Dry Valleys of Antarctica
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 "QUANTUM SHOT" #156Journey Through the Otherworldly Landscape The Dry Valleys of Antarctica (located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound) get almost no snowfall, and except for a few steep rocks they are the only continental part of Antarctica devoid of ice. The terrain looks like something not of this Earth; the valley floor occasionally contains a perennially frozen lake with ice several meters thick. Under the ice, in the extremely salty water live mysterious simple organisms, a subject of on-going research. Victoria Valley, Wright Valley and Taylor Valley.    Image credit: Peter West, National Science Foundation Recent Washington Post interactive presentation (featuring photography by George Steinmetz) reveals this stark but beautiful terrain like never before - in some places weirdly similar to Martian landscape... Looking like something out of Lovecraft's ("Mountains of Madness") imagination, this is actually a dried skeleton of a seal. Lake Vanda in Wright Valley, with extremely salty water underneath thick layer of incredibly clear ice... Taylor Valley: Powerful "katabatic" winds erode the rocks on the bottom of the valley into marvelous shapes. Such wind-sculpted rocks are called "ventifacts" - see here. Compare them with Easter Island Statues:  (thanks to m3ch for pointing this out) For more images from this series, click here Another good article shows more wind-carved "ventifacts":  Photo by Kristan Hutchison Canada Glacier on the edge of Lake Fryxell:  Photo by Joe Mastroianni Volcanic Fumaroles of Mount Erebus  Lenticular clouds hover over Mount Erebus volcano (US Coast Guard photo) Mount Erebus (3,794 meters), Ross Island, is the most active volcano in Antarctica, which also contains "persistent" lava lake, one of a very few long-lived lava lakes in the world - clearly visible from space:  Steaming ice "fumaroles" (volcanic gas vents) surround the crater, in time turning into surreal ice towers:  Photo courtesy of Rich Esser See more of ice fumaroles here Blue light inside a fumarole turns it into a work of art:  Photo by Paul Doherty Mount Erebus ice caves merit their own exploration: (see more here)  Photo by Jessie Crain Permanent Link...  Category: Travel,Nature Related Posts: Bolivian Salt Lake, Giant Frozen "Wave" |
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7 Comments:
These are truly wonderful pictures...I hope that one day I'd be able to visit Antarctica as well! (if it doesn't melt ;))
Beautiful pictures. Although I believe that if that third picture down had been sent from one of the martian rovers, it would have been cited as evidence of extra-terrestrial life, does look like a face in profile, or is it just me ?
Beautiful photos. Is it just me, or does it seem like this valley would be an ideal place to practice a manned Mars mission? Very dry, desolate, isolated, and cold....
If there is frozen water in Antartica then doesn't that mean that the contenient used to not be covered in ice. This means that "global warming" could be a natural thing but just being onset sooner due to human intervention?
Wow! These pictures are amazing. They've completely captured my imagination for the last several days.
Austin,
The existence of frozen water would also occur if the contenient used to be covered in ice - that is what ice is.
Even if Antarctica was once iceless (indeed this was almost certainly the case in Pangea and Gondwana Land) that says nothing of what would happen to our modern costal cities if this were to happen again. The same applies to animals now (but not formerly) trapped on islands or low-lying land, unique speciation events in costal forrests, world heritage coastal sites, etc.
Nor does this prove, or even suggest, that humankind is not causing these changes this time around, as many would argue this SUDDEN rate of change (rather than the possible millenia in previous ages) suggests.
The underwater lakes are a natural phenomenon. Most are buried under 2 miles of ice and are suspected to have microbial life forms that have been isolated from the rest of the planet for a very long time. Also NASA does test different designs down there. When I was there they asked if we could hop on a snow machine and ride 70 miles in the middle of winter to collect a big rolling ball that had hung up on the ice somewhere. We politely declined.
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