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Strange phenomena at the South Pole have kept planes away, and a vanished submarine may have uncovered something eerie beneath the ice. What secrets is Antarctica hiding?
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00:00I guess it's no surprise that it's not that easy to just hop on a plane and literally fly to
00:06the South Pole, a.k.a. Antarctica.
00:08Sure, there are airports down there, but they're not really set up for commercial flights.
00:13So most people go to Punta Arenas International Airport in southern Patagonia, Chile, and then take a boat if they
00:20want to see some penguins.
00:22But not only is it hard to fly there, it's even harder to fly over there.
00:28When you're cruising at 30,000 feet, you probably don't think much about what's happening below.
00:34But it's pretty unusual for flights to go directly over the South Pole, and planes flying across Antarctica are quite
00:41rare too.
00:42Technically, it is possible. I've already mentioned that there are airports there.
00:47But even so, the infrastructure down there is still super limited.
00:51There simply aren't enough airports or refueling stations to support regular commercial flights, making it tricky to operate in such
00:58a remote area.
01:00Plus, there are only a handful of specialized cargo and transport flights that go in and out, and they exist
01:06to cater to those few folks who actually live in Antarctica.
01:11Then there's the weather that drives up the costs.
01:14The simplest example is that the pilots there need special training, which costs money, which is all because of the
01:21weather.
01:22Another hurdle is something called ETOPS.
01:25These rules dictate how far twin-engine planes can fly from an airport.
01:30Since there are so few airports in Antarctica, it's tough for pilots to stick to these regulations.
01:37Historically, ETOPS made it next to impossible to fly close to or over the South Pole, while flights over land
01:44have plenty of airports to choose from.
01:47Antarctica is a whole different ballgame.
01:50These days, some aircraft can fly up to 330 minutes or, in rare cases, even 370 minutes from an airport.
01:58But even with those extended limits, certain parts of the airspace above Antarctica are still off-limits.
02:05Still, in the grand scheme of things, that might not be a huge deal.
02:10The most curious of you must have Googled that already and found out that there really are Antarctic Airways.
02:17Please do not judge fast and don't say I wasn't right saying how hard it was to fly to the
02:22South Pole.
02:23Let me break it down for you.
02:25Antarctic Airways advertise as the world's most exclusive transcontinental flight, but don't think you can just waltz in and book
02:33a ticket any time.
02:35For starters, Antarctic Airways mostly operates flights to King George Island from December to March, so it's not all-year
02:42-round.
02:43But there are many more reasons why these flights are unique.
02:48If you dig into their website, you'll find you've got two choices.
02:53A full day in Antarctica or an overnight adventure.
02:56Prices kick off at $5,500 for a day trip and go up to $6,500 for an overnight stay.
03:05And if you're considering a private charter, get ready to shell out a pretty penny.
03:09It's rumored to start at around $125,000.
03:15Sure, that's a steep price compared to your average cruise ship crossing the Drake Passage.
03:20But here's the thing.
03:21It's about 20 times faster.
03:23Air travel to Antarctica is pretty limited, likely due to the high costs, limited seating, and the logistical challenges that
03:30come with flying to such a remote location.
03:33Plus, flights can often be delayed because of bad weather.
03:38Most travelers opt for a quick day trip or an overnight stay on King George Island, usually aboard smaller Beechcraft
03:44King Air 300 aircraft.
03:47The experience typically includes a stroll to a research station and a boat ride to see nearby penguin colonies.
03:53But that's just scratching the surface of what Antarctica has to offer.
03:59But once you're aboard Antarctic Airways, you'll see it's just like a regular flight on a smaller plane.
04:05You'll be served meals that have received some pretty good reviews.
04:08There are even photos floating around online showcasing the food.
04:12And honestly, it looks awesome.
04:15Those who've experienced it say it's luxurious yet unpretentious.
04:19You'll get a mix of meats and cheeses, plus treats like tiramisu, salmon salad, a single after-eat chocolate, and
04:27a selection of quality street candies.
04:31Today, everything may seem cool and safe, but back in the day, there were some pretty tragic events.
