Original subtitles

Legendary explorers braving a deadly frozen world.

A massive government expedition shrouded in secrecy. And strange

new life forms buried beneath miles of solid ice.

Antarctica.

This frozen continent at the bottom of Earth is a massive polar desert.

This desolate yet beautiful place has captivated brave explorers for

And while its natural wonders are undeniable, Antarctica is also steeped

myth, legend, and strange phenomena.

What secrets lie hidden within the world's most mysterious continent?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

Antarctica, Earth's southernmost continent.

This vast frozen world covers five and a half million square miles and is nearly

the size of the United States and Mexico combined.

Only 1 ,000 to 5 ,000 humans are on Antarctica at any given time.

And most of these temporary residents are small groups of scientists from

the world who work...

and live in research outposts that dot the landscape.

Those who are willing to endure the extreme conditions of the White

find themselves in a world like no other.

My first visit to Antarctica was almost 20 years ago now. I've always found

Antarctica to be fascinating because it is enigmatic.

When you get there, you're in awe of the sights that you see.

Antarctica is essentially covered in a huge slab of ice that can be up to three

miles thick in places.

And it has the coldest temperatures in the world, but also is the highest

continent, the driest continent, the windiest continent, and the least

place on the planet.

And it feels like nowhere else on Earth.

My first time getting to the ice, it's otherworldly.

There's not a tree in sight. Depending when you get there, You're often either

in 24 -hour daylight or 24 -hour darkness.

The threshold between being perfectly safe and, oh my God, we're in trouble,

very thin.

Humans aren't built to survive in Antarctica.

It's mysterious and wondrous because so few people get a chance to go. The

scientists visit it, the explorers visit it, but we all leave.

The things that catch your eye, like the penguins and whales and things, that's

all in the coastal regions.

Once you go into the interior, there's nothing that lives there that we know

So it's got an allure already.

There's so many questions to be answered.

Everything's unexplained about Antarctica.

While those who have ventured to Antarctica have experienced freezing

temperatures, blinding storms, and endless snow -covered terrain.

Scientists have recently discovered geological evidence that millions of

ago, the continent looked very different than it does today.

Antarctica hasn't always been covered in ice. Just by fossils found in

Antarctica, we know that Antarctica was once covered in jungle, that it was once

covered in forest.

There are some people who theorize that there could have been ancient men in

Antarctica.

and then all that was covered in ice. So we know that there's a lot there, but

we don't know what's going to be found.

It's fascinating to think that 90 million years ago, the South Pole was

lush forest filled with plants, trees, and animals.

It would take a dramatic climate shift around 56 million years later to create

the frozen landscape we know today.

And while explorers would not lay eyes on Antarctica until the 1800s, great

thinkers like Aristotle had proposed the existence of a land at the bottom of

Earth thousands of years before it was discovered.

In ancient times, Antarctica captured our imaginations. People suspected that

Antarctica existed because it seemed right.

But it was an undiscovered land.

It seemed like there should be a land in the southern regions of the planet.

It was suspected to be there, but there was no proof.

Istanbul, Turkey, 1929.

While cataloging antiquities at the Topkapi Palace Library, German scholar

Gustav Adolf Deismann finds an unusual map printed on gazelle skin parchment.

The remarkable 16th century document is quickly recognized as the work of the

distinguished cartographer, Piri Reis, and becomes an object of great

and heated controversy.

Piri Reis was an Ottoman admiral and cartographer.

In 1513, he produced an extraordinary map.

Only about a third of the map survives, but that third offers something that's

really surprising.

and looks like it is showing a coastline of a southern continent.

And some argue that that coastline looks very much like the coastline of part of

modern Antarctica.

And that leads you to wonder, how did he possibly know the coastline of a

continent that we didn't even know existed yet?

So it presumes that some civilization either lived there or was close enough

it in order to map it, and somehow that information made it back to Pierre Reif.

It's certainly not proven, and we don't know.

Did Piri Reis create a map of the Antarctic coast based on lost knowledge

mysterious ancient civilization?

And if so, how did the famous mapmaker come to learn about it?

Some experts think the answer can be found in the folklore of a great

people who came not from the frozen desert, but instead from a tropical

paradise.

The Polynesian peoples of the Pacific have many culture heroes and these were

great navigators that would journey for many thousands of miles from one end of

the ocean to the other.

