak?
03:24To figure that out, researchers looked at its surroundings.
03:27And there it was, the culprit.
03:30The Kohler East Glacier.
03:32Experts think Kohler West slowed down because it's flowing toward its pirate neighbor, Captain Whitebeard.
03:39I mean, Kohler East.
03:40That one's moving much faster.
03:42In fact, it's one of the fastest glaciers in the area.
03:45Its speed has been increasing by about 105 feet every year over the study period.
03:51Okay, that might sound slow, even for a tortoise.
03:54But for a glacier, that's disturbingly fast.
03:58Kohler East is the Usain Bolt of ice chunks.
04:00And that's not even the most impressive part.
04:03The strange thing is that it changed its flow direction.
04:07Instead of moving straight ahead like it used to,
04:09it's now turning towards its neighbor, Kohler West, and pulling ice from it.
04:14Scientists think this is happening because the ice at the point where the glacier meets the ocean
04:19is melting faster than before.
04:22That glacier melting makes the ice thinner.
04:24And as it thins, it changes the way the ice upstream flows.
04:28So now, instead of feeding both glaciers evenly,
04:31more of that ice is being funneled onto Kohler East.
04:35In short, Kohler East is speeding up and changing its course.
04:39So now, it's pulling or stealing ice from its slower neighbor.
04:42And just like that, this mysterious glacier in Antarctica became a real ice pirate.
04:49Okay, this whole ice piracy thing isn't that weird.
04:52I mean, it's part of how glaciers normally behave.
04:55Slow, dramatic, and occasionally a little mischievous.
04:59What really blows scientists' minds is how fast it's happening.
05:04They used to think this was a super slow process,
05:06something that would take hundreds or even thousands of years.
05:10But this one is taking place in just 18 years.
05:14And this is a huge satellite discovery in Antarctica.
05:17I mean, scientists were only able to spot it thanks to the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission,
05:22a pair of European satellites that use radar to keep an eye on Earth's surface.
05:27They can track changes in ice, land, and ocean with incredible precision and coverage,
05:32making them perfect for studying how the polar regions are changing.
05:36Because, here's the thing, keeping an eye on the coldest parts of our planet
05:41is becoming essential for our future.
05:43And this particular part of Antarctica, where both the Kohler West and East glaciers are located,
05:49is thinning faster than anywhere else.
05:52Its glaciers are retreating at record speed.
05:55The grounding line, I mean the point where the glacier stops resting on land
05:59and starts floating on the sea, is moving backward.
06:02When that happens, the ice sheet slides into the ocean even faster.
06:07But scientists say glaciers aren't just melting.
06:09They're reshaping themselves in completely new ways.
06:13And that's exactly what's happening with the Kohler East glaciers.
06:17Seeing a pirate glacier in action firsthand has once again changed how scientists look at things.
06:23The new data on ice piracy shows something they've never seen before.
06:27Glaciers and floating ice shelves are interacting in new and surprising ways.
06:33So, more and more, experts need to rethink how these icy giants behave as the world warms up.
06:39And that's a big deal, because they play a significant role in how fast sea levels rise this century.
06:46In fact, Antarctica's glaciers are one of the biggest reasons our oceans are swelling.
06:51The continent is losing about 135 billion tons of ice every year.
06:57That's like dumping tens of billions of Olympic-sized pools of water into the ocean annually.
07:02If all of its ice melted, sea levels would rise by about 190 feet.
07:08That kind of rise would flood much of Florida and huge areas of the Netherlands and Bangladesh, for example.
07:14Many small island nations would completely vanish beneath the waves.
07:17Now, you might be asking yourself, what's hiding beneath all of Antarctica's ice?
07:23Well, it might look flat from above.
07:25But underneath that mile-thick layer of ice lays a whole landscape of steep mountains and deep valleys, crossed by
07:32winding rivers.
07:33Those hidden rivers could play a crucial role in how the ice sheet reacts to all this unusual warmth.
