Revealing information about the mountain range

International scientists have published the first data on the mysterious giant mountain range deep beneath the ice at the southernmost tip of the earth.

The Gamburtsevs - consisting of mountains completely buried under the Antarctic ice sheet - were discovered by some former Soviet experts in 1957. Their findings surprised the scientific community because they assumed that floors The rock lies under the ice in the Antarctic continent, which is relatively flat. According to the BBC, scientists from many countries have been searching for the Gamburtsevs range from last year to this year. During the American Geophysical Union conference on December 18, they published the first information about the mysterious mountain range.

"This is a mountain range formed by collisions of strata," said Dr. Michael Studinger of the University of Colombia, USA. Studinger is one of the key experts in the project to search for Gamburtsevs (called AGAP).

Artwork of the Gamburtsevs mountain range by Dr. Michael Studinger.

BBC said the search for Gamburtsevs was hard work due to the extremely harsh weather conditions in Antarctica, where temperatures could drop to -80 degrees C. Until 2008 new scientists did it. Get a comprehensive study thanks to the efforts of many countries. The team used two aircraft carrying radar transmitters to collect data on the shape, attraction, thickness of the ice above the mountain range and more. In addition, they map the surface of ice shelves above the mountain range with a laser beam.

The researchers say that the shallowest ice covers the mountain range of a few hundred meters thick, while the deepest ice layer is about 4,800 m thick. The mountain range is about 2,500 m above sea level. Gamburtsevs have a long and narrow shape, not a circular mountain like people think. According to Studinger, the peaks in the Gamburtsevs range are much sharper than the scientific thought. The data also show that there are many deep valleys among the mountains.

"Before data collection, we did not detect the existence of valleys in the mountains," said Dr. Fausto Ferraccioli, a British Antarctic researcher.

Ferraccioli said that the valleys could provide clues about the process of Gamburtsevs buried under ice.