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There is something hot hidden under Eastern Antarctica and scientists do not know exactly what it is – although they have a good idea.
East Antarctica is a craton, a hunk of crust the size of a continent. It's solid and thick. It's not supposed to let the heat in from the inside of the Earth. (This makes it different from the thinner Antarctic crust of the West, where the magma is, in some places, quite close to the surface.)
This craton means that East Antarctica should not have a lot of melted water at the bottom of its ice cover. And yet, as researchers have revealed in an article published Nov. 14 in the journal Scientific Reports, there is an unusually high amount of melted water out there. This melting is not related to climate change, which causes an intense melting on the borders of the continent; It is an old and warm corner separated in the ice, isolated and kept away from the atmosphere. Scientists were able to detect it through a survey using specialized radar penetrating the ice. [Antarctica: The Ice-Covered Bottom of the World (Photos)]
It's not quite clear what causes the heat there. The craton should protect the ice from the internal heat of the Earth. But the research team came up with an enlightened hypothesis: hydrothermal energy. A crack in the crust could be full of water, jostling up and down between the warm depths of the Earth and the bottom of the ice. It allows the heat to escape and triggers the melting.
This hidden heat source is certainly interesting, but the researchers wrote that it was particularly important because it could influence the data used to understand the deep past of the planet.
"This is an area of special interest," they wrote in the newspaper, "as models suggest." [East Antarctica] may contain some of the oldest ice on the planet, thus preserving records of important climatic transitions. "
Researchers take basic samples of this old ice cream and use them to understand how the atmosphere of the planet has changed over time. Each layer of ice works as a kind of recording of the air from the planet from the time it was formed. Understanding the circumstances in which this ice has been sitting for millennia can help researchers better understand this data.
Originally published on Science live.
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