07:40Scientists now predict that as Antarctica's ice sheet keeps melting and thinning over the next few decades,
07:46those subglacial rivers will grow, overflow, and shift into new paths.
07:52This could make some of the biggest glaciers near the coast start to break apart faster.
07:57And that would make sea levels rise more quickly.
08:00So that's why understanding these changing dynamics and glacier movement, like our icy pirate, is so important.
08:08Every new discovery helps scientists figure out what's really driving Antarctica's glaciers
08:13and how they are responding to a warming world.
08:16The more we learn about these frozen giants, the better we can predict what might happen next
08:21and how changes down in Antarctica could ripple across the entire planet.
08:27A vast expanse of white snow, freezing winds, lifeless landscapes, and weird, eerie signals seemingly coming from within Earth.
08:37These radio pulses occur in Antarctica, and no one can figure out what they are and where they're coming from.
08:45You see, scientists are running an experiment called ANITA, short for Antarctica Impulsive Transient Antenna.
08:52Basically, it's a bunch of detectors strapped to giant balloons and floating way up above the South Pole.
08:58Their job is to detect extremely high-energy neutrinos.
09:02How do they spot them?
09:05Right at the moment when neutrinos come into contact with ice and produce an intense, short burst of radio waves.
09:13Now, neutrinos are these tiny, almost massless particles that don't have an electric charge.
09:19They're everywhere, and billions of them are flying through you every second, even while you're watching this video.
09:27Neutrinos come from all over the place.
09:29From the Sun, exploding stars, deep space, even from under your feet.
09:35The Sun pumps them out non-stop as it fuses hydrogen into helium.
09:40Stars that are going off blast out huge bursts of neutrinos during supernova explosions.
09:46When high-energy cosmic rays hit our atmosphere, they make new neutrinos that rain down on us, too.
09:53And some even come from radioactive stuff decaying inside Earth.
09:58The oldest neutrinos have been flying through the universe since the Big Bang.
10:02But they're practically invisible, because they almost never react with anything.
10:09That's why scientists use unbelievable experiments like ANITA to try and catch even a few of them.
10:16But let's get back to that fateful day when everything changed.
10:20Normally, the radio signals produced by neutrinos bounce off the ice and fly upward.
10:27That's where ANITA can catch them.
10:30This is the whole point of the experiment.
10:32To study neutrinos and learn more about distant cosmic events, like supernovas or whatever's happening light-years away.
10:40But then something really weird happened.
10:42The detectors picked up radio waves that weren't bouncing off the ice at all.
10:47They looked like they were coming from below the horizon, from under the ice.
10:52Now, this shouldn't even be possible.
10:55According to everything we know about physics, signals can't just travel upward through solid rock and ice.
11:02One of the researchers, Stephanie Wiesel from Penn State, also said that those radio waves were coming in at super
11:09-steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface.
11:12The only way that could happen is if the signal had passed through thousands of miles of solid rock before
11:18hitting the detector.
11:20But if that were true, the rock would have completely absorbed it.
11:23So, something just didn't add up.
11:26The team ran all the numbers and still got no clear answer.
11:30But for them, it was an interesting problem, since they didn't actually know what those anomalies were.
11:36What they did know was that they were probably not neutrinos.
11:42That's because if the team does detect a neutrino, that means it's traveled an insane distance without bumping into anything,
11:49possibly all the way from the edge of the observable universe.
11:53So, whatever Anita has picked up, it's not behaving like anything scientists have seen before.
11:59It might mean there's some totally new type of particle out there, or maybe something else is going on that
12:04we just don't understand yet.
12:05They publish the findings in physical review letters, but the mystery remains unsolved.
12:11No one really knows what's going on under that Antarctic ice, just that something out there isn't playing by the
12:17rules.
12:19Now, if scientists actually manage to detect and trace where those crazy fast particles come from, they can learn tons
12:26of stuff about the universe.
12:27Way more than even the biggest, most expensive telescopes allow us to see.
12:33You see, neutrinos basically zip through space almost at the speed of light, barely bumping into anything.
