Category: Science & Technology

The first detailed pictures of one of the planet's last unexplored frontiers — a vast mountain range that rivals the Alps in majesty buried underneath the ice of Antarctica — were revealed by scientists this week.

The rugged peaks soar to more than 8,000 feet (2,400 meters). They are buried beneath solid ice more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick, deep within Antarctica's eastern interior.

NEWSCOM - This digital composite image of an iceberg in Antarctica shows both the top arch portion of the iceberg, and the underwater structure and shape, which is sculpted by the movements of the sea.

The existence of this mountain range, called the Gamburtsev Mountains, shocked the Russian scientists who first discovered it more than 50 years ago, and mystery still shrouds the nearly 750-mile- (1,200-km-) long series of subglacial peaks.

At the International Polar Year conference in Oslo, Norway, scientists unveiled new radar images of an area of the mountains the size of the state of New York.

Newscom - Chinstrap penguins walk on the ice between South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia in Antarctica.

"What we'd shown before was an estimate based on gravity data — a little bit of a coarse resolution tool," said Robin Bell, a senior research scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. "What we showed at this meeting was the radar data. It's like going from using a big, fat sharpie to using a fine-tipped pencil."...MORE...

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