And these legends tell us that they also went to a southern continent

that was naturally very, very cold.

They say that it's a place that's...

beneath the earth itself.

It's a place of darkness, but it's also a place of light in that the sun shines

all the time there.

And it's a place where rocks grow out of the sea and strange animals and what

appears to be what we describe as Noah and I. And it seems very obvious that

they were reaching Antarctica.

It's intriguing to think that the ancient world may have discovered

centuries before explorers would catch a glimpse of it.

And while the belief in an unknown southern land was well established in

15th and 16th centuries, the ability to actually set foot on this mysterious

continent would finally be possible in the late 1800s, in an era known as

the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

At the time of the Age of Exploration in Antarctica, the South Pole, no one had

ever been there. Much like the highest point on Earth or the lowest trench in

the ocean, getting to that point would be an historic achievement.

The two powers that were pushing to get to the South Pole first were Great

Britain and Norway.

Ernest Shackleton was a British polar explorer in the early 1900s.

And he made the record at the time of reaching the closest location to the

Pole, getting within nearly 100 miles before having to turn around.

In 1911, Roald Munson, the great Norwegian explorer, becomes the first to

the South Pole.

So Norway steals the glory.

These early explorers of Antarctica, they're going into kind of almost like a

black hole.

From 1897 to 1922, ten countries were involved in launching 17

major Antarctic expeditions in the pursuit of scientific and geographical

exploration. Polar exploration is complicated.

At its core is the sense of national pride.

These early explorers were carrying the flag of their country.

But it was also an effort to understand the world. No one had been...

to Antarctica.

Was it one continent? Was it several large islands?

I mean, geographic knowledge was being gathered during that time.

It was also scientific learning about animal species.

They were kind of early field researchers.

It was this willingness to go forward and explore and learn and advance human

knowledge that was one of the driving factors.

And whether they would come out or not was the question.

Despite the inherent dangers of Antarctic exploration, brave adventurers

everything to reach the White Continent.

But once there, survival would require strong ships, adequate supplies, trusted

crewmates, and at times, help from an otherworldly source.

Queen Maud Land, Antarctica.

November 13th, the year 2000.

Famous polar explorers Anne Bancroft and Liev Arneson set out on a truly

extraordinary expedition.

Their formidable goal is to become the first women in history to ski across the

most dangerous continent on Earth.

For our expedition, the goal was to pull sleds all the way across Antarctica.

And it's incredibly...

People do fall into crevasses.

Mishaps happen.

If you got injured, it's very hard to get out.

It's sort of do it or die.

The trip was 97 days across Antarctica.

It was about 1 ,700 miles. We went from tip to tail, basically, with the South

Pole in the middle.

Liev and I became the first women to cross the continent of Antarctica.

Anne Bancroft and Lee Varnison made history on Antarctica.

But something strange happened on their quest across the continent that's not

easily explained.

In the first half of the journey, it was very steep up into the interior, and it

was just blizzards all the time. So we're getting stuck all the time. And

the continent is ahead of us.

And so the dilemma for us was how do we overcome what was before us? Because

we're going into a place of despair.

It was so incredibly cold and hard, and you're so scared.

And you're thinking, we're never going to do it. We're never going to get

This is just too formidable.

And suddenly I felt like I was getting help.

I felt like they were people in my life who had passed on.

My grandmother, for one. And you have a dialogue.

And I had a dialogue.

There is a presence that you can get. But what is that? What is that

Could the spirit of a loved one have been the unseen force that helped Anne

during her expedition?

Or might it have been something else?

Remarkably, there have been other polar explorers.

who have experienced a very similar phenomenon called Third Man Syndrome.

Third Man Syndrome, also called Third Man Factor, is a sense of

being in the company of an unseen friend, a presence who guides

you, who encourages you, and is a key factor in an

individual's survival during extreme stress.

So it often happens in mountaintops, it happens at sea, it happens in

Antarctica, extreme environments, and it's a sense of guidance and help and

support, almost, if you will, an angel.

There are countless examples like that where people have had the very same

experience.

Could there really be an angelic presence that guides those in need of

during extreme conditions?

It's a comforting thought, and perhaps best illustrated in what's considered to

be the most remarkable Antarctic survival story in history.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 26, 1914.

