0:01 Antarctica is easily the least
0:03 understood and the most mysterious of
0:05 All Earth's continents in the 21st
0:07 century it's such a poorly understood
0:09 place that most people alive today still
0:11 don't even really have a solid grasp
0:14 about Antarctica's true size or shape
0:15 something that's probably not really
0:17 helped by our perception of Antarctica
0:19 as this sprawling misshapen blob that we
0:21 always see stretching across the bottom
0:23 of our two-dimensional Maps if it's even
0:25 displayed on the map at all in reality
0:27 Antarctica is the world's fifth largest
0:29 continent exceeding the sizes of austral
0:31 Australia and Europe and being closer in
0:33 size to South America than any other
0:35 continent the true scale of Antarctica
0:37 can be revealed when overlaying it at
0:38 top a continent that were more familiar
0:41 with like North America Antarctica is
0:42 significantly larger than the mainland
0:45 Continental 48 US states with the
0:47 distance from the Antarctic Peninsula to
0:48 the other side of the continent is as
0:50 far as the Canadian Arctic islands are
0:52 to Mexico and placed over Europe
0:54 Antarctica would stretch from the far
0:56 Northern reaches of Norway and Finland
0:58 down to Iran and Iraq in the Southeast
1:00 and well past Ireland into the
1:02 Mid-Atlantic to the West it's a
1:04 genuinely massive place and it's also
1:06 almost completely empty and absent from
1:09 human life the human population of
1:11 Antarctica ranges from as many as 4,000
1:13 people during the warmer Antarctic
1:15 summer months to as few as only a
1:17 thousand people during the long dark and
1:20 savagely cold Antarctic Winters when the
1:22 darkness of night envelops the entire
1:24 continent for months straight and the
1:27 temperatures plummet to beneath - 34° c
1:29 continent wide but it's not just the bru
1:31 brutal weather of Antarctica that keeps
1:33 its population low it's also just an
1:36 insanely remote place that's really
1:38 difficult to get yourself to it's
1:39 located down at the bottom of the globe
1:41 and the closest large human settlement
1:44 to the continent is usua in Far Southern
1:46 Argentina which is still about a th000
1:48 km away from the tip of the Antarctic
1:50 Peninsula despite this closeness however
1:52 the distance between usua and Antarctica
1:54 is separated by the infamous Drake
1:56 Passage an expanse of water that is
1:58 perhaps the roughest and most dangerous
2:00 part of the world's ocean
2:02 here at the bottom of the civilizational
2:04 world between the continents the
2:05 Southern and Pacific Oceans flow
2:07 unobstructed into the Atlantic
2:09 representing the only location in the
2:11 southern hemisphere where winds and
2:13 ocean currents can each flow around the
2:15 entire world without any obstruction
2:17 from Land allowing them to violently
2:19 whip around the world continually and
2:22 keep picking up speed and strength as
2:24 they go this combined with a collision
2:26 of warmer water in the north and colder
2:28 water in the South result in powerful
2:30 waves in the Drake Passage that can
2:33 climb up to nearly 20 M or 65 ft High
2:36 during extreme weather scenarios with
2:37 the rough conditions through the Drake
2:39 Passage and the vast distances between
2:41 Antarctica and the other nearby
2:43 continents of Africa and Australia it's
2:45 no wonder that human eyes most likely
2:47 never even saw the Frozen continent at
2:50 all until the 19th century when a
2:51 Russian ship made the first ever
2:54 recorded discovery of Antarctica in 1820
2:57 even today more than 2 centuries later
2:59 we still understand precious little
3:01 about this ice olated continent
3:02 especially anything about what's
3:04 possibly beneath the Titanic antarctic
3:08 ice sheet ice covers more than 98% of
3:09 the Antarctic continent's surface
3:12 leaving very few exposed areas of land
3:13 above the ice that we can actually
3:16 observe with our own eyes on average
3:17 across the entire continent the
3:19 Antarctic ice sheet stretches more than
3:21 2 km thick from the surface we can
3:23 observe down to the surface of the
3:25 actual Continental land mass but at its
3:28 thickest points the ice on Antarctica
3:30 can reach upwards of nearly 5 K
3:32 thick which is nearly as thick as six of
3:34 the bir khalifas in Dubai the world's
3:37 tallest building all stacked on top of
3:39 each other this is why 61% of all the
3:42 freshwat on the planet is locked away in
3:44 Antarctica's ice sheet and if the entire
3:46 thing melted away into its liquid form
3:48 it would probably end up raising Global
3:51 sea levels by around 60 M which would be
3:54 enormously catastrophic and result in
3:56 the total obliteration of Florida and
3:59 most of the US Gulf and East coasts the
4:01 ice sheet of Antarctica is so thick and
