10 Greatest Discoveries Found In Antarctica

Antarctica is the coldest known place on the planet and for that reason it's probably not a very good destination hot spot for a lot of people we know so little about the giant ice cap but we've learned so much in just the past few decades ready to join the americano team then make sure to subscribe with notifications on so you don't miss any of our interesting videos ever again that being said let's begin [Music] fossilized forests despite being one of the coldest places on the planet if not the coldest place on the planet scientists still regard Antarctica as the world's biggest desert so it was a huge shock to learn that there was actually fossil forests on the continent and scientists are at a loss to explain how they got there or how they're forming this shows evidence that there were actually forests on the giant continent and that it wasn't always a giant ice cap this is a huge breakthrough in history and understanding how the continent formed but there's a lot of research still to be done the fossil forests can be dated back all the way to 300 million years ago and throughout time as the ice cap got colder the plants were perfectly preserved as they were frozen scientists today say that the discovery of fossilized forests has doubled in recent years and they found more than enough evidence to say that there's concrete proof that hard plants used to exist on the giant ice continent this information could help scientists understand the current animals that live there and why they act the way they do bacteria discovery there are a lot of different breeds of bacteria on Antarctica however we've struggled to understand the purpose of this bacteria and to find where exactly it came from however today scientists believe they're closer than ever to proving that life on other planets exists or that other life may have visited earth thanks to the bacteria and microorganisms found within Antarctica one of the main things consistent with a lot of the bacteria found is that it means little to no Sun to survive this means we're dealing bacteria unlike anything we've ever seen before among all of the habitats one thing is consistent with bacteria and that's that bacteria usually needs a lot of sunlight and a warm hosting environment to survive if you freeze most bacteria it will quickly die off so why is so much bacteria in Antarctica able to survive with little to no sunlight scientists haven't been able to come up with any kind of solution or answers as of yet but we're getting closer than ever to understanding life in Antarctica and we may be able to use some of this bacteria to hopefully discover cures to things currently incurable the whole now you might be thinking what's so special about a giant hole well the problem with holes is that a lot of different factors can build up to their formation sinkholes for example usually happen on the mainland and are usually done on roads or highways this is when people build bridges or roads over land that decays over time and things like wear or tear and constant heavy traffic among these roads eventually leads to a giant sinkhole forming and opening up creating a seemingly bottomless pit giant sinkholes are rather scary but science is getting closer to understanding them in Antarctica however there's not supposed to be any natural holes the only holes that are made are when an ice cap breaks off or falls into the ocean leaving a conveniently-placed hole however in 2017 scientists discovered that there was actually a hole the size of Maine that seemingly appeared overnight scientists are at a loss to understand this or exactly what could have made a giant hole this massive some people suspect that aliens could have had something to do with this or that another country is building a base there what do you think could have made a hole the size of a state without anyone noticing mutated seals in a rather interesting and bizarre discovery it was discovered that some of the seals in Antarctica had actually begun to mutate and not in the traditional way that you're thinking of but it appears that some of the seals were actually beginning to gain superpowers in one scientific study that was conducted in 2014 it was revealed that some of the seals were starting to gain the ability to grow more senses and actually develop a sixth sense when seals dive underwater they usually need sound and their own vision to find a breathing hole or to hunt for food however as the ice giant has gotten colder it appears that the seals are actually evolving than live there some of them now have the ability to use the Earth's magnetic field as a GPS and they don't have to use their eyes or sound to navigate around anymore this is a remarkable discovery and it allows seals to hunt without vision which is terrifying for any prey of seals it means that nowhere is safe and now seals are able to find breathing holes by using a magnetic field rather than looking for them which is absolutely incredible as the cap gets colder we wonder what else seals will develop super old ice as far as we know the ice has been there for millions of years or possibly hundreds of millions of years we're not sure of the exact age of the ice there but we know that this has been a long build-up due to neglect in core temperature changes of our planet however scientists are developing new methods to determine just how old the ice is they're typically ice doesn't last very long and most of the ice there is suspected to be dozens or just hundreds of years old however thanks to this new technology scientists have found some super old ice some scientists have discovered that there's ice over 100 thousand years old and they're at a loss as to how to explain this how do you explain the discovery of ice that's over 100 thousand years old and how has it not melted yet even under some of the most extreme conditions place usually doesn't last long especially when sunlight is involved it's usually melted and replaced by new ice with this discovery scientists now believe that they possess the technology to understand why ice ages happen and how often they happen do you think we're headed for a new ice age in our lifetime penguins we all love penguins or at least we should unless of course they're emperor penguins some researchers have gone to study emperor penguins and they've left horrified emperor penguins are all sociopaths and they have their own clique rules no seriously one researcher went to study emperor penguins and left with some of the most horrific notes ever read about other animals they noted that the penguins appeared to have their own hierarchy of who was popular some of the emperor penguins would participate in forced sex they were very condescending and all-around just jerks lesson learned never trust an emperor penguin penguins in general though were first discovered by some of the world's first early explorers and the first species ever discovered were Gentoo penguins there are a lot of different penguins today that we could research but emperor penguins have been the most mortifying and have scarred a lot of different researchers for life because of how brutal they are and how much of a dictatorship they run in their own communities the temperatures there are a lot of different labs set up around the giant ice cap to help study the temperatures and understand why it gets so cold we all know that Antarctica can get rather cold but do you know just how cold it can get some studies have detected temperatures as low as negative 144 degrees Fahrenheit if you were to walk outside during those temperatures you more than likely would