The British vessel, the Endurance, sets sail with 28 men on a historic adventure

known as the Imperial Trans -Antarctic Expedition.

The ship's owner and captain is Sir Ernest Shackleton, a seasoned explorer

led an expedition to the South Pole seven years earlier.

Shackleton's plan for the endurance expedition is to be the first to

land crossing of Antarctica.

In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton set out in what would become one of the most

fateful expeditions in Antarctic history.

He was tasked with crossing the continent from west to east.

via the South Pole.

But their ship, the Endurance, got locked in sea ice, leaving them

they had to give up on the South Pole expedition.

This was now an expedition of survival for hundreds of miles.

In 1915, the Endurance got stuck in the Weddell Sea, which is a very icy sea in

Antarctica. So then, having spent almost, you know, more than a year

this frozen ship, it was quite clear the ship was going to sink.

They had to take the lifeboats, take everything that they could off the ship,

and push those across the ice and went to search for help.

Twenty -eight -man shipwreck marooned in Antarctica.

It's an incredibly horrific effort to get out of that situation.

Crossing the rotting ice, eating their sled dogs.

They were at one point covered in ice from the sea spray, and they all looked

like kind of ghosts.

And then they finally reach this place called Elephant Island.

Shackleton and his crew of 27 men reach Elephant Island on April 16, 1916,

nearly 15 months after getting stuck in the ice.

But their journey is far from over.

On Elephant Island, it was clear that they wouldn't be rescued from there.

And so Shackleton...

And other men take one of these boats, which has been dragged all the way

the ice, and they decide to go to South Georgia Island in order to get to a

whaling post to search for help.

It's 800 miles across the ocean to get there.

If they miss the island, it's over. It's an open boat, and they're on the ocean

in these waves. They're wet all the time.

There's nothing left in the tank.

If you were a betting person, you would not bet for them.

And yet they achieved it.

Against all odds, the men land safely on South Georgia Island.

But still ahead of them is a treacherous climb over an uncharted mountain, where

on the other side, there's a whaling station and their last hope for getting

help.

With barely any strength left to survive Shackleton and two of his men begin the

long, dangerous trek through the mountains.

And it is then that all three men begin to sense that they are not alone.

It was during that final leg over the mountains in South Georgia that he and

other two men who were with him had the sense of a force.

having joined their party, and Shackleton described it as the divine

In his book South, he wrote of this presence experience that he had had on

Georgia Island.

It was a spiritual, a religious experience that they felt they had had.

They felt they were in the company of an unseen friend.

The other two guys he's traveling with feel the same, I call it a spirit, you

know, the same.

Essence, it is a benevolent presence. It kind of rides on your shoulder, it

appears. Oftentimes when you need it, it feels like there is a person, a being

with them, aiding them, helping them.

They somehow managed to get over this mountain range to the whaling station.

It's just unbelievable.

They were absolutely, totally malnourished.

Their clothing was in tatters.

They were not...

recognizable, really, as a civilized man when they arrived.

And Shackleton was so changed by what he had gone through. It was a horrific,

horrific experience.

And yet he survived, and they went back to Elton Island and collected the other

men.

On August 30, 1916, more than a year and a half after the Endurance became

trapped in ice, the stranded crew on Elton Island are finally rescued.

Miraculously, all 28 men that set out on the journey survive.

Perhaps with the help of an otherworldly presence that no one can explain.

Third man syndrome always comes back to the question, what is it?

Is it purely a psychological coping mechanism or is it some sort of

entity?

Neurologists continue to study the phenomenon.

psychologists continue to study the phenomenon, but I don't think any of

have solved the mystery.

I think it remains very much unexplained.

Could Shackleton and Bancroft have really been guided to safety by

supernatural? Or was it simply a hallucination?

The answer remains a mystery.

Just like the case of an American military hero who stopped secret polar

adventure has led to controversial theories about what may lie deep beneath

the ice.

The Bay of Wales, Antarctica.

January 15th, 1947.

A fleet of 13 ships, 33 aircraft, and almost 5 ,000 troops

arrived under the command of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, famed naval

and Polar Explorer, who in 1929, along with his crew, was the first to fly an

airplane over the South Pole.

Now, he is leading a massive classified operation for the United States

government known as Operation High Jump.

Operation High Jump was by far the largest expedition on the Antarctic

continent. At this point in history, it was right after World War II.

