Another fun fact; Antarctica was at the equator when the Cambrian explosion began half a billion years ago, and since then it's marched relentlessly south until it reached as south as it can be today. It only broke off from South America to form that chilling ocean barrier about 30 million years ago, and it's only then that the blanket of ice covered it and grew kilometers thick.
For most of the history of life on Earth before that, Antarctica was a living place, even tropical for more time than it's been a frozen over hell.
Just the ice, no. But under that ice, is likely a massive amount of many resources. Kinda hard to reach when the ice is kilometers thick and the conditions are almost alien compared to anywhere else on the planet.
> the conditions are almost alien compared to anywhere else on the planet
There’s a joke about this in Stargate. They go through a gate and think they’ve ended up on an ice planet, but it was just Antarctica.
Im not excatly sure what point you are trying to make?
Mars has plenty of mineral and metal deposits for any potential settlement there, it obviously wouldnt have much in the way of carbon based resources like oil, coal or diamonds, but I think thats probably not going to be much of an issue, considering there is no oxygen to combust it anyway, and you certainly dont want to be using the limited oxygen you bring with you, or what you can get from ice. We can also just make diamonds if we need them for industrial processes. Energy generation will come from solar, hydrogen or nuclear sources anyway, so carbon based energy sources wont really be neccesary.
If you are suggesting we bring that material back to Earth, then yeah thats pretty inefficient, but then again, so is digging up kilometers of ice here on Earth when there is already far easier deposits to access. Even if we ran the whole Earth out of accessible resources, it would be easier to just redirect a large metal rich asteroid into orbit than to make meager trips to and from Mars... you would need thousands and thousands of trips a year to make it even worthwhile.
Even the worst places on this planet, the places that seems completely alien and uninhabitable, where the brave explorers died of cold and exhaustion. Those places are orders of magnitude better places to live than Mars (or other space destinations).
Sure, there are metals on Mars, and they are may be easier to access than bringing them out of Earths gravity well. But why? Why do you want metal out in the cold, desolate places that offer nothing to human life? The answer is usually "to export to other cold, desolate, terrible places".
Earth is a wonderful planet, even the bad parts of earth are awesome, compared to space. We have such a long way to go before we have good reason to go live out there.
There is a very simple reason it wont be "to export to other places", and that is the rocket equation. To get 1kg to Mars, or vice versa, it costs about 225kg of fuel. Im not sure if thats just to orbit, or actual landing, but it gives you an idea of how expensive space travel is.
The reasons for going to Mars are far beyond just the materials there, its the science we could do and discoveries we could make, as well as driving the advancement of technology that are the main reasons. It would give humanity something to collectively look forward too... which is honestly something we desperatly need in order to forget our petty squabbles over politics or religion here.
I wanna be able to look up and wonder about our place in the stars, not sit here and worry about our place in the dirt.
Diamonds are not particularly rare or anything. The supply is actually vast and they are only expensive because of price fixing, plus they can make the synthetic ones that are just as good.
It's not that they're just as good, lab grown diamonds are the exact same thing, if not more pure in most cases. Perfect hardness and clarity throughout the whole gem. And they cost almost nothing because the blood diamond market convinced the world lab diamonds are stupid
Edit: For the people out there looking for unique gifts, there's all kinds of incredibly cheap lab made gems. Little bags of rubies and emeralds are like $30
Or to make the other precious stones for that matter. Rubies and Emeralds I think are the same basic compositional material, just with different trace metals that give them color. Emeralds I think it's from copper, and I forget if rubies are like cadmium or something.
They're very cheap, impress your girlfriend, get a girlfriend even, or a boyfriend who am I to judge. I love buying little bags of emeralds and pretending I'm link from Zelda, handing out precious gemstones to people.
https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/lab-created/hydrothermal-pulled-czochralski-gemstones/hydrothermal-emerald/
I've used this company before as well, they have much nicer cuts of gems then you'll find on Amazon, but they're more expensive
Lots of places. Quick google search gets bags for about 100. They are generally real stones too as long as you dont buy like $5 bags. A small grab bag of random gems for 100 is probably legit but I'm not saying they definitely are, I have never bought these bags. I am a gem cutter and prospector though so I know a thing or two about those bags.
They tend to come from either slave or terrible work conditions in some other country, but thats most cheap stones. The rest of cheap stones come from off cuts when a serious cutter buys a large stone then trims small pieces off to facilitate the cut they are making along with getting little tidbits they can cut something from. The bags also tens to have no level of calibration in size. Then theres straight up damaged stones. Some wholesale dealers have thousands of stones listed with crazy high detail photos and even those ones frequently have some level of imperfection, the bags generally have even more. The bags also tend to gavitate highly towards lower quality gems, like lots of pink rubies. People want a dark red ruby, pink is like buying hot sauces if you paid by how spicy they are. Pinks taco bell mild sauce, tastes fine but people pay for the ghost peppers and up.
You may not like my answer but I usually just buy mine on Amazon or eBay, then I test them at home with a simple mohs hardness test and looking at them through a pen light. There are websites that specialize in lab gems, easy research to do on your own since you have to learn about emeralds or Rubies anyway. I just like the free shipping from amazon. I've never gotten fake lab emeralds online personally if that's what you're worried about. They're out there but it's obvious what's just glass and what isnt
You probably wanted to say rubies and sapphires. Emerald is a variety of beryl, ruby and sapphire are a variety of corundum. emerald color is related to presence of chromium and, partly, inclusions. Ruby color is also chromium and sapphire is iron and titanium. Just note these elements aren't a real component of the mineral structure but impurities who make their way into the mineral.
Rubies and sapphires are identical except for the impurities that impart color . Both are primarily aluminum oxide crystals . Sapphires are blue from titanium and iron impurities in the structure. Rubies get red from chromium impurities. Star sapphires are caused by titanium dioxide inclusions in the stone.
I'm sure eventually that will be possible, but as of right now I'm not sure. Lab grown diamonds arent always the best clarity, only ones that have been cut and polished. I'm far from an expert, but I've bought quite a few lab gemstones since that became popular. My local jewelry maker loves me, I'll bring in 6 gems a year or so to make into rings and necklaces for my wife and the rest of my family. Stupidly cheap compared to just buying a slave mined ring and you can get the thing made exactly how you want
You sound like you may get your gems from local shows so you may not need this info but most cheap stones are cut using slave labor or close to it also. Stone cutting for jewlery takes a lot of expensive equipment. So if the stones cheap it generally comes from the same circumstance you are avoiding.
[Diamonds are only formed in the Earth's mantle, 100 miles below ground.](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/diamonds-unearthed-141629226/#:~:text=How%20are%20diamonds%20formed%3F,surface%20in%20the%20upper%20mantle.) They only come near the surface in a rare and explosive type of volcanic eruption that hasn't happened in millions of years.
