Hidden mountains make up Antarctica's true terrain

Chelsea White, contributor

(Image: British Antarctic Survey/BEDMAP consortium)

Antarctica is hiding something. It may look like a fairly flat, snow-covered wasteland, but the BEDMAP project has pulled back the ice sheet to reveal the mountainous bed topography of the continent underneath.

Only one per cent of this concealed rock makes its way to the surface of the frozen terrain. Although some of these mountains are as tall as the European Alps, reaching 3000 metres above sea level, they're still obscured by 1000 metres of ice.

The highest elevations are marked in this image in red and black and the lowest are shown in dark blue. The light blue area shows the extent of the continental shelf.

Using radar to map the landscape, scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have pooled data from decades of polar expeditions to create the most accurate and detailed map of 'the white continent' ever made.

Radar travels easily through ice, so in order to chart the terrain, planes flying above the ice send microwave pulses through the upper sheet and record the echoes that reach the plane when it bounces off the underlying rock. This gives a clear picture of the shape of the hidden landscape and also reveals the depth of the ice cover.

"It's like you've brought the whole thing now into sharp focus," Hamish Pritchard of the BAS told BBC News.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1aad8ae2/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A110C120Chidden0Emountains0Emake0Eup0Eantar0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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