And High Jump's stated missions were about exploration and scientific

They explored new places, they set up bases, and they took thousands of

photographs. They took measurements that nobody had ever taken over a vast swath

of the Antarctic continent.

Operation High Jump was a massive operation.

It's like a World War II invasion, but it also gives rise to some various

theories, because why would we send an entire fleet?

to Antarctica just to do scientific research.

Do we really care that much about science, or is there some secret

goal down there that we don't know about?

For over 70 years, the question has persisted.

What was the true mission of Operation High Jump?

One of the prevailing theories is that High Jump's secret objective may have

been to locate a hidden Nazi base.

Starting in 1938 and arriving there in January 1939, Adolf Hitler had sent a

Nazi research expedition to Antarctica.

They established a presence there.

Now, one of the purposes of this was to establish a whaling industry there.

However, a lot of people believe that they were also storing weapons there.

So this opens up the question, was Operation High Jump looking for...

a hidden Nazi base there in the ice that could contain secrets and weapons that

the Third Reich may have left behind.

The possibility that Operation High Jump was searching for a secret Nazi base

remains an unproven theory.

But over the decades, others have proposed that Admiral Richard E. Byrd's

objective in Antarctica was to find something even more shocking.

The entrance.

to a secret world hidden below the ice.

Richard Byrd was probably one of the last of the great explorers. He was the

first man to fly over the North and South Pole, and he was determined

to uncover the secrets of the land beyond the poles.

When Byrd said the secrets of the land beyond the poles, he was probably using

that as a romantic metaphor. So it's been taken over the years that Byrd was

referring to possibly entranceways into the inner earth.

The concept of an inner earth is that we live on a shell

and that beneath that shell is a realm.

another world, the parallel existence, that has its own atmosphere, its

own sun, its own land, its own fertility, its own animals, and perhaps

own inhabitants.

Could Admiral Byrd have been searching for a mysterious land beneath

It's an incredible story, if it's true.

And what's even more remarkable is that, according to legend, Admiral Byrd.

may have found it.

The story goes that when Admiral Byrd flew over the South Pole, he could see

that there was an opening.

He directed a squadron to fly into the opening, and underneath the ice, it

wasn't frozen.

It was temperate.

There were valleys there. There was flowing water there.

The rumors had it that he had discovered areas of Antarctica that were free of

ice and snow.

Allegations that he discovered the inner earth circulated in various books and

publications, and it was alleged that at one point they observed a number

of flying disks, UFOs.

and received radio communications ordering them to land near an enormous

where they met the leaders of this underground kingdom.

There's been all kinds of allegations, but we don't know if these stories are

true or not.

Did Admiral Byrd discover a highly advanced civilization hiding deep below

Antarctica? It all sounds too incredible to be true.

But some experts are convinced that something very strange did indeed happen

during Operation High Jump.

Because this massive military undertaking in 1947 was suddenly

cut short.

Operation High Jump was supposed to stay for the entire Antarctic summer of

1947.

But they were there less than two months and came back to the United States.

It would be nice to know why did they leave so early, what happened to a lot

the photographs that were allegedly taken at the time, and did everybody

back safely?

Now, I suspect that the crazy stories about flying saucers and men from the

hollow earth was part of a disinformation campaign to hide what was

on.

So the question remains,

what actually happens with Operation High Jump.

The true purpose of Operation High Jump is still shrouded in mystery.

But it is possible the mission did find something incredible beneath the eyes

because scientists have since discovered an absolutely massive

object buried a mile below Antarctica's surface. And they don't know what it

is.

Antarctica 2024.

Across the icy continent, 55 countries have established research stations where

scientists come to study topics like marine biology, geologic mapping, ice

cores, and objects from space.

Like the 50 ,000 meteorites that have landed on the snowy surface of

And many believe...

There are hundreds of thousands more meteorites waiting to be found there.

The magnitude of some of these discoveries is amazing.

We've actually found more meteorites on the ice in Antarctica than anywhere else

on the planet combined.

Roughly 60 % of all the meteorites found on Earth have been found in Antarctica.

So all the time we're finding meteorites that we didn't even know existed there.

The weather conditions and uncluttered setting of Antarctica are said to be

helpful when spotting and collecting space rocks.

But a discovery in 2006, deep underground in the Wilkes Land region,

the potential to rewrite Earth's history.