04:38On November 28, 1979, Air New Zealand Flight 901 tragically collided with Mount Erebus on Ross Island, Antarctica.
04:47Unfortunately, all 237 passengers and 20 crew members aboard lost their lives that day.
04:54Since 1977, Air New Zealand had been running regular sightseeing flights over Antarctica.
05:00This particular flight took off from Auckland Airport in the morning,
05:04with plans to spend several hours exploring the stunning Antarctic landscape
05:09before heading back to Auckland via Christchurch that evening.
05:14Initially, the inquiry into the incident pointed the finger at pilot error.
05:18However, growing public concern led to the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry for a deeper investigation.
05:26The commission found that the crash had been primarily due to a change in the flight path coordinates made the
05:32night before,
05:32which the flight crew hadn't been informed about.
05:35As a result, instead of being guided by the computer down McMurdo Sound,
05:40as they were led to believe, the aircraft was mistakenly redirected toward Mount Erebus.
05:48In a way, this flight looks like modern one-day Antarctic tours.
05:52Flight 901 was marketed as a unique sightseeing adventure,
05:56complete with a knowledgeable Antarctic guide who highlighted various scenic spots and landmarks
06:01through the plane's public address system, while passengers enjoyed a low-altitude tour of McMurdo Sound.
06:08These flights operated as day trips, taking off from New Zealand and returning on the same day.
06:14The plane departed from Auckland International Airport at 8 a.m.,
06:18aiming to land in Antarctica, with a scheduled return to Christchurch International Airport by 7 p.m.
06:24The total journey covered about 5,360 miles,
06:29including a 45-minute stop in Christchurch for refueling and crew changes
06:33before completing the final 464 miles back to Auckland, arriving at 9 p.m.
06:40Back in November 1979, tickets for these flights were priced at $359 per person,
06:47which is over $2,150 in today's money.
06:52Anyway, this tragedy isn't the reason why planes don't fly over the South Pole.
06:56The real culprits are weather,
06:59ETOPS regulations,
07:00and of course, penguins.
07:03Yep, those cool, friendly little creatures.
07:05Friendly, at least according to researchers.
07:08With no natural predators on land,
07:10all of them are in the water.
07:12They're not really afraid of people,
07:13and actually seem to enjoy our company.
07:16The South Pole is completely uninhabited,
07:18and packed with penguins,
07:20making it pretty tricky to build anything down there.
07:24By the way,
07:25the North Pole actually allows planes to fly over it.
07:29Not too long ago,
07:30there were direct flights from Copenhagen to both L.A. and Tokyo,
07:34operated by SAS,
07:35and they cruised right over the North Pole.
07:37Other airlines joined in too.
07:39For example,
07:41Emirates ran a flight from Dubai to L.A.
07:43that took the same route.
07:45The difference in air traffic between the two poles
07:48mainly comes down to where people live
07:50and how much land there is.
07:52Roughly 88 to 90 percent of the world's population
07:55hangs out in the Northern Hemisphere,
07:57while only about 10 to 12 percent
08:00call the Southern Hemisphere home.
08:02Most folks in the South are clustered around the equator
08:05in places like Indonesia,
08:07Central Africa,
08:07and Brazil.
08:09When it comes to flights heading to the South Pole,
08:12options are pretty limited.
08:14You mainly have routes connecting New Zealand and Australia,
08:17parts of southern South America,
08:19and a few spots in southern Africa,
08:21especially South Africa.
08:24There aren't really any direct flights over the South Pole,
08:27though some flights can get close to Antarctica.
08:29One possible route could connect Auckland, New Zealand
08:32to Cape Town, South Africa,
08:33but there aren't any scheduled flights for that right now.
08:36The few flights that came close to Antarctica
08:39are operated by Qantas and LATAM Airlines,
08:43linking Australia with Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile.
08:47In 2021,
08:49Qantas took a long detour over parts of Antarctica
08:51on a flight from Buenos Aires to Darwin,
08:54and in July 2023,
08:56they adjusted a route closer to the continent
08:58to dodge some fierce headwinds
09:00on a trip from Santiago to Sydney.
