Mysterious Antarctica Secrets Scientists Cannot Explain

From unnatural particles and gravitational anomalies to reappearing ghost ships, these mysterious Antarctic secrets are confusing scientists. Up first are Antarctic Particles. The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna, or ANITA, is a device that measures cosmic rays, more specifically the high energy neutrinos that come off them. ANITA floated on a balloon high above the Antarctic ice sheet, gazing at the stars for several years. So imagine the researcher's shock when the instruments meant to read energy coming from the stars detected those same high energy neutrinos coming up from the earth. Now low energy neutrinos can pass through quite a bit of material, as they are very small and can pass through the gaps in atoms. But high energy neutrinos have a much larger footprint and are more easily deflected and intercepted. So how did these relatively easy to deflect neutrinos come up through the earth? Did they pass all the way through, or is there another explanation? Scientists have proposed everything from neutrinos passing all the way through the planet or getting reflected around inside like an inverse disco ball, to a discovery of an entirely new neutrino or even dark matter. However, others think the answer is much more mundane. The neutrinos simply came down from outer space, missing ANITA, and then entered the Antarctic ice, where they hit a sort of compacted snow called fern. Fern is between glacial ice and snow and can have pockets of low or high density which may allow it to reflect neutrinos back up towards space. Scientists still aren't really sure what's going on though. Next is Shackleton's Ship. Ernest Shackleton is one of the great explorers of world history, having made his fame off of the rather disastrous attempt to reach the south pole with his ship Endurance. It wasn't his first trip to Antarctica, and far from his first time in the cold, but this time the ship got stuck in an ice floe. The crew would spend two months on the ice before managing to make an equally long journey to rescue, but the ship was swallowed whole by the floe, and then vanished into the cruel Antarctic sea. You'd be forgiven for thinking the ship had sunk, totally destroyed and would never be seen again, but you'd be wrong. In the mid-1960s, another ship went searching for the Endurance, tracing her path, and would get to see a once in a lifetime event. The ice floe heaved, split, and spat forth the Endurance, her hull pushed high into the sky before she was sucked back under the ice and vanished for good. In 2022, researchers would successfully discover the wreckage beneath the ice, scanning it through the crust for a 3D rendering. Being stuck beneath dangerous sea ice 3 kilometers under the surface, it is likely Endurance will remain there for the rest of history. Next is the Green Crab Crisis. Green Crab are some of the most successful colonizers in the animal kingdom. Rapidly adaptable, small enough to survive anywhere, often in large numbers, and very successful predators, these crabs can take up roots just about anywhere the water is the right temperature for them to live in. So you might think it's a little silly to bring a whole bunch of them and start farming them off the coast of Chile, and now, several years after that decision was made, we know it was a bad idea. Green Crab have been swarming up the pacific coast of the Americas, devastating several ecosystems, but they also taste delicious so it isn't too bad. It's not like there's nothing that eats crabs along the pacific coast anyways, but Antarctica is a different story. For now, the waters are too cold for the green crab to push that far south, but if we know anything about the future, it's that the world's waters will warm more. And as they do, the crabs will slowly flood south, or get picked up and carried in the ballast of ships, and Antarctica will eventually be infested with them. Antarctica is a unique environment, with much less diversity and competition to halt the spread of the green crab, which makes it especially dangerous and vulnerable. So far as we know, Antarctica is currently free of green crab influence, but that may not last long. Next is Totten Glacier. Melting sea ice is one of the greatest threats to the world's oceans. It raises sea levels, decreases salinity, and introduces more cold water than would normally be in the ocean. But recently scientists discovered something even more chilling, a massive glacier field in Antarctica known as the Totten Glacier Catchment, which is under serious threat. The ice field is larger than the more famous West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and should be less of a threat due to its size and therefore inherent stability, except it isn't stable. Deep sea channels beneath the ice are pumping warm water into the underside of the glacier, encouraging it to melt faster than it should. Should the entire field melt, global sea levels would rise 11 feet, destroying numerous cities around the world. Next is Maud Rise Polynia. The Antarctic Ice Sheet may look smooth and pristine from the air, but it is absolutely not. It's filled with small holes and cracks, which are known as polynia. Polynia are complex, and can occur for a vast variety of reasons, often many of which are deeply interconnected. Maud Rise Polynia is, however, one of the largest and most sudden polynias ever to appear. It practically appeared overnight, like a sudden gash in the ice sheet, larger than the country of Wales. Unlike other polynias which come and go, however, Maud Rise has not shrunk, resealed, or vanished. It's believed that a strong current, strengthened by unusually warm and salty water, encountered the deep sea mountain of Maud Rise, which then drove this current up its face and into the ice sheet above. This new warm water current is then thought to have pushed the ice apart, opening up this strange and massive gash in the sheet. It's unknown how long the ice will stay this way, but it will likely be for decades if not longer. Then again, with how quickly the world's climate is changing, scientists really can't make any certain predictions. Next is the Ice Storm. Antarctica is one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Only a handful of people are allowed to visit on tours, and even fewer are chosen to live on the continent. So it's no wonder Antarctic ghost stories have a special flavor of terror. In 2016, a small outpost was rocked with a storm, and the three occupants were trapped inside the squall. The storm was a big one, set to last weeks, and so the crew hunkered down. It didn't take long for the first cracks to show, even amongst these professional researchers. After a week of complaining of a growing whining and speaking in his head, Mike Leash was eventually scrabbling at the doors, even as his colleagues tried to restrain him, and eventually bursted out into the storm. Despite their desire to save his life, none of the crew was going to go out into a zero-visibility Antarctic ice storm, and Mike disappeared. The storm cooled off two days later, leaving the world covered in a thick coating of snow. The crew went out to find what happened to Mike, only to see him standing just a hundred steps from the front door. When they approached him, though, they were shocked to find it was just his clothes, frozen solid and completely empty of Mike's body. Despite a recovery attempt, Mike was not able to be found. It's thought he may have stripped while hypothermic and then been buried under the snowstorm, but why then would his clothes be standing in place? Something strange happened here. And finally is the Wilkes Gravity Anomaly. A negative gravity anomaly was detected under the ice of Wilkes Land, and it has scientists stumped. It may sound a little sci-fi, but there are actually gravitational anomalies all over the world, and they can help us discover some pretty interesting things. If the Earth were actually a totally smooth, consistent ball, then gravity would be experienced the same all over the planet. But the Earth isn't smooth, and gravity is not consistent. These gravitational anomalies are small shifts away from the predicted ideal gravitational value, and can be used to find dense ore deposits beneath the Earth's surface. Other things can also cause anomalies, though, like caves or caverns where the Earth isn't as dense as it hypothetically should be. A positive anomaly means gravity is stronger than expected there, maybe due to a mountain or dense elements underground, while a negative gravitational anomaly means gravity is weaker than expected. This could be for any number of reasons, but usually an unseen void in the Earth is the culprit. In the case of the Wilkes Gravity Anomaly, scientists still aren't really sure what's causing it. However, the most plausible theory is that of an old meteor crater that was then frozen over by the ice from the Ice Age. Still, no one is really truly sure what is causing this anomaly. Those were Antarctica's mysterious secrets that are currently confusing scientists. I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you next time.