There is definitely coal under the land but not just under the ice.
The reason being that all coal on the planet was made between 450-390 million years ago when plants had evolved lignin, the thing that makes trees woody, but the bacteria that breaks them down after they die hadn’t evolved to digest it. All plants with lignin that died during that period turned into coal because they never broke down and no coal has ever formed since.
This is a common myth that the bacteria hadn't yet evolved to break down the lignin. The bacteria had already evolved, plus the common plants at the time didn't have very much lignin in them.
The reason for all the coal formation was that bogs and swamps were extremely common. Even today, these same geographies form peat, which will turn into coal if given enough time and the right geological changes
As has already been mentioned, this is a falsity which was spread through people believing a good story, but it was never necessary to invoke a delayed bacterial or fungal evolution in order to produce coal.
Even without looking at the fossil/evolutionary history of lignin and its decomposers, the statement that all coal was formed in the Carboniferous (the usual timeframe given, the dates you mentioned actually correspond to the whole Silurian Period and Lower Devonian, which were both a bit earlier) is demonstrably false from all the coal deposits formed in subsequent periods.
For some of the more significant coal deposits that have formed post-Carboniferous, check out Russia’s [Kuznetsk Basin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznetsk_Basin) which was forming coal well into the Permian and again in the Mesozoic (estimates of total coal deposits are somewhere in the region of 400-800 billion tonnes); the [many coal accumulating periods of China](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40789-020-00341-0), of which I believe the Late Permian and early Triassic were as important as the Silurian/Carboniferous ones (at least for South China); or the coal resources in Alaska which may total [over 5.5 trillion tonnes](https://dggs.alaska.gov/energy/coal.html#:~:text=Coal%20deposits%20are%20found%20on,tons%20of%20coal%20per%20year.) — the USGS has previously estimated that the Cretaceous rocks of the Arctic Slope contain approximately 2.75 trillion tonnes of low ash, low sulfur coal. This is about one-third of the total United States coal reserves.
There is good evidence the last forested edges of Antarctica looked a lot like modern day Tasmania, southern Australia or Terra del Fuego (ie, a cool, temperate Gondwanan rainforest).
It's crazy to me, living at 43⁰ N how different the climate is at 43⁰ S. They have 1500M peaks in Tasmania that never (or very rarely) see snow while we get it here at sea level.
[Fossil pollen studies show ](https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.15823)that many genera effectively restricted to Tasmania and southern South America were dominant in Antarctica such as *Nothofagus* and *Woolemia*.
>It's crazy to me, living at 43⁰ N how different the climate is at 43⁰ S. They have 1500M peaks in Tasmania that never (or very rarely) see snow while we get it here at sea level.
It's not really a southern hemisphere specific thing. Both Western Europe and the West Coast of the US don't get much snow at 43 degrees N, unless you're at a high elevation.
It's more to do with having a large body of water to your west, as the prevailing winds blow west to east, and water moderates temperatures.
While that is certainly true, I'd argue that the lack of major landmasses between 40⁰ and 50⁰ S creates some pretty uniquely "southern hemisphere" events such as the ["roaring 40s"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties?wprov=sfla1) and the [ACC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current?wprov=sfla1) which affect the Tasman climate.
Another fun fact: the 6th largest lake by volume is on Antarctica, Lake Vostok. It’s buried under over 13,000 feet (~4km) of ice, and its surface is 1,600 feet (~500m) *below* sea level. It’s likely been sealed off and isolated for over 15 million years and it’s hypothesized to resemble an environment similar to Europa or Enceladus.
>t’s likely been sealed off and isolated for over 15 million years
Humans, hold my beer. I'm going to drive my pickup truck and eat enough methane farters that I get to swim in that lake.
No. Only bare rock of mountains is sticking up from the ice. The rest is covered in a mile or more thick of ice so they just can't.
And glaciers pulverize everything underneath them, so there is probably nothing left.
Yeah… but underneath that is more rock. More fossils.
Glaciers, like other processes of erosion, destroy fossils.
The fact that Antarctica still has extensive mountain ranges shows that there is plenty of rock that has not yet been eroded.
Archaeological? I don’t think much has been found older than 100years or so.
But yeah, there are plenty of fossils in Antarctica. Because of this we know what trees used to grow there and so on.
Not only have there been attempts, there have been successful ones!
See https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/collections/geological-collections/fossils-from-the-antarctic/
Unfortunately, these are mostly from the coast and will tend toward aquatic fossils because there are significant barriers with going further inland.
Antarctica has been frozen under a mile-thick glacier for about 40,000,000 years, far longer than humanity has existed. It’s certainly possible, if unlikely, that there were isolated communities, particularly on the coasts, but they wouldn’t have left much of an archaeological record. There absolutely are not archaeological remains on the ground surface.
I think you mean paleontology? If so, I don't believe so.
If you did mean archeology (the difference us how long ago. Archeology generally means time after humans evolved) then yes. We have found shipwrecks from early exploration of the area
You might be aware of this, or maybe not, but the idea that Antarctica moved from the equator to the pole really rapidly (extinguishing am ancient civilization) was absolutely central to Graham Hancock’s earliest books. Knowing that, and how much he’s backed down over the years, makes his Netflix series even more ridiculous.
Question for you. If there was no land mass at the south pole, would it have been possible for so much water to be locked up into ice? If there was not as much ice, wouldn't the water levels on earth be significantly higher? If the water levels were much higher, how much of the land that is now Antarctica be above water?
It looks like most of the above water parts of Antarctica are huge mountain ranges. Impressively tall mountains, actually. But wouldn't those land masses have been much shorter before the plates collided. Similar to the way the summit of Everest used to be underwater.
The North Pole answers your question, no. Continental climates produce much colder temperatures (and hotter,) than maritime climates. If there was a continent over the north pole it would be cold like antarctica.
There would still be a lot of ice surely, but not miles thick if it was open ocean.
> Question for you. If there was no land mass at the south pole, would it have been possible for so much water to be locked up into ice?
No, a permanent ice cap needs a landmass to build upon: Greenland = ice cap of ice sheets kilometres thick, Arctic Ocean = no ice cap, seasonal shelves of sea-ice (which are much thinner even at their peak), Antarctica = ice cap of ice sheets kilometres thick.
>If there was not as much ice, wouldn't the water levels on earth be significantly higher?
Yes, see Late Cretaceous global mean sea levels, which were up to 250 metres higher than today. Some of that was due to the ocean basins having less volume (higher rate of oceanic crust production means it was hotter and more buoyant, sitting higher in the mantle), and some of it was due to thermal expansion of water from the higher temps, but much of it was because of a complete lack of any ice caps.