immediately freeze and you'd have to amputate a limb at least this is why special equipment has to be worn if you go outside this was done during a census from 2004 all the way to 2016 this means that it's actually the coldest spot on earth even colder than Siberia where there's rumored to be prisons there that held some of the world's worst criminals and there's even conspiracy theories about horrific scientific experiments that go on where some of the prisoners are injected with mysterious medicines to see of Russia can create super soldiers who knows we may have some basis set up in Antarctica where some shady things happen that we'll never know about fires fires have to be literally impossible in Antarctic right there's no way that there's actual fires inside of Antarctica well if that's what you're thinking then you're somewhat correct but you're also dead wrong in Antarctica there's been signs of fire and there's also a lot of remote lakes around the area as well there are some areas of the giant ice cap that actually aren't all ice and scientists have found recent evidence that there may be fossilized forests as we previously mentioned wildfires are actually possible in some areas of the giant ice cap such as those remote Lakes where it's not icy and there's still some possible vegetation growing possibilities there fires were more than definitely possible but today most of the ice cap cannot support or sustain a fire because it would immediately go out unless it's in a controlled environment such as one of the many buildings or labs set up on the continent first discovery a lot of people want to know when an article was first discovered and it's hard to say because many people have claimed that they made the first discovery of Antarctica however as far as we can tell it was actually someone by the name of Captain James Cook who was the first person to discover Antarctica this happened in the year 1773 and oh boy do we feel sorry for the people who first discovered that place because they probably weren't expecting it to be so cold when they first approached the island they understandably didn't get on the island because it was too cold no one would set foot on this island for almost 100 more years it wasn't until 1843 when a man by the name of Charles Wilkes had an expedition of six different ships that he was taking to the island it took him nearly two years to get to the island and he stepped foot on the giant ice cap we assume he didn't spend very long there and quickly got onto a ship and sailed back any direction but their South Pole speaking of exploration it wasn't until 1911 that the South Pole had actually been reached sure there had been people on the giant ice cap before this point but no one had successfully reached the South Pole what's impressive about this is that it took 57 days to Trek all the way to the South Pole all the way from the beginning of the mainland how did they survive the extremely cold temperatures and survive the harsh conditions it was in approximately 1800 mile walk and all of the men made it alive however during their return back as some of their team did perish because of the blistering cold temperatures and we're even surprised that they made it that long it's absolutely incredible what kinds of conditions people could live through all in the name of exploration this was one of the few times that anyone had actually reached the South Pole and not many people are dumb enough to brave the Antarctic winds today deep Lakes helú archaea this frigid lake is perhaps one of the least suited environments on earth to sustain life strangely enough it was recently discovered that it not only contained life but the creatures they did find were actually thriving deep lake has a 27% salt content not far behind the 33.7% of the Dead Sea the lake salt content allows the water in the lake to remain in a liquid state despite the extreme conditions and temperatures around it scientists found that the lake is filled with microbes called halo archaea that are specifically suited to living in such conditions being removed from the rest of the evolutionary pool for so long has made these strange microbes an invaluable study they've already given scientists some unique insights into genetics and how life might evolve on different planets upward flowing rivers Antarctica actually has rivers that flow uphill these rivers located deep below the surface ice in the gambits tough mountain range maintain a constant uphill flow against gravity believe it or not this is due to the weight of the ice resting on top of the river and the pressure that it exerts on the water below these strange rivers are found in valleys between the surface rock and glaciers with gigantic amounts of ice crushing them from above scientists have been able to study them using aerial based radar and found that as ice shifts downhill the incredible pressure ends up forcing the water back uphill green ice [Music] recently an immense green growth was spotted in the Ross Sea after looking closer scientists discovered that green ice has been forming in a sheet spreading over 1,000 square kilometers more interestingly they found the cause to be an enormous phytoplankton bloom that had completely discolored the ice around it algae blooms themselves aren't rare with an even bigger one recorded around the same time back in 2012 phytoplankton however don't usually tint the ice the leading theory points to an overall thinning of the ice sheet coupled with the consequent rise in surface slush providing more optimal conditions for algae growth ancient alien and conspiracy theorists however have been quick to assert that this mysterious growth appears to be the otherworldly hidden mountain ranges if you are thinking about making an attempt at the gambit of mountains it might be more difficult than you'd first expect in a sense these ancient mountains are almost three kilometres tall but are also completely covered by more than half a kilometre of ice and snow making these mountains a little tough to reach interestingly they are incredibly similar to today's European Alps the gambit of range is over 1 billion years old created as a result of the formation of red ania also known as Pangaea this mountain range covered by glaciers somewhere around 35 million years ago even features its own freshwater underground lakes and is the site of those strange backward flowing rivers Wilkes land anomaly a number of different impact crater sites have been theorized at Wilkes land with a lot of evidence to back them up most recently in 2006 NASA satellites spotted what they then classified as gravitational changes scans suggested a massive object positioned inside what appeared to be an impact crater this crater spans over 150 miles across and is over 800 meters deep a growing number of scientists believe that this rock was more massive than the one we know to have wiped out the dinosaurs with many claiming that this could be evidence of the asteroid that led to the Permian Triassic extinction event wiping out almost all life on Earth there are also abounding theories that feature secret Nazi UFO landing sites whatever the cause the Wilkes land anomaly is certainly Antarctica's weirdest site you

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Keywords: discovery, discoveries, biggest discovery, greatest, greatest discovery, mysterious discoveries, most mysterious, mysterious, found on earth, on earth, worldwide, happening worldwide, happening on earth, documentary, unexplained, mysterious videos, mysterious things, science

Id: UMDIcrLNnJk

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2019