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Scientists have released the results of a pioneering investigation into ‘lost continents’ lurking underneath Antarctica.
Data from the Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer has been used to badyse ancient landmbades hidden more than one mile beneath the ice crust.
A research team from Germany’s Kiel University and the British Antarctic Survey has just published a study based on data from the Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE).
This spacecraft collected huge amounts of information about the pull of Earth’s gravity, before being steered into the atmosphere and destroyed in a pre-planned suicide dive.
‘These gravity images are revolutionising our ability to study the least understood continent on Earth: Antarctica,’ said co-author Fausto Ferraccioli, Science Leader of Geology and Geophysics at BAS.
‘In East Antarctica, we see an exciting mosaic of geological features that reveal fundamental similarities and differences between the crust beneath Antarctica and other continents it was joined to until 160 million years ago.’
Scientists discovered that West Antarctica has a thinner crust than East Antarctica, which has a ‘family likeness to Australia and India’.
The East contains remnants of land which was once part of Gondwana, a long-gone ‘supercontinent’ which covered about 39,000,000 square miles.
The findings of the study will also be used to study how Antarctica’s geology and continental structure is affecting the melting of its ice.
ESA’s GOCE mission scientist Roger Haagmans added: ‘It is exciting to see that direct use of the gravity gradients, which were measured for the first time ever with GOCE, leads to a fresh independent look inside Earth – even below a thick sheet of ice.
‘It also provides context of how continents were possibly connected in the past before they drifted apart owing to plate motion.’
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