Free Republic

An American teenager has been detained on an Antarctic island, creating a major delay in his attempt to fly his small plane to every continent that is being followed online by more than a million people. Chilean authorities stopped Ethan Guo, 19, after he submitted a false flight plan, according to the BBC's US partner CBS News. His deviation from that plan in the air had "activated alert protocols", Chile's General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics said in a statement. Mr Guo was taken into custody after landing on King George Island, home to a number of international research stations and...

Planet Earth continues to hide a plethora of secrets that our modern science still seems far from uncovering. One of the most mysterious regions of our world is the southern pole, the Antarctica, where a group of researchers has now found ‘strange radio waves coming from below the ice’.

Why this story matters.. The discovery of a prehistoric river valley and forested landscape beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet sheds light on the continent's ancient climate and may improve scientific understanding of Antarctica's response to climate change. Ancient Antarctic landscape.. Uncovering evidence of rivers, valleys, and dense forests beneath Antarctica can enhance understanding of the continent's prehistoric environment and biodiversity. Climate history and change.. The findings provide valuable information about past warm and even tropical conditions, aiding scientists like in predicting how the Antarctic ice sheet might react to future climate shifts. Warm climate.. Researchers believe Antarctica featured a...

Deep beneath the thick ice that covers East Antarctica, scientists are revealing new discoveries about a mystery that has been hidden beneath the continent’s frozen exterior for half a billion years. According to newly published research, clues to the formation of a mountain range the size of the Alps tucked away below Antarctic ice are being revealed, offering geologists a unique glimpse at the processes behind their formation. The Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, initially discovered by Soviet scientists during an expedition in 1958, have puzzled researchers for decades. Now, these massive features beneath Antarctica’s frozen surface, which were formed long ago...

Our southernmost continent is, we’ve been told, the suffocating canary in the global coal mine. The more ice loss in Antarctica, the greater trouble we’re in. So what do we make of a study which found that between 2021 and 2023, there was a record-breaking increase in the Antarctic Ice Sheet? We mark it down as another in a long line of misses from the global warming zealots. “Notably, four major glaciers in the Wilkes Land–Queen Mary Land region of East Antarctica reversed their previous pattern of accelerated mass loss from 2011 to 2020 and instead showed significant mass gain...

A surprising shift is underway at the bottom of the world. After decades of contributing to rising sea levels, Antarctica’s massive ice sheet has started growing again — at least for now. A study published this week in Science China Earth Sciences finds that the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) experienced a record-breaking mass gain between 2021 and 2023, largely due to anomalous increases in precipitation. The rebound is especially significant in East Antarctica, where four major glacier basins had previously shown signs of destabilization.

Chile has issued a tsunami warning and said people should evacuate coastal areas in the south of country after a large earthquake. The warning was issued for the remote Magallanes region on the country's southern tip and parts of the Chilean Antarctic Territory. It comes after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck 219km (136 miles) off the coast of the city of Ushuaia, in neighbouring Argentina, on Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey. The earthquake was also felt in Ushuaia, local media reports, and aftershocks have been reported in the region. In a post on X, Chilean President Gabriel...

"Leafy moss dated to the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) has been found embedded in Antarctic glacier ice that today is “permanently snow-covered” with “no evidence of meltwater....This affirms a warmer MWP and that summer melt during the MWP was greater than today...The leafy moss samples have been dated to about 1,000 years ago"

A Chicago-sized iceberg recently broke away from Antarctica, giving scientists the chance to explore a portion of the sea floor that may have been hidden for centuries.

Nine members of an Antarctic expedition are locked up together at a research station 2,000 miles from civilization. And one of them is a madman — accused of violently beating, threatening and sexually harassing at least two of his teammates. The Post can reveal that the South African crew of three women and six men includes a glamorous doctor with her own skincare line and a deputy team leader who helped produce a short horror film during a previous stay at the station — along with engineers and a meteorologist. The identity of the crew member believed to have snapped...

A group of South African scientists has pleaded for help, saying they are trapped in an isolated base on a cliff edge in Antarctica with a team member who has become violent. One of the team has been accused of assault and threatening violence against his colleagues, according to the South African newspaper The Sunday Times. South Africa's environment minister confirmed that an assault had taken place. Why It Matters The overwintering team, a group that remains in a remote and extreme environment during winter months, knew that 10 of their 15 months at the base would be spent in...

