Interesting Facts About Antarctica Will Make You Speechless

Interesting Facts About Antarctica Will Make You Speechless (Interestingawesome.blogspot.com)

Antarctica....Hmmmm... Let me think. "It is sooo cold". This is the first thing that came to your mind. Yes, you are right. Antarctica is very cold.  Antarctica  is Earth 's southernmost most continent. It contains the geographic South Pole and is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere , almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle , and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean . Most people know very little about Antarctica. But there are so many amazing things about Antarctica and some facts that I am going to mention in here will definitely make you speechless. The more I learned about this frozen continent the more I couldn’t get it out of my mind. So, I decided to share my knowledge with you. Hope you will like it.

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1. The first confirmed sighting of the continent was in 1820. Also explorers first reached the South Pole in 1911.
2. Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents.
3. Scientists exploring this southerly landmass have reported wind speeds that have reached up to 200 miles per hour.
4. The name ‘Antarctica’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘opposite to the north’.
5.  The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F), though the average for the third quarter (the coldest part of the year) is −63 °C (−81 °F). That's a lot colder than your freezer! .
6. The lowest ever temperature recorded was at the Russian Vostok station. It was - 89.6°C (-129°F).  Then what is the highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica?The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica is 58.2°F (14.5°C).
7.  Antarctica is a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 in) along the coast and far less inland.
8. While humans don’t permanently reside in Antarctica, several thousand people live and work at various research facilities found on the continent.
   
9. The cold and dry conditions in the Dry Valleys region of Antarctica are so close to those on Mars that NASA did testing there for the Viking mission.
10. Antarctica is pushed into the earth by the weight of its ice sheets. If they melted, it would "spring back" about 500m (1 625 ft). It would do this v...e...r...y s...l...o...w...l...y taking about 10,000 years to do so.
11. Scotland and Scandinavia are still rebounding today after the last ice age  at the rate of half a meter a century in the Northern Baltic the fastest place.
12. One of the biggest icebergs ever broke free from the Ross ice shelf, Antarctica in 2000. It was 295km (183 miles) long and 37km (23 miles) wide, with a surface area of 11,000 sq km (4,250 square miles) above water - and 10 times bigger below.
13. The Antarctic ice cap has 29 million cubic kilometres of ice. This is 90% of all the ice on the planet and between 60 and 70 % of all of the world's fresh water. Only about 0.4% of Antarctica is not covered by ice.
14. The largest land animal in Antarctica is an insect, a wingless midge, Belgica antarctica , less than 13mm (0.5in) long. There are no flying insects (they'd just get blown away), just shiny black springtails that hop like fleas and often live among penguin colonies.
15. If Antarctica's ice sheets melted, the worlds oceans would rise by 60 to 65 meters (200 - 210ft) - everywhere.
16. Samples of ice known as ice cores are regularly drilled through the ice in Antarctica by scientists. They are removed as a long cylinder of ice that gives an indication of the past going back tens of thousands of years. The properties of the ice, of dust trapped in the ice, and even of air bubbles trapped in the ice give valuable information about the earth's climate at various times in the past.
17. In January of 1979, Emile Marco Palma became the first human to be born on Antarctica. Since then, only ten other people have been born on the continent.
18. While Antarctica is covered in ice, it actually holds one of the world's biggest mountain ranges – the Gamburtsev Mountains, which stretch out more than 750 miles. The highest peaks are estimated to be around 9,000 feet, or about one-third the heigh of Earth's tallest mountain: Mount Everest.
19. Another interesting geographic feature hidden under the ice sheet is Lake Vostok, a freshwater lake buried under 2.5 miles of frozen water. This lake is about the size of Lake Ontario and is one of more than 200 different bodies of water that have been discovered beneath the ice.
    
20. Antarctica is home to Mount Erebus the southernmost active volcano in the world  as well as the only known ‘lava lakes’, which have held liquid magma for eons despite the continent's frigid conditions. It spews crystals.
21. Antarctica has two active volcanoes, which are known. There could be more, however, these are the only two that have their peaks above the surface of the ice. Mount Erebus is the highest of them, which is located on the Ross Ice Shelf, in East Antarctica.
22. Antarctica is the best place in the world to find meteorites. Dark meteorites show up against the white expanse of ice and snow and don't get covered by vegetation. In some places, the way the ice flows concentrates meteorites there. The ice makes them gather in one place. Since 1970, there have been more than 10,000 meteorites discovered in Antarctica, a few up to 700,000 years old.
23. THERE IS A WATERFALL IN ANTARCTICA THAT RUNS BLOOD RED.This five-story, blood-red waterfall pours very slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys. The crimson color comes from iron.
24. While the Grand Canyon is largely considered to be the planet’s biggest natural rift, scientists discovered another trench on Antarctica that could rival one of America's mightiest natural features. The unnamed canyon was found during a 2010 expedition and extends 62 miles, is more than 6 miles wide, and reaches depths of more than 1 mile. Scientists speculate that it could be even larger, but further exploration is required to learn the true boundaries of this massive rift.
25. Because of the Earth's tilt, the sun does not rise in Antarctica from the vernal equinox to the autumnal equinox, which means the continent remains dark throughout the entire winter season.
26. Deep Lake in Antarctica is so salty that it cannot freeze, even in temperatures as low as -4° F.
27. Chile has a civilian town in Antarctica, complete with a school, hospital, hostel, post office, Internet, TV and mobile phone coverage.
28. There are 30 different countries that operate 80 research stations situated around the continent. The human inhabitants who occupy these facilities number around 4,000 during the summer months and only around 1,000 during the long, harsh winters.
29. Around 2009, multiple glaciers along a vast coastal expanse, measuring some 750km in length, suddenly started to shed ice into the ocean at a nearly constant rate of 60 cubic km, or about 55 trillion litres of water, each year.
30. The ice loss in the region is so large that it causes small changes in the gravity field of the Earth, which can be detected by another satellite mission, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).
    
31. Because Antarctica lies in the southern hemisphere, seasons there are the opposite of seasons in the north summer runs from October to February and winter covers the remainder of the year.
32. Snow falling at the South Pole takes about 100 000 years to "flow" to the coast of Antarctica before it drops off the end as part of an iceberg.
33. Antarctica has a peculiar group of fish called the ice fish. These have no hemoglobin. The temperature is very low and oxygen dissolves better in cold temperatures, so there's no need. They just have a larger volume of clear blood instead and this gives them an unusually ghostly white color, particularly their gills. They have antifreeze in their blood so they don't accidentally get frozen solid!
34. This is the only place on Earth where the Emperor penguin can be found. It is the tallest and the heaviest of all penguin species.
35. Antarctica has no government and no country owns this continent. While many countries tried to gain the ownership of these lands over the time, a common agreement has been reached, that grants Antarctica the privilege of remaining the only region on earth which is not ruled by any nation.
36. This is the only continent without a time zone. Scientist communities in Antarctica tend to keep either the time relating to their home lands or the supply line that bring them food and other essential goods. One can walk all the 24 time zones in few seconds.
37. Antarctica grows bigger in winter.How? Its sea ice expands about 40,000 square miles per day, adding up to an extra 12 million square miles of ice around the land mass (the equivalent of 1.5 United States). In effect, it doubles the size of the continent. In summer the new ice breaks up and melts.
    
38. During summer more radiation reaches the South Pole than the equator.
39. This is because the hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic is the largest on record at 27 million square km.
40. One of the biggest dangers to researchers and others living on the continent is actually fire. The dry environment makes it very possible and hard to stop.How strange??

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So now what do you think about think about Antarctica? Is Antarctica only a cold place? Or is it hiding more secrets?

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