12:39It means they can carry untouched data about events that happened millions or even billions of light years away.
12:47That's why Whistle and a bunch of other researchers around the world have been building these insanely sensitive detectors to
12:53catch neutrino signals.
12:55Even the tiniest ones are super important, because in this field, one tiny blip of data can hold a treasure
13:03chest of information.
13:05So, researchers have been designing setups in both Antarctica and South America to catch these rare particles.
13:13ANITA is one of those detectors, and Antarctica's the perfect spot for it.
13:18There's hardly any radio noise, there are no cities, no traffic, and no random interference.
13:24The setup is actually pretty cool.
13:26They attach a cluster of radio antennas to a giant balloon, send it a few dozen miles up into the
13:33sky,
13:33and make it float over the endless stretches of white ice.
13:37From up there, it points downward, listening for faint radio signals coming from deep inside the ice.
13:43When one of those super rare neutrinos, specifically a tau neutrino, hits the ice, it creates another particle called a
13:50tau lepton.
13:51That lepton then shoots out of the ice and starts breaking down, losing energy and turning into smaller bits.
13:57That decay process gives off what's called an air shower, kind of like a spray of invisible sparks flying through
14:04the air.
14:05If we could actually see those air showers with our eyes, they'd look like someone waving a sparkler through the
14:11dark,
14:12bright streaks trailing behind as it moves.
14:15Studying the direction and pattern of these signals, the ones from the ice, ice showers,
14:22and the ones in the air, air showers.
14:25Scientists can figure out where the original particle came from.
14:29Usually it's super precise, kind of like bouncing a ball off the ground.
14:33You can predict where it'll go.
14:36But these weird new signals don't bounce the way they're supposed to.
14:40The angles are all wrong way steeper than anything the models can explain.
14:46So the team dug deeper.
14:48First, they looked at all the data from ANITA's multiple balloon flights.
14:52Then they compared it against tons of computer simulations of cosmic rays and neutrinos
14:57and filtered out all the usual background noise.
15:00They even cross-checked their results with other experiments like the IceCube detector,
15:05which is also located in Antarctica, and the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina.
15:11They wanted to see if anyone else had picked up similar upward-going air showers.
15:16And guess what?
15:17Things got even weirder.
15:19They found... nothing.
15:21No other detectors had picked up anything that could explain what ANITA had seen.
15:25That's why the researchers ended up calling the whole situation anomalous.
15:30It basically means, yeah, we have no idea what this is, but it sure isn't behaving like a neutrino.
15:36Whistle explained that the signals just didn't fit into the usual picture of how particles were supposed to act.
15:42Some people have floated ideas, like maybe it's some new kind of physics, or a hint of dark matter.
15:48Dark matter is basically that invisible stuff that keeps the universe from falling apart.
15:54It's everywhere. We just can't see it.
15:57Scientists have been trying to figure out what it actually is for almost a century,
16:01and it's still one of the biggest mysteries out there.
16:04Everything we can see, like stars, planets, people, dogs, makes up only about 5% of the universe.
16:11And dark matter makes up around 27%.
16:14The rest is something even stranger called dark energy.
16:19Scientists think dark matter is what gives galaxies their shape,
16:22and holds everything together like cosmic glue.
16:26Without it, the universe would look totally different.
16:29It would be totally amazing to find out that this theory is true.
16:32But since IceCube and Augur haven't caught the same thing, that really limits the possibilities.
16:39Penn State has been in the neutrino detecting game for almost a decade now,
16:44building detectors and analyzing all kinds of cosmic signals.
16:47And the team is already working on their next big project, a brand new detector called Pueo.
16:53It's going to be bigger, more sensitive, and way better at spotting those elusive neutrino signals.
16:58For now, this remains just one of those long-running cosmic mysteries that keep scientists awake at night.
17:04But the team is optimistic.
17:06When Pueo goes up, it'll have better sensors.
17:10Which means, if there really are more of these anomalies out there, this time, they'll catch them.