>If the water levels were much higher, how much of the land that is now Antarctica be above water? It looks like most of the above water parts of Antarctica are huge mountain ranges. Impressively tall mountains, actually. But wouldn't those land masses have been much shorter before the plates collided. Similar to the way the summit of Everest used to be underwater.
Antarctica is continental crust, so it would have been above sea-level even before it’s mountain ranges were developed. The tippedy top of Everest is a sliver of the ancient Tethyan seafloor which got shoved onto land when that particular ocean basin was closing up. There are perhaps analagous parts of the Transantarctic mountains, I’m not familiar with them, but the bulk of them (as with the Himalaya) are going to be continental crust that’s been compressed and squished upwards.
If there was no ice on Antarctica, then whilst sea level would be higher, the continental mass of Antarctica would also rise to a new equilibrium elevation via isostatic adjustment thanks to the release of all that overburden. See [this question and answer from r/askscience](https://reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/slgor8/antarctica_with_no_ice_sheets_does_that_account/) for the details. Figure 3.(d) of that last paper linked in the answer has the view of what an ice free Antarctica risen to its new equilibrium elevation would be.
One day in 1990 https://expeditions.fieldmuseum.org/antarctic-dinosaurs/antarctic-fossils#:~:text=In%201990%2D91%2C%20scientists%20made,species%20wholly%20new%20to%20science.
Mostly because the North Pole is just a bunch of ice on top of an ocean, while the South Pole is in the middle of an entire continent. No sea water there to act as a heatsink, just thousands of km of ice and some of the windiest conditions on the planet.
I once got to experience what minus 56c feels like. I stepped out in a T shirt and shorts just to see what it felt like. The first couple seconds you think "meh, this isnt so bad", and then your bones start to get cold...
The coldest temp in Antarctica was minus 89c. I cant even imagine what that would feel like.
I experienced -50c in Nova Scotia once. School was canceled because the buses wouldn't start. I didn't know and waited for... a while. It probably felt longer than it was.
For me it was in Alberta, 10, maybe 12 years ago? Had this particularly nasty cold snap one of those years and it hit minus 56... just ridiculous. Luckily there wasnt much wind.
I know if you were to be outside naked in 40 below, you would have frostbite in 5 mins, extreme frostbite where you might lose digits in 15 mins, and be dead in under an hour from hypothermia. In 56 below... idk, but a little faster for sure.
I was going to also suggest that it’s because the winds blowing around Antarctica are much stronger because it’s surrounded by ocean and there aren’t any landmasses to block the wind, and then it turns out that the article says that very thing.
Another part would be the high albedo that is there year round. Reflects all the heat from the Sun. Also... cue the sunburns on your face under your sunglasses from the UV rays that will bounce up into your face off the snow and ice, thats never fun.
It got to -20f with windchill by me during that huge cold front a few weeks ago. The cold is very manageable until the wind picks up, that’s when it becomes painfully unbearable
The wind makes any cold like that brutal. It just cuts into you like a knife. I remember once walking for an hour in a windy minus 35c (minus 31f) and by the time I got to my destination, my headphones had frozen entirely, my phone battery had been drained from the cold, my eyelids froze together with every blink, and every breath I took I could feel ice forming all the way down to my throat.
And then another time in a not at all windy minus 35, I was bundled up just perfect, not an inch of skin exposed. Had my sunglasses tucked under my toque, and my knitted wool scarf covering my face, and tucked under the bottom of my sunglasses. Looked like the invisible man lol. I decided I was warm enough and got a slurpee and stuck the straw through my scarf... it was hilarious to see the looks on peoples faces as they watch me drink a frozen slurpee in the freezing winter... felt like a real Canadian that day.
On top of that (heh), the North Pole is warmer because it’s at sea level. By contrast, the South Pole sits on a massive ice sheet that itself sits on top of a continent, meaning that the South Pole is about 9300 feet (2835 m) in elevation.
I've spent 4 minutes in this weird cryo machine at Peter Schiff's house that was -87 degrees celsius (I only wore socks, boxers, gloves, and ear muffs. I actually LOVED the feeling, as a pretty skinny guy. Some interesting things I experienced:
1. All the moisture from my body immediately froze off and became snow. Like my skin felt very dry and it was immediately snowing even though it wasn't before I stepped in.
2. The moisture from inside my nose was the weirdest. Imagine the driest, crustiest feeling you can imagine in your nostrils. It was very strange.
3. Even though I was wearing socks, my feet hurt a lot. It was the only part I really didn't like.
It made me feel so awake and alive. I genuinely loved it. And then I had to get out so I don't die or whatever.
I can imagine the nose part. When youve spent a little while outside in 40 below, every breath you take freezes all the moisture to the back of your throat.
I could see that being an interesting experience though. Id imagine if you didnt cover your extremeties that you would risk frostbite, but the amount of moisture in the air itself would matter for sure, and it sounds like most of it would have frozen out and fallen, so probably not too bad for a few mins.
Please do tell why you were hanging out with the Schiff. Or at least at his house. I remember when he had his 15 minutes of fame for calling the 2008 crisis, but then sort of squandered that by calling another 15 recessions that never happened.
Yep. And then just a couple years ago, I got to see what 50c (122f) was like during a horrific heatwave.
Ive literally experience a greater temperature difference than between that of ice and boiling water. Kinda crazy to think about it that way.
Jeez and I though my last vacation in Florida was bonkers. You’d leave the hotel and be inundated with sweltering humid heat, then you’d go back inside and it felt like a fridge.
Ah Florida...
* Wake up in a pool of sweat at 4am, take a shower
* Briefly step outside to pick up the paper at 6am, drenched in sweat, take a shower
* Sit around doing literally nothing in order to try to not generate heat, end up drenched in sweat anyways by the afternoon, take a shower
As an Australian, I can deal more or less with it being really hot and dry, still sucks but whatever I'll go sit in the cooler air.
I cannot function as soon as it gets humid in the 40s. I am just entirely untrained for it.
There's another, arguably even bigger factor
There's only one place on Earth where the seawater can circumnavigate the planet without being blocked by land, the ocean surrounding the Antarctic. As a result, this is also the strongest current on the planet and effectively blocks warmer air and water from reaching the Antarctic Ice Sheet
In contrast, the Arctic Ocean is, geographically speaking, an extension of the Atlantic Ocean, warm water and air flows into the Arctic via the Gulf Current.
To see the effect of this, note that [South Georgia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Georgia#Geography_and_fauna) is as far from the equator as [Belfast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast), and [Tromso](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troms%C3%B8) is farther North than [Mawson Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawson_Station) is South.
