What if we told you another world exists in this world, and that place scientists have
only just discovered.
The great David Attenborough has called this one of our planet’s great secrets, a place
teeming with life; strange creatures exist there that have captivated researchers.
But where is this mysterious new world?
What is going on there?
Let us explain.
We are going to take you to one of the most hostile places on the planet, a place we know
as Antarctica.
It’s not generally a place we visit due to the extreme temperatures and the fact that
there’s not that much going on there.
The area is twice the size of Australia, with the actual size being 5,500,000 square miles
(14,200,000 square kilometers).
Antarctica is a hard place to call home, seeing that it’s the coldest, driest and windiest
place on Earth.
It’s also just about all covered with ice, or about 98% of the landmass.
Believe it or not, that ice might be 1.2 miles (1.9 km) thick in certain areas.
Just try and imagine an ice block that large.
Due to this kind of unforgiving environment, Antarctica has no indigenous population.
No one knew much about this place at all until explorers started going there in the 19th
century.
Since then and still today thousands of scientists around the year make the continent their home,
living in research stations.
This is hardly a luxurious life, but then we the public are learning a lot about this
great continent of ice.
For years we saw moving images of whales in the water, penguins scurrying and slipping
on the ice, but what we didn’t see was the world under that thick ice.
It’s here where another world exists.
Well, two worlds really, one is the ancient world in subglacial lakes and another is the
ocean under the giant pieces of floating ice.
This is how Mr. Attenborough put it when he saw life under the ice:
“It may be hostile above the ice, but below it couldn’t be more different, conditions
are so stable that life over millennia has had time to diversify.
Creatures here grow to a great size; these predator worms are three meters in size.”
Yep, imagine coming across a three meter-long worm.
The more we explore down there, the more extreme animals we see.
That’s not it, though, and researchers are just beginning to understand this new world.
It’s not just about animals, though.
Last year scientists working with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization
drilled down into the ice to measure something called hydroxyl.
This is what the lead researcher said about that stuff:
“Hydroxyl (OH) is a naturally occurring, highly reactive molecule that plays an important
role in the atmosphere as a 'natural air purifier', by destroying greenhouse gases like methane
and industrial chemicals that deplete ozone.”
Perhaps this stuff can be used to help clean up the environment above.
That’s what they hope anyway.
Back to life down there, one researcher simply called underneath the ice a weird bit of ocean.
He said by looking deep down we might know more about our past.
He said, “It’s very different to basically anywhere else in the planet.”
There is ocean underground, but there are also something called subglacial lakes.
These exist way under the ice, in a kind of separate world from ours.
Some people have called these places underworlds, new worlds.
One person put it like this: “We think we know a lot about the Earth, and then things
like this happens and you think, "oh my gosh, I gotta rewrite everything."
These subglacial lakes hold secrets that have been hidden from mankind for millions of years.
What has gone on down there has stayed down there, but now with better drilling technologies
we are starting to see more.
By drilling into these thick sheets of ice the experts tell us we might better learn
to breach the subglacial lakes in other worlds, such as on Jupiter's moon Europa.
There’s also one on Mars, well, one we have found.
There might be more.
We’ve seen the inventory for Antarctica subglacial lakes and it’s long, so while
we are getting better at drilling these things are nothing new.
The first of them was observed in 1969 and we’ve been looking into these places since,
finding life in the form of microorganisms that have for all intents and purposes not
been part of our world for a long, long time.
This is how one scientist described these lakes:
“Over 400 lakes exist beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.
They range from giant stable lakes at the center of the ice sheet, isolated from the
atmosphere for millions of years, to small through-flow pockets of water beneath fast-flowing
ice streams.”
One of the largest of these lakes, called dark, deep and mysterious by some, is called
Lake Vostok.
This lake has been covered with ice for a pretty long time…err…15 million years
to be almost exact.
Located in East Antarctica it is 143 miles (230 km) long, 31 miles (50 km) wide and as
much as 2,625 feet (800 meters) deep.
So, what’s down there?
Well, this is why David Attenborough keeps talking about secrets, because the folks that
study this place admit it’s a mystery and there are things we’ve never seen before
for sure.
We are talking life forms that could tell us a lot about the process of evolution.
It’s said an ecosystem survived down there when previously we thought that not possible.
These microorganisms have survived without sunlight or energy for millions of years and
scientists are amazed.
“There's a thriving ecosystem down there,” said one scientist.
“It's the first time that we've got a real insight into what organisms might live beneath
the Antarctic continent.”
We should say again that this is somewhat different from the places where you might
find three meter worms.
Scientists are indeed making discoveries like that, but this is when they are drilling through
thinner sheets of ice and look for life.
National Geographic took some pretty amazing photos of this under ice world.
To get those shots divers went deeper under the ice than had ever been done before, and
that’s why they got the money shots.
They introduced us to this new world in all its splendor.
So while this world isn’t like the subglacial world in that the lifeforms are known to us,
it’s still pretty special.
Here’s a snippet from the National Geographic article:
“Farther down, we meet giant sea stars: At 15 inches in diameter, they’re much bigger
than those in warmer seas.
Then come the giant sea spiders.
They’re arthropods, like insects and spiders on land, and they’re found in all the world’s
oceans, but in warmer waters they’re rare and tiny, nearly invisible to the naked eye.
Here, as in the Arctic, the sea spiders can span a foot or more.”
But there was more.
Colorful plants that cover the seafloor, giant beetles, those massive worms, and just plain
weirdness.
In the words of the writer, “Extreme conditions beget extreme animals.”
Would you be up for some extreme animal watching under the ice?
Tell us in the comments.
And go watch “Scientists Find Best Evidence That The Loch Ness Monster Actually Exists”
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.