Antarctica's Hidden Peaks, a New Mystery under the Ice
Antarctica's Hidden Peaks, a New Mystery under the Ice I. Introduction: The seventh continent, a realm of stark white stretching across an area larger than Europe, has long captivated the human imagination. Antarctica, a land sculpted by relentless cold and shrouded in a seemingly eternal winter, has been perceived as a vast, relatively uniform expanse of ice. Our mental image is dominated by the monolithic ice sheet, a frozen leviathan holding the key to global sea levels and whispering tales of ancient climates locked within its icy layers. For decades, scientific understanding of the terrain beneath this colossal ice sheet was largely based on broad surveys and inferences, painting a picture of a sub glacial landscape dotted with basins, valleys, and a few known mountain ranges that occasionally pierced the icy surface like jagged teeth. However, recent scientific endeavors, employing increasingly sophisticated techn...