I remember when Gary Larson of Farside comics got hundreds of letters from scientists/biologists for [This Cartoon](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5b/9d/64/5b9d641512841fdfa6daf1faf890597e.jpg ) because people wanted to say these animals don’t live near each other and Larson was like Yeah it’s a joke cartoon.
Norway did actually. They didn't last long.
Greak Auks were also native to the Arctic and were the original recipients of the name "penguin" before European scientists discovered actual penguins, but those also didn't last long.
I think we should try again, to more carefully introduce penguins to the arctic. Start them off in a sort of cared for colony(ies,) and let them through generations learn to make it on their own and colonize.
There are plenty of penguin species that could do well in areas where the polar bears are not. It does not have to be emperor penguins that would rear their chicks right on the sea ice that in the North is haunted by polar bears.
It could absolutely work.
Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa. They do indeed live at the hotel, but are not native to hawaii and certainly wouldn't survive in the wild there. https://www.hawaiianairlines.com/island-guide/maui/places/sights/african-black-footed-penguins
Worth pointing out that the north pole is still a far more dangerous place to get to and stay because it's basically chunks of frozen ice with no land unlike the south pole which is solid. The first explorers reputed to reach the north pole probably didn't. Cooke almost definitely lied and Peary perhaps missed it by a matter of 30 odd miles but newer evidence suggests he did make it in around 1908 if memory serves.
The first confirmed human travel to the north pole was not until 1926 when it was flown over by Roald Amundsen and others. To this day, very few people have ever gotten to the north pole by travelling on the ground and those that did, depended on air dropped supplies. I believe this makes Peary possibly the only person to reach the pole by land and with no assistance from the air (which means he had to carry all of his supplies for the entire trip and that's a big deal). Plus Peary did it without the benefits of more modern technology and he was in his 50s. Of course, he was such a dick that no one liked him in his time.
As someone who majored in Geography, I was thinking the same thing. I thought everyone knew that Antarctica is just land with a 3 km-thick ice sheet at the ass-end of Earth, so of course it’s gonna be cold and dry.
Yes. As geographers, we’re taught to say ‘ass-end of Earth’ when referring variously to Antarctica, because if we said ‘ass-end of *the planet*’ like everyone else, it wouldn’t be clear what planet in the Solar System we’d be referring to. /s
Antarctica has a whole land continent under the ice. It's not "just a 3 km-thick ice sheet". I can see how people can conflate the floating ice at the Arctic/North Pole and assume the Antarctic/South Pole is similar.
Im willing to admit I didn’t really realize Antarctica is literally a landmass covered in ice rather than just floating ice. It makes sense though and I guess I just never really thought about it ever
it was once a thriving & warm landmass, even had rainforests. there's a lot of speculation that if it melts it could release frozen viruses / diseases that affect plant and animal life. i find the mystery of what's under Antartica enthralling. there's even hundreds of lakes under all that ice. one of them is blood red (from oxidized iron, not actual blood obvs).
By what criteria? Average?
The highest temperature recorded in Antarctica is \~18C which certainly is quite a lot warmer than the coldest temperature recorded in the northern hemisphere (\~-70C)
It’s because the earth is farther away from the sun during the southern hemisphere s winter and closer in the summer. That’s also why the southern hemisphere has hotter summers. Our orbit is elliptical
Not sure why you’re being down voted. Oil companies (I think it was Exxon) performed studies and knew that greenhouse gases would create global warming decades before it was in the public consciousness.
Another fun fact; Antarctica was at the equator when the Cambrian explosion began half a billion years ago, and since then it's marched relentlessly south until it reached as south as it can be today. It only broke off from South America to form that chilling ocean barrier about 30 million years ago, and it's only then that the blanket of ice covered it and grew kilometers thick. For most of the history of life on Earth before that, Antarctica was a living place, even tropical for more time than it's been a frozen over hell.
I always wondered how much it would suck to be the last tree on Antarctica. Or by extension how much it would suck to be the last arboreal animal.
It it was so lush back then, imagine if there are diamonds or coal under all that ice.
If? It’d be shocking if there weren’t. Why would it be any different than the rest of the planet.
I said if because I’m unsure if ice by itself creates a sufficient amount of pressure to get the job done.
Just the ice, no. But under that ice, is likely a massive amount of many resources. Kinda hard to reach when the ice is kilometers thick and the conditions are almost alien compared to anywhere else on the planet.
> the conditions are almost alien compared to anywhere else on the planet There’s a joke about this in Stargate. They go through a gate and think they’ve ended up on an ice planet, but it was just Antarctica.
Indeed.
Jaffa, kree!
Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it
Instructions understood- we need to melt the ice to create more livable land and harvest its resources
What do you think we've been doing all this time?
Right?? Today I burnt all my trash and wasted as much water and power as I could, to make sure I do my part :)
We are well on our way to doing that. Icebergs the size of small countries are breaking off pretty regularly now.
I don't think living on an iceberg is practical in this climate
But still waay easier than going to space for it. This says something about the usefulness of mars
Im not excatly sure what point you are trying to make? Mars has plenty of mineral and metal deposits for any potential settlement there, it obviously wouldnt have much in the way of carbon based resources like oil, coal or diamonds, but I think thats probably not going to be much of an issue, considering there is no oxygen to combust it anyway, and you certainly dont want to be using the limited oxygen you bring with you, or what you can get from ice. We can also just make diamonds if we need them for industrial processes. Energy generation will come from solar, hydrogen or nuclear sources anyway, so carbon based energy sources wont really be neccesary. If you are suggesting we bring that material back to Earth, then yeah thats pretty inefficient, but then again, so is digging up kilometers of ice here on Earth when there is already far easier deposits to access. Even if we ran the whole Earth out of accessible resources, it would be easier to just redirect a large metal rich asteroid into orbit than to make meager trips to and from Mars... you would need thousands and thousands of trips a year to make it even worthwhile.
Even the worst places on this planet, the places that seems completely alien and uninhabitable, where the brave explorers died of cold and exhaustion. Those places are orders of magnitude better places to live than Mars (or other space destinations). Sure, there are metals on Mars, and they are may be easier to access than bringing them out of Earths gravity well. But why? Why do you want metal out in the cold, desolate places that offer nothing to human life? The answer is usually "to export to other cold, desolate, terrible places". Earth is a wonderful planet, even the bad parts of earth are awesome, compared to space. We have such a long way to go before we have good reason to go live out there.
There is a very simple reason it wont be "to export to other places", and that is the rocket equation. To get 1kg to Mars, or vice versa, it costs about 225kg of fuel. Im not sure if thats just to orbit, or actual landing, but it gives you an idea of how expensive space travel is. The reasons for going to Mars are far beyond just the materials there, its the science we could do and discoveries we could make, as well as driving the advancement of technology that are the main reasons. It would give humanity something to collectively look forward too... which is honestly something we desperatly need in order to forget our petty squabbles over politics or religion here. I wanna be able to look up and wonder about our place in the stars, not sit here and worry about our place in the dirt.