17:16And maybe then, we'll finally figure out what's behind them.
17:22Welcome to one of the most mysterious and unexplored places on Earth.
17:26Um, but what's so special about that?
17:29It's just some icy peaks and the endless snowy expanse of Antarctica.
17:34Yeah, that's right.
17:36But there's still a planetary scale mystery here.
17:39No matter how hard you try, you won't see a hidden mountain range.
17:43Giant, unexplored land where no human has ever set foot.
17:47And it lies under another layer of mountains.
17:51It's like a nesting doll, but the size of a continent.
17:54These mountains hide Antarctica secrets.
17:57And these secrets can tell us something awesome about the ancient history of our planet.
18:04This gigantic, unexplored territory in Antarctica is called the Gambritsev Subglacial Mountains.
18:11And the layer of ice above keeps this place untouched by nature and people.
18:17It's like a land inside another land.
18:19And it hides more than just mountains.
18:22There are valleys, hills, and plains.
18:25The whole area is similar to the European Alps.
18:28But unfortunately, we can't enjoy the view.
18:32Those mountains were first discovered in 1958 using seismological instruments.
18:37More than half a century has passed since then.
18:40And this place still remains one of the most poorly studied tectonic objects on Earth.
18:46Why?
18:46Because it's ice.
18:48A lot of ice.
18:51Who knows?
18:52Maybe there are some unknown ancient artifacts lying there.
18:55What if they're hiding a secret city or spaceships?
18:58It's unlikely, of course, but it would still be interesting to look there.
19:02Think about it.
19:03Hundreds or even thousands of miles of land that have remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.
19:11Even if no new species of animals or remains of an ancient civilization are there,
19:16this place still has a history.
19:19The history of the formation of continents on our planet.
19:22And scientists have already figured out some of this story.
19:28The mountains buried in Antarctica were originally like ordinary mountains.
19:32But as a result of a planetary scale event, they just…
19:36Wait a minute.
19:37Have you ever wondered how mountain ranges are formed?
19:40We see them in real life.
19:42In movies.
19:43In photos on the internet.
19:44We climb them.
19:45But how did they appear?
19:47Mountains have not always existed on the planet in this form.
19:51They appeared as a result of a large scale collision of tectonic plates.
19:56Two giant solid chunks of ground are moving toward each other, then crash, and boom!
20:02Millions of tons of the Earth's crust pile on top of each other, mix, and form ledges and gorges.
20:10And all this can last for millions of years.
20:13Yes, it's a disaster.
20:15But it's very slow.
20:17Some tectonic plates are still colliding.
20:20For example, the Himalayas continue to grow because the Indian and Eurasian plates are still ramming into each other.
20:27And this process began about 50 million years ago.
20:31The Gambertsev Mountains under ice experienced a similar event, only much earlier.
20:37An article in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters says that they appeared during the formation of the supercontinent
20:44Gondwana.
20:46Two giant pieces of land were separated by a boundless ocean.
20:50But then, about 700 million years ago, they collided and formed Gondwana.
20:57This supercontinent included the territories of modern Africa, South America, Australia, India, and Antarctica.
21:05The giant pieces crashed into each other and released a stream of hot, partially molten rock.
21:11This mess grew bigger and bigger, forming mountains.
21:15The temperature of those mountains grew, their mass increased, and at some point, Gondwana became unstable.
21:22The supercontinent began to collapse under its own weight.
21:26The hot rocks below the surface began to flow sideways as a result of a process called gravitational spreading.
21:34Take toothpaste and start squeezing it out of the tube.
21:37Approximately the same thing happened with billions of tons of red hot rock.
21:42Ancient mountains in Antarctica appeared right during this catastrophic event.
21:48You've just watched a visual simulation of global events that took place hundreds of millions of years ago.
21:54It looks cool, but how did scientists figure it out?
21:58How did they see this planetary scale destruction?
22:02If the Gambertsev Mountains under ice is one of the most unexplored places in the world,
22:07then how could people find out its origin?
22:10The answer is simple.