09:05This sleek, state-of-the-art submarine named RAN
09:08was sent to explore the depths of Antarctica.
09:11But as soon as it discovered something,
09:13it mysteriously disappeared.
09:15So, what happened?
09:19It all started when scientists wanted to explore
09:22one of the most remote and mysterious places on Earth,
09:25the Datsun Ice Shelf in West Antarctica.
09:28This ice shelf, silent giant, stretches 30 miles wide.
09:33That's almost the length of New York City.
09:35It stands between two icy promontories,
09:38the Martin and Bear peninsulas,
09:39and it hides an entire world of geological mysteries.
09:44If you think that Antarctica is nothing but a desert
09:47of super-thick snow and ice, you're wrong.
09:50There are entire landscapes hidden deep down there.
09:53The underside of the Datsun Ice Shelf
09:56is a rugged, dynamic terrain
09:58shaped by the slow, relentless forces of nature.
10:01There are towering ice formations,
10:04deep troughs, and bizarre structures
10:06stretching for hundreds of feet.
10:09Scientists are super curious about it,
10:11but as you can imagine,
10:12this landscape isn't easy to explore at all.
10:15To find out more,
10:17we have to scan the area with satellites
10:18or try drilling through the snow,
10:20trying to collect the big picture,
10:22piece by piece.
10:24But these methods only gave us vague hints.
10:28The real breakthrough happened
10:29when scientists came up with the idea
10:31to let the submarines explore it.
10:33Autonomous submersibles could swoop deep
10:36into the icy waters beneath the Datsun Ice Shelf
10:38and tell us what's up down there.
10:41These robotic explorers have fantastic advanced sonar systems.
10:46It's that thing that bats or dolphins do.
10:48They can use sound to see the world.
10:51Basically, they send out sound waves underwater.
10:54And when those waves hit something,
10:56like the ice shelf above or the seafloor below,
10:59they bounce back to the system.
11:02Animals feel how long it took for the sound waves to return
11:05and how they changed.
11:06And this helped them understand what's located where.
11:09For example, clicks that dolphin send out,
11:12tell them where the fish are.
11:14We copied this crazy evolutionary trick
11:17and adapted it to our underwater exploration.
11:21Only our version is much cooler,
11:23with a higher level of precision,
11:25so we created detailed maps of the environment.
11:28The RAND submarine was one of those robotic explorers.
11:32It was named after the Norse deity of the sea.
11:35RAND had been meticulously programmed
11:37to navigate a treacherous landscape of Antarctica.
11:40But even with all this training,
11:43its journey led to an unexpected and eerie end.
11:47In 2019, RAND was sent to explore the depths
11:50beneath the Datsun ice shelf.
11:52It was a hero,
11:54the first one to go on a mission like this.
11:56The team said it was like seeing the other side of the moon.
12:02For 27 straight days, it worked tirelessly.
12:05It traveled over 620 miles beneath the thick ice.
12:09That's like a journey from Paris to Berlin.
12:13RAND went further and deeper than anyone could have imagined.
12:16At one point, it reached over 10 miles into the glacier's belly.
12:20And what it discovered down there was astonishing.
12:23Scientists thought there would be some smooth, uniform ice surfaces.
12:27But RAND revealed an underside marked by huge cracks, ridges.
12:32There were formations that looked like sand dunes, frozen in time.
12:36And finally, it found some mysterious swirling and teardrop-shaped patterns.
12:41They all looked more like art than geology.
12:45This actually tells the story of ice shelves and the ocean around it.
12:49Warm water sneaks in under the ice and melts it from below.
12:53Sometimes it smooths the ice out.
12:55But other times, it carves out these weird, uneven shapes that look like patterns and drawings.
13:01And some of these shapes are huge.
13:03Over 1,300 feet long.
13:05That's about three and a half football fields.
13:08The reason why they look like swirling doodles is because the earth spins.
13:12It makes the water turn in special ways, bending the shapes and drawing these spirals.
13:18It's called the Coriolis effect.
13:21Imagine you were on a merry-go-round and tried to throw something like a ball.