A group of isolated researchers has been stranded for months on end in the most inhospitable environment – until one of the team members goes rogue, sexually harassing and eventually threatening to kill a female colleague. That could be the plot of a successful thriller or horror film. Still, unfortunately, this is reportedly what’s happening in real life to a group of South African scientists trapped in the tiny Sanae IV base in Antarctica. The story broke in the outer world because a member of the research station sent out an email to a major newspaper pleading for rescue after...

A group of scientists trapped in a tiny base in Antarctica have sent an email pleading to be rescued after they say a member of their team threatened to kill another colleague. A South African research group dispatched to Sanae IV base, a research station in Antarctica, are isolated on their mission for at least 10 more months. Extreme weather makes leaving and entering nearly impossible and there are thousands of miles between the team and their home continent. This leaves the group with only each other for company in the absence of animals, other humans and society as they...

Sensational new discoveries arising from long-forgotten early aerial photographs indicate that ice has remained stable and even grown slightly since the 1930s over a 2,000 km stretch of East Antarctica. In a recent paper published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Copenhagen came to their conclusions by tracking glacial movement in an area with as much ice as the Greenland ice sheet. The findings are unlikely to feature in narrative-driven mainstream media. The silence will probably replicate the response to another recent paper that found the ice shelves surrounding Antarctica grew in overall size from 2009-2019. The Copenhagen...

Recently, the incoming Trump administration has expressed a desire to expand the territory of the United States. One option for achieving this is the annexation of Marie Byrd Land, a region of Antarctica that is currently unclaimed by any nation and whose exploration was pioneered by the U.S. Annexing this land can be done in a realistically achievable manner and would deliver practical gains. Marie Byrd Land is a region in West Antarctica that currently comprises the largest unclaimed piece of land on the surface of Earth. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) describes it as stretching east of the Ross...

Legendary Grand Funk Railroad frontman Mark Farner opens up about the day he died - TWICE - and what he saw on the other side. Farner shares his near-death experience (NDE), describing in vivid detail what it was like to "leave his body" and cross over into the afterlife. This is Mark Farner like you've never heard him before—reflecting on life, death, and his incredible journey back.Mark has a brand new album, Closer To My Home, his first new release since 2006, available to pre-order now, check it out!Grand Funk Legend Died & Saw the Afterlife – Mark Farner Tells...

No trees have grown on the windswept Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean for tens of thousands of years — just shrubs and other low-lying vegetation. That's why a recent arboreal discovery nearly 20 feet... beneath the ground caught researchers' attention...Thomas and colleagues went to the site and began "picking up these big chunks of wood." The tree remains were so pristinely preserved they looked like driftwood, Thomas said. But knowing the history of the Falklands, the researchers knew the remnants couldn't be modern...The presence of the tree fossils suggests the island was once home to a temperate rainforest...

The images are ones you have to see to believe. One of the world's biggest icebergs is stuck spinning in an ocean vortex off the coast of Antarctica.Massive iceberg stuck spinning in ocean vortex off Antarctica | 1:57NEWS CENTER Maine | 104K subscribers | 897,238 views | August 15, 2024

The expedition was carried out in regions of drifting ice in West Antarctica in 2022. On the return visit in 2024, Ran disappeared without a trace under the ice. Credit: Filip Stedt Using the unmanned submarine Ran, researchers mapped the underside of West Antarctica’s Dotson Ice Shelf, uncovering complex ice formations and significant melt areas driven by underwater currents, crucial for enhancing sea level rise predictions. An international research team from the University of Gothenburg deployed the unmanned submarine ‘Ran’ beneath the thick ice of Antarctica. They received the first-ever detailed maps of the underside of a glacier, providing valuable...

Scientists have looked back in time to reconstruct the past life of Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” — nicknamed because its collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise. They have discovered it started retreating rapidly in the 1940s, according to a new study that provides an alarming insight into future melting. The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is the world’s widest and roughly the size of Florida. Scientists knew it had been losing ice at an accelerating rate since the 1970s, but because satellite data only goes back a few decades, they didn’t know exactly when significant melting began. Now there is...