22:12Tiny particles of rock have told us about the changing landscape of the planet.
22:17These are zircons, but scientists also call them time capsules.
22:22This mineral is very handy and resistant to mechanical and chemical influences.
22:28It's difficult to crush, it doesn't get affected by erosion, and it doesn't dissolve in water.
22:34And there's uranium inside it.
22:36This chemical element shows scientists the age of the rock.
22:41The fact is that uranium always decays into lead at the same rate.
22:45Scientists look at the ratio of uranium and lead and determine the age of minerals with great accuracy.
22:53Okay, this sounds a bit complicated.
22:55Here's a simple example.
22:57Imagine that each mountain belt is a clock that starts ticking at the moment of its formation.
23:02That is, after the collision of tectonic plates.
23:06After the rock forms, uranium begins its slow decay.
23:10The more time passes, the more uranium turns into lead.
23:15The rate of this decay is always the same.
23:18This decay can last for billions of years.
23:21The less uranium is in zircons, and the more lead, the older the rock is.
23:26And this is how it happens in practice.
23:29Geologists take several rock samples.
23:32In a lab, they crush it to extract crystalline zircons.
23:37Geologists then dissolve the particles in acid to separate uranium from lead.
23:41Then, they use a special device.
23:44A mass spectrometer that accelerates atoms and sorts them by mass.
23:48This is a rather complicated process, but the bottom line is that this device shows scientists the amount of uranium
23:56and lead.
23:57They look at the ratios of these two elements and calculate the age of the rock.
24:03Geologists took zircons from sandstones near the Gambertsev Mountains, studied those particles,
24:09looked at the level of uranium, and calculated the chronology of mountain formation.
24:13Then, they compared the data obtained with the history of our planet,
24:18and realized that the mountains buried in Antarctica appeared during the formation of the supercontinent Gondwana.
24:25But how did they find out that the supercontinent included Australia, India, and Africa?
24:31Zirconia from those Antarctic rocks turned out to be very similar to zirconium from those countries.
24:37That is, a long time ago, these three continents were together.
24:42So, the Gambertsev Mountains began to grow about 650 million years ago.
24:47About 580 million years ago, they reached the height of the Himalayas.
24:52And 80 million years later, they experienced the melting of the Earth's crust.
24:57And while most of the mountain ranges on the planet were changing and collapsing,
25:01the Gambertsev Mountains under ice remained untouched.
25:07Water, soil, wind, earthquakes, gravity, and other natural forces destroy mountain belts.
25:13This process is called erosion.
25:16But mountains buried in Antarctica haven't experienced anything like this.
25:20The cold temperature and the ice sheet around them kept this range unchanged.
25:24It's one of the best preserved ancient mountain belts on the planet.
25:28Okay, but why do we need to explore these mountains?
25:32What difference does it make that the supercontinent Gondwana collapsed in the past?
25:37It's possible that plants, frozen bodies of insects, or ancient bacteria have remained preserved under thick layers of ice.
25:45What about ancient animals?
25:47Many species could have lived on Gondwana.
25:50Studying ancient mountains in Antarctica can show us what the planet looked like about a half a billion years ago.
25:56When Antarctica was a green continent, what lived on it?
26:00What happened to this life?
26:02Is it possible to revive those ancient creatures after so many years?
26:06If scientists were able to calculate the date of the supercontinent's appearance using tiny particles,
26:12then imagine what they could find after examining this hidden mountain range.
26:16It all sounds very interesting, but there's one problem.
26:21To take a small piece of this unknown world, you need to drill through a lot of ice.
26:27You need to deliver heavy equipment to one of the most inaccessible continents in the world,
26:31build stations, obtain an energy source, and conduct large-scale research.
26:36It sounds incredibly expensive, so this hidden territory will probably remain a mystery for a long time.
26:44Let's just hope that some billionaire will want to find out Antarctica's secrets and arrange a large-scale expedition there.
26:52I will, I will praise you for a long-term discovery and Internationale.
26:52hàng&s
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