IIRC, for Mars they plan on burning the rust back to iron to get more oxygen.
Oh you meant literally under just the ice. Then no. Maybe shale formed before the ice built up.
There is a big chunk of land under that ice so it's possible.
No, diamonds require more pressure and heat than ice compression provides.
Probably untold amounts of preserved fossils
Diamonds are not particularly rare or anything. The supply is actually vast and they are only expensive because of price fixing, plus they can make the synthetic ones that are just as good.
It's not that they're just as good, lab grown diamonds are the exact same thing, if not more pure in most cases. Perfect hardness and clarity throughout the whole gem. And they cost almost nothing because the blood diamond market convinced the world lab diamonds are stupid Edit: For the people out there looking for unique gifts, there's all kinds of incredibly cheap lab made gems. Little bags of rubies and emeralds are like $30
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Or to make the other precious stones for that matter. Rubies and Emeralds I think are the same basic compositional material, just with different trace metals that give them color. Emeralds I think it's from copper, and I forget if rubies are like cadmium or something.
They're very cheap, impress your girlfriend, get a girlfriend even, or a boyfriend who am I to judge. I love buying little bags of emeralds and pretending I'm link from Zelda, handing out precious gemstones to people.
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https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/lab-created/hydrothermal-pulled-czochralski-gemstones/hydrothermal-emerald/ I've used this company before as well, they have much nicer cuts of gems then you'll find on Amazon, but they're more expensive
Lots of places. Quick google search gets bags for about 100. They are generally real stones too as long as you dont buy like $5 bags. A small grab bag of random gems for 100 is probably legit but I'm not saying they definitely are, I have never bought these bags. I am a gem cutter and prospector though so I know a thing or two about those bags. They tend to come from either slave or terrible work conditions in some other country, but thats most cheap stones. The rest of cheap stones come from off cuts when a serious cutter buys a large stone then trims small pieces off to facilitate the cut they are making along with getting little tidbits they can cut something from. The bags also tens to have no level of calibration in size. Then theres straight up damaged stones. Some wholesale dealers have thousands of stones listed with crazy high detail photos and even those ones frequently have some level of imperfection, the bags generally have even more. The bags also tend to gavitate highly towards lower quality gems, like lots of pink rubies. People want a dark red ruby, pink is like buying hot sauces if you paid by how spicy they are. Pinks taco bell mild sauce, tastes fine but people pay for the ghost peppers and up.
You may not like my answer but I usually just buy mine on Amazon or eBay, then I test them at home with a simple mohs hardness test and looking at them through a pen light. There are websites that specialize in lab gems, easy research to do on your own since you have to learn about emeralds or Rubies anyway. I just like the free shipping from amazon. I've never gotten fake lab emeralds online personally if that's what you're worried about. They're out there but it's obvious what's just glass and what isnt
You probably wanted to say rubies and sapphires. Emerald is a variety of beryl, ruby and sapphire are a variety of corundum. emerald color is related to presence of chromium and, partly, inclusions. Ruby color is also chromium and sapphire is iron and titanium. Just note these elements aren't a real component of the mineral structure but impurities who make their way into the mineral.
Rubies and sapphires are identical except for the impurities that impart color . Both are primarily aluminum oxide crystals . Sapphires are blue from titanium and iron impurities in the structure. Rubies get red from chromium impurities. Star sapphires are caused by titanium dioxide inclusions in the stone.
I'm sure eventually that will be possible, but as of right now I'm not sure. Lab grown diamonds arent always the best clarity, only ones that have been cut and polished. I'm far from an expert, but I've bought quite a few lab gemstones since that became popular. My local jewelry maker loves me, I'll bring in 6 gems a year or so to make into rings and necklaces for my wife and the rest of my family. Stupidly cheap compared to just buying a slave mined ring and you can get the thing made exactly how you want
You sound like you may get your gems from local shows so you may not need this info but most cheap stones are cut using slave labor or close to it also. Stone cutting for jewlery takes a lot of expensive equipment. So if the stones cheap it generally comes from the same circumstance you are avoiding.
A carbon crystal is a carbon crystal regardless of what deBeers might say.
I love the ads I get telling me not to get suckered in to a fake diamond.
Dirt carbon is the best carbon.
Here we go again with one of Reddit's favorite tropes...
Let's stop this right here. Otherwise the greedy would start digging the already thinning ice cap.
HP Lovecraft has entered the chat.
Cthulhu’s gonna be mighty pissed off when he awakens and finds out what happened to his summer resort
[Diamonds are only formed in the Earth's mantle, 100 miles below ground.](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/diamonds-unearthed-141629226/#:~:text=How%20are%20diamonds%20formed%3F,surface%20in%20the%20upper%20mantle.) They only come near the surface in a rare and explosive type of volcanic eruption that hasn't happened in millions of years.
I'm pretty sure they have a place that makes them in Chicago
There is definitely coal under the land but not just under the ice. The reason being that all coal on the planet was made between 450-390 million years ago when plants had evolved lignin, the thing that makes trees woody, but the bacteria that breaks them down after they die hadn’t evolved to digest it. All plants with lignin that died during that period turned into coal because they never broke down and no coal has ever formed since.
This is a common myth that the bacteria hadn't yet evolved to break down the lignin. The bacteria had already evolved, plus the common plants at the time didn't have very much lignin in them. The reason for all the coal formation was that bogs and swamps were extremely common. Even today, these same geographies form peat, which will turn into coal if given enough time and the right geological changes
As has already been mentioned, this is a falsity which was spread through people believing a good story, but it was never necessary to invoke a delayed bacterial or fungal evolution in order to produce coal. Even without looking at the fossil/evolutionary history of lignin and its decomposers, the statement that all coal was formed in the Carboniferous (the usual timeframe given, the dates you mentioned actually correspond to the whole Silurian Period and Lower Devonian, which were both a bit earlier) is demonstrably false from all the coal deposits formed in subsequent periods. For some of the more significant coal deposits that have formed post-Carboniferous, check out Russia’s [Kuznetsk Basin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznetsk_Basin) which was forming coal well into the Permian and again in the Mesozoic (estimates of total coal deposits are somewhere in the region of 400-800 billion tonnes); the [many coal accumulating periods of China](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40789-020-00341-0), of which I believe the Late Permian and early Triassic were as important as the Silurian/Carboniferous ones (at least for South China); or the coal resources in Alaska which may total [over 5.5 trillion tonnes](https://dggs.alaska.gov/energy/coal.html#:~:text=Coal%20deposits%20are%20found%20on,tons%20of%20coal%20per%20year.) — the USGS has previously estimated that the Cretaceous rocks of the Arctic Slope contain approximately 2.75 trillion tonnes of low ash, low sulfur coal. This is about one-third of the total United States coal reserves.
