Nobody had even seen Antarctica until 1820. It is bigger than the United States and Mexico put together, almost all of it lies under ice more than a mile thick, and you cannot simply go there on your own. In 1939 a German expedition dropped darts marked with swastikas onto the ice. In 1946 the US Navy sent Admiral Richard Byrd there with thirteen ships and nearly five thousand men. Satellite pictures show what looks like a pyramid. A NASA balloon picked up something coming up out of the ice that nobody has been able to explain. Tonight we take the idea that something is down there seriously, and then we check it.

Tonight: why a whole continent is off limits, what Admiral Byrd saw, the Nazi base at the bottom of the world, the pyramid on Google Earth, Atlantis under the ice, a rainforest at the South Pole, mountains no one has ever seen, a lake sealed under two miles of ice, the glacier that bleeds, a rock from Mars, the volcano that spits gold, and the monsters beneath the ice.

Real science, told slowly. Some of what you have heard about Antarctica is true, some is not, and some nobody knows, and each is told as exactly that. Settle in, and if you are here to sleep, sleep.

A soft 432 Hz ambient tone plays beneath the narration. Designed for sleep, study, focus and calm.

If you are listening tonight, tell me in the comments where in the world you are.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction
1:29 Why Is a Whole Continent Off Limits?
14:22 What Did Admiral Byrd See?
26:39 The Nazi Base at the Bottom of the World
39:28 What Google Earth Shows
51:51 Atlantis Under the Ice?
1:03:41 A Rainforest at the South Pole
1:15:56 The Mountains No One Has Ever Seen
1:28:34 The Lake Sealed Under Two Miles of Ice
1:41:01 Something Is Coming Up Out of the Ice
1:52:26 The Glacier That Bleeds
2:04:47 The Rock That Said There Was Life on Mars
2:17:14 The Volcano That Spits Gold
2:29:47 Monsters Beneath the Ice
2:41:33 What the Ice Is Really Hiding
2:52:02 Picture credits

SOURCES (selection)
The Antarctic Treaty (1959) — https://www.ats.aq/e/antarctictreaty....
Summerhayes & Beeching (2007) 'Hitler's Antarctic base: the myth and the reality', Polar Record 43:1-21 — https://doi.org/10.1017/s003224740600...
Wardle et al. (2020) 'Rapid and dynamic processing of face pareidolia in the human brain', Nature Communications 11:4518 — https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18...
Lau et al. (2023) 'Genomic evidence for West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial', Science 382:1384-1389 — https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade0664
Klages et al. (2020) 'Temperate rainforests near the South Pole during peak Cretaceous warmth', Nature 580:81-86 — https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-21...
Ferraccioli et al. (2011) 'East Antarctic rifting triggers uplift of the Gamburtsev Mountains', Nature 479:388-392 — https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10566
Kapitsa et al. (1996) 'A large deep freshwater lake beneath the ice of central East Antarctica', Nature 381:684-686 — https://doi.org/10.1038/381684a0
Gorham et al. (2018) 'Observation of an Unusual Upward-going Cosmic-ray-like Event in the Third Flight of ANITA', Physical Review Letters 121:161102 — https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05088
Mikucki et al. (2015) 'Deep groundwater and potential subsurface habitats beneath an Antarctic dry valley', Nature Communications 6:6831 — https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms7831
Lagain et al. (2022) 'Early crustal processes revealed by the ejection site of the oldest martian meteorite', Nature Communications 13:3782 — https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31...
Ilanko et al. (2015) 'Cyclic degassing of Erebus volcano, Antarctica', Bulletin of Volcanology 77:56 — https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-015-09...
Griffiths et al. (2021) 'Breaking All the Rules: The First Recorded Hard Substrate Sessile Benthic Community Far Beneath an Antarctic Ice Shelf', Frontiers in Marine Science 8:642040 — https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.64...

IMAGERY
Pictures: public domain works of NASA, NOAA, NSF, the US Navy, the US Geological Survey, the Library of Congress and the National Archives; Pexels footage; own maps (Natural Earth and NASA Blue Marble, public domain) and satellite renders (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2021-2026; Copernicus DEM GLO-30); AI-generated scenes of the deep past are marked "Artist's reconstruction".

Creative Commons Attribution pictures (CC BY 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0; creativecommons.org/licenses/by/) are credited by name in the picture credits at the end of the video.

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