Translated by Mintina Research shows that peaks in the Alps formed when the ancient supercontinent split and became different continental plates. After a thousand years of "extreme freezing", people finally got a sense of a mysterious mountain system deep in the Antarctic contine

Compilation: Mintina

Research shows that peaks of Alps were formed when the ancient supercontinent split and became different continental plates.

After a thousand years of "extreme freezing", people finally got a sense of a mysterious mountain system deep in the Antarctic continent.

3D model of the Gambutsev mountain system of Antarctic Great Road
Image copyright: British Antarctic Continental Survey

A new study shows that the Gambutsev mountain system appears to be part of a crack - a series of ridges formed when the Earth's crustal plates split - once extended 3,000 kilometers/1,800 feet.

This crack may have appeared 25 million years ago when the ancient supercontinent Gondwana collapsed. The continent includes the present-day eastern Antarctic continent, India, Africa and Australia, said Fausto Ferraccioli of the Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK.

Buried about 5 km/3 miles below the ice, the Gambutsev mountain system was not discovered until the mid-century when Russian explorers learned that there were unusual gravitational fluctuations under the ice.

Subsequent research showed that there was a huge mountainous area, just like the European Alps, with the highest peak here at an altitude of about 4,500 meters/15,000 feet.

"This is the mountain range that people know the least about on Earth," Ferraccioli said. "This is as exciting as exploring another planet."

performs a mountain MRI

In 2011, a team of geophysicists came to the Gamburtsev mountain system and used radar to detect the lower end of the ice layer, and recorded detailed gravity and electromagnetic induction data.

radar detection results show the peak conditions, and electromagnetic induction and gravity data allow scientists to have a deeper understanding of the mountain systems below the surface. Putting all the information together is like a nuclear magnetic resonance for the mountain system, extending from the surface to the bottom, Ferraccioli said.

Based on these data, Ferraccioli's team speculated on the complex changes in the history of the mountain.

Now, the Gambutsevs system appears to be on the top of an older ridge, a major supercontinental aggregation period, about 110 to 180 million years ago, when the eastern Antarctic continent was gradually forming from smaller plates, Ferraccioli said.

This ancient ridge was subsequently eroded, but the bottom of the 32 km/20 mile depth is still at the bottom of the mantle.

Antarctic continental mountains are "extremely frozen"

Then, when the huge rift formed - like the well-known East Africa rift - the heat inside the earth heats the long-sleeping peak bottom material heats up, causing these substances to come to higher positions in the mantle.

As a result, a million years ago, the peak rose again. At this time, the Indian plate left the Antarctic continent and began to float northward to its current location.

About 34 million years ago, ice on the Antarctic continent began to form.

"The entire [peak area] is sealed in the ice surface, it is no exaggeration to be preserved in extreme freezing," Ferraccioli said.

"Otherwise, these mountain peaks will have wind erosion, and we will not have the chance to see this."



Information source: Richard A. Lovett