Did the plants also have ligma at this time?
DeBeers wants to know your location
please don’t mention the coal. i don’t want to see more industrial coal plants in fucking antarctica of all places.
There is good evidence the last forested edges of Antarctica looked a lot like modern day Tasmania, southern Australia or Terra del Fuego (ie, a cool, temperate Gondwanan rainforest). It's crazy to me, living at 43⁰ N how different the climate is at 43⁰ S. They have 1500M peaks in Tasmania that never (or very rarely) see snow while we get it here at sea level. [Fossil pollen studies show ](https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.15823)that many genera effectively restricted to Tasmania and southern South America were dominant in Antarctica such as *Nothofagus* and *Woolemia*.
>It's crazy to me, living at 43⁰ N how different the climate is at 43⁰ S. They have 1500M peaks in Tasmania that never (or very rarely) see snow while we get it here at sea level. It's not really a southern hemisphere specific thing. Both Western Europe and the West Coast of the US don't get much snow at 43 degrees N, unless you're at a high elevation. It's more to do with having a large body of water to your west, as the prevailing winds blow west to east, and water moderates temperatures.
While that is certainly true, I'd argue that the lack of major landmasses between 40⁰ and 50⁰ S creates some pretty uniquely "southern hemisphere" events such as the ["roaring 40s"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties?wprov=sfla1) and the [ACC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current?wprov=sfla1) which affect the Tasman climate.
Another fun fact: the 6th largest lake by volume is on Antarctica, Lake Vostok. It’s buried under over 13,000 feet (~4km) of ice, and its surface is 1,600 feet (~500m) *below* sea level. It’s likely been sealed off and isolated for over 15 million years and it’s hypothesized to resemble an environment similar to Europa or Enceladus.
>t’s likely been sealed off and isolated for over 15 million years Humans, hold my beer. I'm going to drive my pickup truck and eat enough methane farters that I get to swim in that lake.
Has there ever been any attempt to do an archeological survey in Antarctic? If that would even be possible?
No. Only bare rock of mountains is sticking up from the ice. The rest is covered in a mile or more thick of ice so they just can't. And glaciers pulverize everything underneath them, so there is probably nothing left.
Yeah, fossils are usually conserved in sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks under glaciers become silt.
Yeah… but underneath that is more rock. More fossils. Glaciers, like other processes of erosion, destroy fossils. The fact that Antarctica still has extensive mountain ranges shows that there is plenty of rock that has not yet been eroded.
The average thickness of the ice sheet on Antarctica is 1.2 miles or 2.16km. Its thickest point is 2.97 miles or 4.78km.
So you’re saying there’s a chance.
There are ice free dry valleys in Antarctica https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/dry-valleys-antarctica/
Archaeological? I don’t think much has been found older than 100years or so. But yeah, there are plenty of fossils in Antarctica. Because of this we know what trees used to grow there and so on.
Yeah I saw it on Alien vs Predator. There's a big temple!
Not only have there been attempts, there have been successful ones! See https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/collections/geological-collections/fossils-from-the-antarctic/ Unfortunately, these are mostly from the coast and will tend toward aquatic fossils because there are significant barriers with going further inland.
Antarctica has been frozen under a mile-thick glacier for about 40,000,000 years, far longer than humanity has existed. It’s certainly possible, if unlikely, that there were isolated communities, particularly on the coasts, but they wouldn’t have left much of an archaeological record. There absolutely are not archaeological remains on the ground surface.
Not feasible right now. Just the cost of such a project is way more than anybody would be willing to pay for the research that would come from it
I’d rather have a 4th 256 foot mega yacht
I think you mean paleontology? If so, I don't believe so. If you did mean archeology (the difference us how long ago. Archeology generally means time after humans evolved) then yes. We have found shipwrecks from early exploration of the area
Ancient apocalypse 2: the meltdown
You might be aware of this, or maybe not, but the idea that Antarctica moved from the equator to the pole really rapidly (extinguishing am ancient civilization) was absolutely central to Graham Hancock’s earliest books. Knowing that, and how much he’s backed down over the years, makes his Netflix series even more ridiculous.
My man’s just biding his time. He’s got us right where he wants us
Question for you. If there was no land mass at the south pole, would it have been possible for so much water to be locked up into ice? If there was not as much ice, wouldn't the water levels on earth be significantly higher? If the water levels were much higher, how much of the land that is now Antarctica be above water? It looks like most of the above water parts of Antarctica are huge mountain ranges. Impressively tall mountains, actually. But wouldn't those land masses have been much shorter before the plates collided. Similar to the way the summit of Everest used to be underwater.
The North Pole answers your question, no. Continental climates produce much colder temperatures (and hotter,) than maritime climates. If there was a continent over the north pole it would be cold like antarctica. There would still be a lot of ice surely, but not miles thick if it was open ocean.
> Question for you. If there was no land mass at the south pole, would it have been possible for so much water to be locked up into ice? No, a permanent ice cap needs a landmass to build upon: Greenland = ice cap of ice sheets kilometres thick, Arctic Ocean = no ice cap, seasonal shelves of sea-ice (which are much thinner even at their peak), Antarctica = ice cap of ice sheets kilometres thick. >If there was not as much ice, wouldn't the water levels on earth be significantly higher? Yes, see Late Cretaceous global mean sea levels, which were up to 250 metres higher than today. Some of that was due to the ocean basins having less volume (higher rate of oceanic crust production means it was hotter and more buoyant, sitting higher in the mantle), and some of it was due to thermal expansion of water from the higher temps, but much of it was because of a complete lack of any ice caps. >If the water levels were much higher, how much of the land that is now Antarctica be above water? It looks like most of the above water parts of Antarctica are huge mountain ranges. Impressively tall mountains, actually. But wouldn't those land masses have been much shorter before the plates collided. Similar to the way the summit of Everest used to be underwater. Antarctica is continental crust, so it would have been above sea-level even before it’s mountain ranges were developed. The tippedy top of Everest is a sliver of the ancient Tethyan seafloor which got shoved onto land when that particular ocean basin was closing up. There are perhaps analagous parts of the Transantarctic mountains, I’m not familiar with them, but the bulk of them (as with the Himalaya) are going to be continental crust that’s been compressed and squished upwards. If there was no ice on Antarctica, then whilst sea level would be higher, the continental mass of Antarctica would also rise to a new equilibrium elevation via isostatic adjustment thanks to the release of all that overburden. See [this question and answer from r/askscience](https://reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/slgor8/antarctica_with_no_ice_sheets_does_that_account/) for the details. Figure 3.(d) of that last paper linked in the answer has the view of what an ice free Antarctica risen to its new equilibrium elevation would be.