Wilkes Land is one of the most remote regions of East Antarctica.

Gravity satellites run by NASA discovered that...

There's a dense segment of rock underneath the ice that's heavier than

everything else around it. And one of the things that could cause an anomaly

like this is an impact crater. But it's impossible to say for sure.

Scientists believe what they discovered was a massive 300 -mile -wide

crater that has been suggested was caused by an

asteroid.

that struck the Earth maybe as far back as 250 million years in the past.

And I don't think scientists know what else it could be.

Unfortunately, we'll probably never know because it's buried under almost a mile

of ice.

So what we know is that there's something there. What we don't know for

what it is, but many scientists think that possibly under the ice in

Antarctica... is the largest impact crater that is known ever to have

Earth.

It's intriguing to think that a prehistoric 300 -mile -wide meteor

lie hidden below 5 ,000 feet of ice.

And if so, could it be the source of a mega impact event that transformed

the planet?

If we look back into geological history,

We find out that around the same time that the Wilkes Land anomaly was

there was a severe shift in the fossil record that

unquestionably involved a massive cataclysm that must have changed the

of Earth itself.

There are people that believe the timing of the Wilkes Land impact at

about 250 million years ago, could be the cause of the Permian Triassic

extinction event, which would have wiped out about 90 % of all life on Earth.

So this potential impact could absolutely be indicative of a mass

event in our Earth's history.

Could the anomaly buried below Antarctica have been responsible for

nearly all life on the planet?

Perhaps. But what's even more incredible is that some experts suggest an

asteroid strike of this magnitude may have been powerful enough to reshape the

Earth itself.

Antarctica has not always been covered in ice.

It used to be a very different place than it is today.

It didn't even used to be at the South Pole. It broke off from the Pangean

supercontinent millions of years ago and drifted southward.

This crater that is still preserved under the ice in Antarctica might have

with the breakup of the supercontinent.

This massive meteor strike could have hit so hard that it literally caused

volcanoes to erupt on the other side of the Earth.

It might be the event that helped to break Antarctica off from Africa.

and break Australia off from Antarctica.

The massive anomaly buried deep below Antarctica may one day reshape our

understanding of planet Earth.

But for now, the evidence remains beyond our reach.

Unfortunately, whilst this idea is plausible, because it's under miles of

nobody can physically collect a rock specimen.

to find out if what they think may have happened is what has happened.

So it's very difficult to know if there's anything else potentially going

there, because we haven't got enough data yet.

But it does give an example of one of the many, many things about Antarctica

that we're currently unable to answer, because Antarctica is dominated by this

huge amount of ice.

Is there a giant asteroid buried deep below eastern Antarctica?

Or could it be something even more shocking?

Based on the depth of this object, the answer for now is too hard to come by.

But even deeper, below the surface, a recent discovery may have uncovered an

entire lost world of strange and unusual creatures.

Vostok Station, Antarctica, February 5th, 2012.

After 20 years of drilling, scientists make a remarkable discovery.

Locked deep beneath the ice for what some estimate to be 20 million years,

scientists reach an extraordinary body of water known as Lake Vostok.

Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica and sits about 13

feet below the surface of the ice sheet above.

A subglacial lake is one that's formed underneath ice.

Subglacial lakes are a real mystery.

We've only explored a handful of them and it's very difficult to explore these

hidden environments.

They represent a natural laboratory.

What happens to life if you cut it off from the rest of the world for millions

of years?

When they pulled up water from Lake Vostok, they found microbes in there

had evolved completely independently from nearly all other life on Earth.

Lake Vostok is so remote, so isolated from the rest of the planet.

If life could evolve here, it could evolve nearly anywhere.

It was the closest thing we've ever found to life on another planet.

While Lake Vostok is a tremendous discovery, it is just one.

of many pristine places in Antarctica, where scientists have found not just

microbial life forms, but creatures of all sizes that have never been seen

before.

One of the amazing things about working in Antarctica as a marine biologist is

we get to discover new species.

If we go to unexplored areas or places that are much deeper, 80 or 90 % of the

species we pull up from the sea are new to science.

And that includes some really strange -looking organisms.

We have the strawberry feather star.

Its central part of its body resembles a strawberry.

I even have two species of sea cucumber named after me because they were

starting to run out of things to name the new species we'd found.

