# Antarctic Alps! And Rivers under the ice?



## Saeltari (Feb 25, 2009)

This is very interesting. It shows that the ice there formed fairly quickly. They stated that the Alps are about 50 to 60 million years old but these may be quite a bit older. The article also said they could see liquid below their camps, about 2 miles down in valleys.

Makes a person wonder what discoveries and mysteries are there! 

-> Alp-sized peaks found entombed in Antarctic ice


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## chrispenycate (Feb 25, 2009)

Deep frozen mountain? I suppose the jagged bits will stop the sheet sliding off in one big lump.

I get this incongruous picture of those heliski maniacs who're always searching for new slopes to slide down digging holes to get to the peaks…


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## Allegra (Feb 25, 2009)

Fascinating! Lovecraft would love to hear this. There are maps on the BBC report:

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | 'Ghost peaks' mapped under ice


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## Nik (Feb 25, 2009)

Scary...

When you consider there's entire ranges trapped under miles of  ice, some places in Antarctica where only the peaks show, those ruddy dry-valleys, ancient 'buried' lakes kept thawed by geothermal heat, ring-of-fire volcanos including the active Erebus...

Um, I'm reminded that 'Alien Earth' hunts now include 'super ice-Earths', 50~~150% bigger, but in Mars-like orbits where life may thrive at Equatorial 'oases', hot springs and/or in the under-ice oceans...


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## Cayal (Feb 25, 2009)

Saeltari said:


> Makes a person wonder what discoveries and mysteries are there!
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090224/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_antarctica_mountains



Megatron.


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## Saeltari (Feb 25, 2009)

Cayal said:


> Megatron.


 


According to _Antarktos Rising_, its the nephilim .


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## Ursa major (Feb 26, 2009)

I heard someone on the Radio 4 ten o'clock news say that these mountains were very odd: there were no nearby plate boundaries and he said the rocks were (or had been) thought to be Precambrian, meaning that any mountains there would have been smoothed by the ages, not Alpine.

(I can only assume that they got their geology wrong.)


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## ktabic (Feb 26, 2009)

From what I dimly remember from my course, there was a plate boundary running through Antarctica. The two plates merged about 65MA ago. 

The Antarctica mountains were not formed by the usual method of banging two tectonic plates together and waiting, but by taking a 2 mile high plateau, about the size of France and eroding it away. There are other mountain ranges (Red Sea foothills are that type, iirc) formed this way, but nothing quite on the same scale as Antarctica.

There are entire rivers and lakes under the ice, which have been separated from the rest of the biosphere for about 15MA. IIRC, the Russians where planning on sending something down to see if there was still life (almost certainly) and how it had evolved (15MA provides plenty of time for stuff to evolve)


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## Nik (Feb 28, 2009)

" taking a 2 mile high plateau, about the size of France and eroding it away..."

Thanks !
That got a 'Wow !' here: Needed *seriously* deep time...


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## AE35Unit (Mar 1, 2009)

Fabulous,if only we could take a look down there! I wonder what fossil remains of creatures past we'd find!


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