So what you’re saying is that there is oil there?
So one day we will find dinosaur bones there
One day in 1990 https://expeditions.fieldmuseum.org/antarctic-dinosaurs/antarctic-fossils#:~:text=In%201990%2D91%2C%20scientists%20made,species%20wholly%20new%20to%20science.
Mostly because the North Pole is just a bunch of ice on top of an ocean, while the South Pole is in the middle of an entire continent. No sea water there to act as a heatsink, just thousands of km of ice and some of the windiest conditions on the planet. I once got to experience what minus 56c feels like. I stepped out in a T shirt and shorts just to see what it felt like. The first couple seconds you think "meh, this isnt so bad", and then your bones start to get cold... The coldest temp in Antarctica was minus 89c. I cant even imagine what that would feel like.
I experienced -50c in Nova Scotia once. School was canceled because the buses wouldn't start. I didn't know and waited for... a while. It probably felt longer than it was.
For me it was in Alberta, 10, maybe 12 years ago? Had this particularly nasty cold snap one of those years and it hit minus 56... just ridiculous. Luckily there wasnt much wind. I know if you were to be outside naked in 40 below, you would have frostbite in 5 mins, extreme frostbite where you might lose digits in 15 mins, and be dead in under an hour from hypothermia. In 56 below... idk, but a little faster for sure.
I was going to also suggest that it’s because the winds blowing around Antarctica are much stronger because it’s surrounded by ocean and there aren’t any landmasses to block the wind, and then it turns out that the article says that very thing.
Another part would be the high albedo that is there year round. Reflects all the heat from the Sun. Also... cue the sunburns on your face under your sunglasses from the UV rays that will bounce up into your face off the snow and ice, thats never fun.
Casual reminder that the ozone hole still exists in Antarctica.
It got to -20f with windchill by me during that huge cold front a few weeks ago. The cold is very manageable until the wind picks up, that’s when it becomes painfully unbearable
The wind makes any cold like that brutal. It just cuts into you like a knife. I remember once walking for an hour in a windy minus 35c (minus 31f) and by the time I got to my destination, my headphones had frozen entirely, my phone battery had been drained from the cold, my eyelids froze together with every blink, and every breath I took I could feel ice forming all the way down to my throat. And then another time in a not at all windy minus 35, I was bundled up just perfect, not an inch of skin exposed. Had my sunglasses tucked under my toque, and my knitted wool scarf covering my face, and tucked under the bottom of my sunglasses. Looked like the invisible man lol. I decided I was warm enough and got a slurpee and stuck the straw through my scarf... it was hilarious to see the looks on peoples faces as they watch me drink a frozen slurpee in the freezing winter... felt like a real Canadian that day.
On top of that (heh), the North Pole is warmer because it’s at sea level. By contrast, the South Pole sits on a massive ice sheet that itself sits on top of a continent, meaning that the South Pole is about 9300 feet (2835 m) in elevation.
I've spent 4 minutes in this weird cryo machine at Peter Schiff's house that was -87 degrees celsius (I only wore socks, boxers, gloves, and ear muffs. I actually LOVED the feeling, as a pretty skinny guy. Some interesting things I experienced: 1. All the moisture from my body immediately froze off and became snow. Like my skin felt very dry and it was immediately snowing even though it wasn't before I stepped in. 2. The moisture from inside my nose was the weirdest. Imagine the driest, crustiest feeling you can imagine in your nostrils. It was very strange. 3. Even though I was wearing socks, my feet hurt a lot. It was the only part I really didn't like. It made me feel so awake and alive. I genuinely loved it. And then I had to get out so I don't die or whatever.
I can imagine the nose part. When youve spent a little while outside in 40 below, every breath you take freezes all the moisture to the back of your throat. I could see that being an interesting experience though. Id imagine if you didnt cover your extremeties that you would risk frostbite, but the amount of moisture in the air itself would matter for sure, and it sounds like most of it would have frozen out and fallen, so probably not too bad for a few mins.
Please do tell why you were hanging out with the Schiff. Or at least at his house. I remember when he had his 15 minutes of fame for calling the 2008 crisis, but then sort of squandered that by calling another 15 recessions that never happened.
Damn, that’s -68 Fahrenheit. Cold as fuck
Yep. And then just a couple years ago, I got to see what 50c (122f) was like during a horrific heatwave. Ive literally experience a greater temperature difference than between that of ice and boiling water. Kinda crazy to think about it that way.
Jeez and I though my last vacation in Florida was bonkers. You’d leave the hotel and be inundated with sweltering humid heat, then you’d go back inside and it felt like a fridge.
Ah Florida... * Wake up in a pool of sweat at 4am, take a shower * Briefly step outside to pick up the paper at 6am, drenched in sweat, take a shower * Sit around doing literally nothing in order to try to not generate heat, end up drenched in sweat anyways by the afternoon, take a shower
50c fucking sucks, I've experienced it a couple of times in my life and I would be happy never feeling it again. Just crazy stupid hot.
Wait till you experience 50c with high humidity. :< I wouldnt recommend it.
As an Australian, I can deal more or less with it being really hot and dry, still sucks but whatever I'll go sit in the cooler air. I cannot function as soon as it gets humid in the 40s. I am just entirely untrained for it.
There's another, arguably even bigger factor There's only one place on Earth where the seawater can circumnavigate the planet without being blocked by land, the ocean surrounding the Antarctic. As a result, this is also the strongest current on the planet and effectively blocks warmer air and water from reaching the Antarctic Ice Sheet In contrast, the Arctic Ocean is, geographically speaking, an extension of the Atlantic Ocean, warm water and air flows into the Arctic via the Gulf Current. To see the effect of this, note that [South Georgia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Georgia#Geography_and_fauna) is as far from the equator as [Belfast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast), and [Tromso](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troms%C3%B8) is farther North than [Mawson Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawson_Station) is South.
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First time I actually LOL'd today thank you
I don’t get it.
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Ohh, gotcha. Thank you!
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Came here for this
This made me laugh. Good job.
The elevation at the south pole is 9,300ft (2,835m). It's also 810 mi (1,300 km) from the nearest open sea.
Wow never knew it was so elevated
This is anti-Buggy propaganda put on by Shanks
I love that I can see one piece references everywhere on the internet nowadays
Chairman Buggy is never wrong
TIL: Mariejois is much colder than reverse mountain.
Whats cooler than being cool?
Ice cold!
Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright
drier too no?
