Volcanoes of Antarctica - undisclosed secrets

Antarctica is a mysterious continent of penguins and white deserts of eternal ice, the last of the open continents and today little-known and melting undiscovered secrets. Volcanoes of Antarctica - one of such secrets, which is in no hurry to open.

Hidden in the ice

Active and extinct, terrestrial and underwater - today the catalog of volcanoes of the Antarctic continent totals about 35 on land, and at least 18 of them are active. The last one was discovered in 2008, it is hidden under the ice layer and is located near the Bay of Pine Island in the Hudson Mountains. He was found when probing the ice cover from the air, but how many have not yet been discovered?

The first, but not the last

Question: "Are there any volcanoes in Antarctica?" Lost relevance in the distant 1841, when the expedition of James Ross saw two volcanoes - the operating Erebus and extinct Terror (named after the ships of the expedition). Since then, the study of volcanoes and new discoveries began. So, in 2010 there were reports of the discovery of a whole chain of 12 underwater volcanoes of Antarctica. With the help of sonar it was found that the height of some reaches 3 kilometers. Seven of them are active, and under water there is a funnel of an extinct volcano with a diameter of up to 5 kilometers.

Erebus volcano

The southernmost of all active volcanoes of the planet - Erebus - has a height of almost 4 thousand meters above sea level and a crater in diameter 805 meters deep in 274 meters. This is one of the three volcanoes of the planet, in the bowels of which is a volcanic inexhaustible lake with lava. This is what gives Erebus an original glow, which became a beacon for all seafarers of the Ross Sea. The last of 8 in a hundred years, a major eruption was in 1972, when the lava was thrown out to the height of the eight-story house.

The conquest of Erebus is a matter of honor

For explorers of Antarctica, the ascent to this dangerous volcano has become almost an obsession. The first to conquer it in 1908 was the expedition group of Professor Ernest Shackleton, who was 50 years old. It was these researchers who first saw the lava lake in the crater.

Geologists from New Zealand in 1974 camped in the main crater, but the activity of the volcano did not allow them to explore the inner crater. And although the path to the volcano is blocked by multiple ice peaks, researchers are annually targeted to extremals.

Deception Vulcan

In the middle of the Shetland Islands, 850 kilometers southeast of Cape Horn is the originator of the origin of the Port of Foster. It is this active volcano that is considered responsible for the largest known eruption. The volcano was opened in 1820 by Captain William Smith, and in the 1960s a joint station of Great Britain, Chile and Argentina appeared there. In the period 1967-1969, as a result of several eruptions, the stations of Chile and Great Britain were destroyed. Only the Argentines remained, to which in 2000 the Spaniards joined.

Mysterious Deception

It is a rare "subglacial volcano" that is under a glacier up to 100 meters thick. Lava it moves slowly and on the surface comes out a huge amount of dirt. Volcanologists and today are not completely sure of the origin of the volcano - either it is a rift volcano (divergence of the crust), or it is formed by subduction (dipping one crust under another) of tectonic plates.

Mount Sidley

The Mary Bird land contains a chain of volcanic mountains in the Executive Committee Range. The height of Mount Sidley is about 4,3 thousand meters, the foot - 2,5 thousand meters. One side of the mountain forms a caldera of a volcanic crater with a diameter of 5 kilometers. The thickness of the ice cover reaches 2 kilometers and if the ice melts, then there will be a second Japan in the form of an archipelago of islands of volcanic origin.

Volcanoes of Antarctica and the future of the planet

According to Nature Geoscience, volcanic activity affects the rate of melting of ice. The heat flow from Antarctica volcanoes, passing through the Earth's crust, causes instability of the ice shell of the continent. Scientists have already modeled a map of the planet after the predicted melting of the Antarctic ice. And it does not have much of North America and the coastal regions of India. London and Venice, the Netherlands and Denmark will completely go under water. Among the countries that will suffer, there is no Russia.

Antarctic fantasies

In 2017, the press reported on the activities of NASA in the crater of Erebus volcano in search of a portal to other worlds or traces of aliens. Now everyone knows which volcano is in Antarctica.

The huge two-meter letter "M" on one of the islands was a mystery for a long time. But it turned out that in this way one Polish researcher immortalized the name of the lady of his heart Magda. True, the material was chosen interestingly - it is excrement of penguins.

Two peaks of the cliff at the entrance to the canal of the Lemera are named very distinctively - "Una Tits". As part of the British expedition was indeed the girl Una. Interesting, because some of the volcanoes and today are nameless.

In Antarctica, a lot of subglacial lakes with fresh water. According to some sources, there are about 140 of them. And the biggest is the East. Its width is 50 kilometers, and its length is 250 kilometers.

But from the glacier Taylor follows a bloody waterfall. This phenomenon is explained by the activity of bacteria in the subglacial lake. They produce bivalent iron, which in the air stains water in an ominous color.

To the disappointment of many, there are no polar bears in Antarctica. Predators here are only sea - killer whales and ice sharks. That's why penguins on land are so bold.

There are 5 polar stations of Russia in Antarctica. The largest - "East" - is located in the geodetic area of the South Pole.