Are there GHOST PEAKS in the Antarctic?
The working conditions could hardly be more hostile to human life: The outside temperature is minus 22°F and fierce winds buffet the international researchers who’ve constructed their camp at an altitude of almost 12,000 feet near the South Pole. Their mission: measure the biggest invisible peaks in the world, the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains (see illustration at right). What makes the mission so special? The camp is considerably higher than the mountain peaks being studied. Like almost all of the Antarctic mainland, the Gamburtsev Mountains are covered by a layer of ice that can be as much as two and a half miles thick. Thus research into these tall mountains in the heart of Antarctica takes place far above their summits. Aircraft equipped with ice-penetrating radar sweep back and forth above the ice, using on-board instruments to map the topography, measure the gravitational and magnetic fields, and find out as much as possible about the origin of these mysterious ghost peaks. The researchers have discovered that the Gamburtsev Mountains cover an area of more than 115,000 square miles and have been buried in ice since around 35 million years ago when glaciers merged to form the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the larger of the two ice sheets that make up Antarctica and the largest ice sheet on the planet. The highest peaks are 10,000 feet above sea level, though they’re under an additional 13,000 feet of ice. The lowest valley in the range lies 2,500 feet below sea level. “Almost two miles beneath us at the bottom of the ice sheet we found liquid water in the valleys,” says Dr. Robin Bell, a coleader of the Antarctica’s Gamburtsev Province (AGAP) project. “It was much warmer at the base of the ice sheet than at the top.”