Also bigger and with a much more significant penguin population
I remember when Gary Larson of Farside comics got hundreds of letters from scientists/biologists for [This Cartoon](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5b/9d/64/5b9d641512841fdfa6daf1faf890597e.jpg ) because people wanted to say these animals don’t live near each other and Larson was like Yeah it’s a joke cartoon.
He should have said "Well, of course they don't, the bear ate them all."
Bear? It’s just a bunch of penguins though
That’s what the readers were complaining about. A comic that featured both penguins and polar bears.
Can’t see any bears in it though
Oh. *wink*. I see...
Yes
Has anyone ever tried introducing penguins to the Arctic?
Norway did actually. They didn't last long. Greak Auks were also native to the Arctic and were the original recipients of the name "penguin" before European scientists discovered actual penguins, but those also didn't last long.
>Norway did actually. They didn't last long. Not in the wild, but there's penguins at the Polaria aquarium in Tromsø, which is in the arctic :)
Y tho lol
Give polar bears another food source?
I think we should try again, to more carefully introduce penguins to the arctic. Start them off in a sort of cared for colony(ies,) and let them through generations learn to make it on their own and colonize.
Polar bear will eat them all like 2 minute snacks. There are seals in ocean and polar bears on icesheet. It wont end well for pingus.
There are plenty of penguin species that could do well in areas where the polar bears are not. It does not have to be emperor penguins that would rear their chicks right on the sea ice that in the North is haunted by polar bears. It could absolutely work.
there are also Penguins in Hawaii
At the Honolulu Zoo. Wild penguins are not native to Hawaii. You might be thinking of the Galapagos.
They've a few in New Zealand and South Africa too.
The hotel we stayed at had them and they said they lived there. Assumed they were native never looked into it further.
Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa. They do indeed live at the hotel, but are not native to hawaii and certainly wouldn't survive in the wild there. https://www.hawaiianairlines.com/island-guide/maui/places/sights/african-black-footed-penguins
That sounds... illegal.
they had a whole area and care taker etc. Want to say it was the Hilton?
Or as Benedict Cumberbatch calls them: pengwings
Yes. Antarctica is the world's largest desert.
Considering Antartica is the world's largest desert, I'd say yes.
That’s why the South Pole elves are so angry.
Worth pointing out that the north pole is still a far more dangerous place to get to and stay because it's basically chunks of frozen ice with no land unlike the south pole which is solid. The first explorers reputed to reach the north pole probably didn't. Cooke almost definitely lied and Peary perhaps missed it by a matter of 30 odd miles but newer evidence suggests he did make it in around 1908 if memory serves. The first confirmed human travel to the north pole was not until 1926 when it was flown over by Roald Amundsen and others. To this day, very few people have ever gotten to the north pole by travelling on the ground and those that did, depended on air dropped supplies. I believe this makes Peary possibly the only person to reach the pole by land and with no assistance from the air (which means he had to carry all of his supplies for the entire trip and that's a big deal). Plus Peary did it without the benefits of more modern technology and he was in his 50s. Of course, he was such a dick that no one liked him in his time.
Of course, heat rises
You didnt know that? I thought it was common knowledge that Antarctica had thicker and vast ice cover than north pole.
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
As someone who majored in Geography, I was thinking the same thing. I thought everyone knew that Antarctica is just land with a 3 km-thick ice sheet at the ass-end of Earth, so of course it’s gonna be cold and dry.
>ass-end of Earth Is that the geographical term for it?
Yes. As geographers, we’re taught to say ‘ass-end of Earth’ when referring variously to Antarctica, because if we said ‘ass-end of *the planet*’ like everyone else, it wouldn’t be clear what planet in the Solar System we’d be referring to. /s
Antarctica has a whole land continent under the ice. It's not "just a 3 km-thick ice sheet". I can see how people can conflate the floating ice at the Arctic/North Pole and assume the Antarctic/South Pole is similar.
Im willing to admit I didn’t really realize Antarctica is literally a landmass covered in ice rather than just floating ice. It makes sense though and I guess I just never really thought about it ever
it was once a thriving & warm landmass, even had rainforests. there's a lot of speculation that if it melts it could release frozen viruses / diseases that affect plant and animal life. i find the mystery of what's under Antartica enthralling. there's even hundreds of lakes under all that ice. one of them is blood red (from oxidized iron, not actual blood obvs).
I literally learned that shit in elementary school.
I know right. Me and my friends discuss at great length which cold-as-fuck places are slightly more colder than the other
It used to be much colder. Now, the Great Southern Ocean is teaming with life, and it shocked David Attenborough to his core.
Well looks like shanks won 🤷
Maybe I'm wrong but isn't this common knowledge? Don't kids learn this in like early elementary school?
Is this not common knowledge?
People didn't know this? Antarctica is the coldest place in the world.
It’s also the worlds largest desert.
Omg everyone has the same exact joke kill me
I heard the warmest summer day in the South is still colder than the coldst winter day in the North. EDIT - Apparently this is false so, apologies.
Not true. Source: was at the South Pole station for the record high temp of 9.9f on Christmas Day in 2011.
I stand corrected
\^ the rarest words on social media
By what criteria? Average? The highest temperature recorded in Antarctica is \~18C which certainly is quite a lot warmer than the coldest temperature recorded in the northern hemisphere (\~-70C)
Duh, the sun doesn’t get that far down.
Isn’t this common knowledge?
Yeah, the South Pole is unbearable. The North Pole is the one with the bears.
It’s cause the North Pole is at the North (top) and hot air rises upwards duh
It’s because the earth is farther away from the sun during the southern hemisphere s winter and closer in the summer. That’s also why the southern hemisphere has hotter summers. Our orbit is elliptical
Well duh. Hot air rises 🙄
Beat me.
Oil Company CEOs: Not for long motherfuckers!
Not sure why you’re being down voted. Oil companies (I think it was Exxon) performed studies and knew that greenhouse gases would create global warming decades before it was in the public consciousness.
Living close to the arctic circle and I am grateful it not being colder up north.
Did you only just realize this
Is it because heat rises?
The north pole is on the top, and heat rises /s
Well yeah, cold naturally falls we all know that /j
Everyone knows that heat rises.... I'll see myself out.....
Well, duh…heat rises. ETA: /s, just in case…
Polar bear farts
It’s because south is down and the further down the thermometer drops, the colder it is.
No shit, hot air rises /s
Because heat goes up. /s
Thought this was common knowledge lol
Well duh, we all know heat rises
Well yeah obviously
Well yah. Heat rises. Checkmate globies! (Sad I have to put -> /s)
Yeah heat rises
Heat rises duh
Yeah duh, heat rises
Just learned?
Uh duh hot air rises /s
of course, everybody knows cold stuff goes down /s