And so it's not a question of will we find new species, it's a question of how

many new species will we find every time we go.

Every time we look at a new pocket of seawater underneath the ice in

we find something we'd never seen before.

Just a few years ago, they found sea spider crabs that have legs up to 20

They found two -foot -wide sea stars.

They found jellyfish with 12 -foot -long tentacles.

Many of these reach sizes that are incomparable to anywhere else on Earth.

The cold, undisturbed waters around Antarctica make an excellent breeding

for... massive creatures.

Blue whales, the largest animals to ever live on our planet, roam these waters.

And even the mysterious and elusive colossal squid can be found here.

Colossal squids are enormous creatures that are at least 33 feet long, and they

have the largest eyeballs of any creature on the planet.

We've only seen a few of these organisms in real life.

But it opened so many questions about how large animals can be found in some

the most inhospitable parts of Antarctica.

Seymour Island, 2017.

The Argentina Antarctic Institute completes their excavation of one of the

extraordinary and massive fossils ever discovered.

It is the skeleton of a sea creature that swam in Antarctic waters 66 million

years ago, called Elasmosaurus.

Elasmosaurus was a real sea monster swimming around the Antarctic.

It's the heaviest marine reptile fossil that's been found around Antarctica.

It was up to 40 feet long and possibly 15 tons worth of animal.

It was thought to have lived right up to the extinction event that killed

dinosaurs. But it was the largest swimming reptile in the oceans around

Antarctica. When the story hit the news, people started saying, doesn't this

resemble the Loch Ness Monster?

Doesn't this resemble other sea monsters and lake monsters around the world?

Begging the question of whether creatures like the Elasmosaurus,

still exist out there in the sea coast of Antarctica to this day.

We know this massive critter lived there, right?

So things that you might call a monster, could they live under those ice

shelves? Of course they could.

98 % of the ocean bottom underneath these huge ice sheets off of Antarctica

completely unexplored.

There's absolutely going to be stuff that we've never seen before that

us and that tells us more about life on our planet.

McMurdo Station, Ross Island, Antarctica.

This American research station is the largest scientific facility on the

continent and serves as a key hub to resupplying scientists working all over

region.

McMurdo is just one of about 70 research stations that support scientific

expeditions from 29 countries around the world.

Part of the reason we fund so much research in Antarctica

Because what happens in Antarctica does not stay in Antarctica.

Antarctica by itself holds enough ice to raise sea levels around the world by

hundreds of feet if it all melted.

We've had glaciers that are thinning and losing literally billions of tons of

ice to the ocean.

And how fast these glaciers can melt is an open question.

Antarctica affects the rest of the planet right now.

and in the future.

While it's fascinating to think that Antarctica may help us predict what lies

ahead for planet Earth, surprisingly, the white continent may also offer clues

to what life might be like on other planets.

At NASA, they talk a lot about Antarctica. It is the closest thing that

to an approximation to an alien environment that might resemble places

hope to visit in space.

There are frozen moons, even in our own solar system, where there's a huge ocean

of water beneath and then a frozen crust on the outside. Very similar to ice

shelves or the sea ice in Antarctica.

And the fact that life can live under the ice in Antarctica might hold the

secrets of life in other places in the universe.

Could the most remote, hostile, and mysterious place on Earth really be that

similar to an alien world?

It's an intriguing thought, but the truth is, after 200 years of

exploration and research, when it comes to understanding the mystery of

Antarctica, we've barely scratched the frozen surface.

We might learn about the universe from Antarctica. We might learn about the

origins of life from Antarctica. We might find species that we've never seen

before from Antarctica.

We just don't know what's under all that ice.

I think what's exciting is that we don't have all the answers.

In fact, we have so very few.

Antarctica is already presenting mysteries that we never thought we would

to. Even today, things are emerging, critters and...

objects, and bodies of water.

And if you're a scientist, it's very much like being an explorer. You just

to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep asking the questions and

keep looking.

It's exciting to think that there are great discoveries yet to be uncovered in

one of the most inhospitable environments imaginable.

And perhaps the fact that Antarctica is the world's highest, driest, coldest,

and windiest continent on Earth is exactly what attracts explorers of all

kinds who risk their lives in the pursuit of understanding this

place. But, as often happens with every revelation, more questions seem to

rise to the icy surface, and the mystery of Antarctica remains

unexplained.