13:25It would go in a curve, not a straight line.
13:28Same thing happens with the water on Earth.
13:31Later, scientists found similar patterns in other Antarctic ice shelves,
13:35though they weren't as epic as the ones under Dotson.
13:38But RAND also discovered something horrifying.
13:42Turns out that these warm waters, aside from being great artists, are also a huge danger.
13:49The Dotson ice shelf isn't just hanging out serenely on the sea.
13:53It's part of a very delicate system and acts as a protective barrier
13:57that holds back huge glaciers in West Antarctica.
14:02The ice shelf is floating on the ocean, but it's still connected to the land.
14:06As warm water sneaks underneath it and the ice melts, the Dotson can't hold on to the land as tightly
14:12anymore.
14:14The protective barrier starts to weaken, and this lets the glaciers behind it move faster into the ocean.
14:19When those glaciers flow into the sea, they add more water, which could cause sea levels to rise,
14:25eventually changing our coastlines.
14:29RAND stumbled upon huge pockets where the ice was melting at alarming rates,
14:33all due to powerful underwater currents.
14:36It was like seeing a ticking clock on the glacier.
14:39The stakes were high, but luckily, the submarine was ready.
14:43This time, it managed to return.
14:45And then, it worked for five more years, helping scientists with tons of useful data.
14:51The missions were daunting.
14:53There could be periods where RAND slipped into the pitch-black cavity beneath the glaciers,
14:58spending 24 hours without communication.
15:00But it was mapping every peak and every valley.
15:04It gained experience from over 40 missions below ice.
15:08Then, in early 2024, RAND went on a mission to the Thwaites Glacier.
15:13The mission was bold from the start.
15:15This place is also ominously referred to as the Doomsday Glacier.
15:21It's called that because it's slowly melting and has the potential to raise sea levels worldwide if it collapses,
15:27causing catastrophes everywhere.
15:30That's why RAND was dispatched to explore its underbelly,
15:33a place that had never been mapped so intricately before.
15:37The idea was to uncover the glacier's secrets, study how rapidly it was melting, and why.
15:44This was RAND's second time exploring Thwaites.
15:47During the previous visit, it became the first sub to ever map the glacier's underside.
15:53RAND was exploring the depths from 650 feet to 1,650 feet.
15:59It sent a lot of data about how the Doomsday Glacier was slowly melting due to warm ocean currents.
16:05But while venturing into these icy depths, something went wrong.
16:10Out of nowhere, RAND vanished.
16:14Without warning, without a trace.
16:17One moment, it was sending back crucial data, and the next, it had slipped into the abyss.
16:23No distress signals.
16:25No final transmission.
16:27And it didn't return to the point it was supposed to.
16:30People sent extensive searches, helicopters soared overhead, drones buzzed through the frozen skies.
16:37But no sign of the submersible emerged from the glacier's grasp.
16:41After a while, RAND's batteries would certainly run away.
16:44So at this point, it had definitely been swallowed by the abyss beneath 1,500 feet of ice.
16:51That was a huge and sad loss for the scientific team.
16:55The scientists at the University of Gothenburg are now looking to replace RAND and continue their important research under Thwaites.
17:03To this day, scientists have no idea what happened to it.
17:07Some say it may have been trapped in the ice.
17:10Others believe it was pulled away by an unseen current.
17:13It also might have collided with something unexpected.
17:17Whatever the truth is, its disappearance has left scientists stunned, and it looks like the ice shelf will hold on
17:22to its secrets a little longer.
17:24At least we gained a treasure trove of knowledge from RAND's journey.
17:29Scientists keep exploring Antarctica, looking for history that hides under the snow.
17:33For example, they discovered that around 90 million years ago, a lush, temperate rainforest thrived near the South Pole.
17:41They revealed an ancient world far warmer than they ever imagined.
17:44Deep in Antarctica, they unearthed fossilized roots, pollen, and spores preserved in the soil.
17:52All this shows that there was a swampy rainforest that flourished despite months of polar darkness.
17:58All these discoveries changed our understanding of Earth's climate, both in the past and the future.
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