4:03 impenetrable that it's widely accepted
4:05 that we know more about the surface of
4:07 far away worlds like Mars today than
4:09 what's actually beneath the Antarctic
4:10 ice sheet on the real surface of
4:13 Antarctica rather than drilling through
4:15 kilometers of ice to see what's beneath
4:17 it the primary way that we've been able
4:19 to sort of visualize what's beneath the
4:21 ice on the continent is by flying planes
4:23 over it and shooting radio waves down
4:25 into the ice below and then analyzing
4:27 how the waves Echo back up to the plane
4:29 a process that's known as radio Echo
4:31 sounding but the Antarctic continent is
4:34 of course a much larger place than even
4:37 Europe is and so flying planes doing
4:39 this technique over the entire continent
4:41 would be a brutally painstaking
4:44 expensive and time-consuming process so
4:46 as it stands now we only have a limited
4:48 idea of what's beneath the Frozen
4:50 continent based on the few radio Echo
4:51 sounding flights we've actually done
4:53 across it so far and it's estimated that
4:56 more than 90% of the continent beneath
4:59 the ice remains unmapped and unknown but
5:00 the small small amount of information we
5:02 already do know about what's beneath the
5:04 world's largest ice sheet on the world's
5:07 most mysterious continent is already
5:10 incredibly fascinating for starters we
5:12 already know that Antarctica isn't
5:14 really a unified land mass beneath the
5:16 ice like it appears to us above the ice
5:18 were all of the continents ice sheet to
5:20 melt or be removed the Antarctic
5:21 continent's true shape would be revealed
5:23 to us what we currently know is the
5:25 Antarctic peninsula in reality would
5:27 emerge as a completely separate
5:28 archipelago of mountainous islands that
5:31 has sometimes been referred to as lesser
5:32 Antarctica While most of the rest of the
5:34 continent known as greater Antarctica
5:36 would remain above the ocean surface and
5:39 be roughly the same size as Australia
5:40 each of these two different halves of
5:42 Antarctica one archipelagic and one
5:44 Continental would become this way
5:46 because of their radically different
5:48 geologies and histories the area of
5:50 Greater Antarctica or the Eastern side
5:52 of the continent is known to consist of
5:54 more ancient ignas and metamorphic rocks
5:56 while the more archipelagic lesser
5:58 Antarctica is much younger and made up a
6:00 sedimentary and vol volcanic rocks
6:03 instead fascinatingly lesser Antarctica
6:05 belongs to the Great Pacific Ring of
6:08 Fire a continuous belt of tectonic fault
6:10 lines and active volcanoes that spans
6:12 nearly the entire perimeter of the
6:14 Pacific Ocean and which has existed for
6:17 about the past 35 million years as a
6:18 result most of the archipelagos and
6:20 islands that exist in lesser Antarctica
6:23 are volcanic in nature despite their
6:25 appearances of Frozen ice and Glaciers
6:27 on top of them Mount arabus far to the
6:29 east in Antarctica is the highest active
6:30 volcano on the continent and the
6:32 southernmost active volcano on the
6:35 planet complete with a lake of molten
6:37 lava within its inner summit crater that
6:39 has been observable since the 1970s and
6:42 the last erupted only a few years ago in
6:44 2020 the average yearr round temperature
6:46 around where Mount arabus is located
6:50 remains around -7° C and during the
6:51 Antarctic winter months between April
6:53 and September the temperature will never
6:56 climb above -20 C and it'll sink to as
7:00 low as - 62° c in August cold enough to
7:02 cause frostbite to expose Skin Within
7:05 minutes or to instantly freeze water if
7:07 you were to pour out a bowl of hot water
7:08 in the air at these temperatures it
7:10 would turn to snow before it even hit
7:13 the ground this is an environment that
7:15 is incredibly hostile to life where you
7:17 wouldn't expect to find very much of it
7:19 and yet just beneath the surface of
7:22 Mount arabus is an entire new world that
7:24 we've only just started to come to
7:26 understand decades and centuries worth
7:28 of hot steam produced by the mount
7:30 arabis volcano have carved out a network
7:32 of tunnels through the ice beneath the
7:35 mountain Within These subvolcanic Ice
7:36 Caves the temperatures are known to
7:41 reach as high as 25° C or about 77 F
7:42 warm enough for you or me to hang out
7:44 down there in a t-shirt and shorts and
7:46 be comfortable doing it despite being in
7:49 the middle of Antarctica and that means
7:50 that the antartic subvolcanic cave
7:53 systems could be warm enough to host all
7:55 kinds of life that we may not even be
7:58 aware of yet back in 2017 a team led by
8:00 the Australian National University
8:02 acquired a sample of the soil within one
8:03 of these cave systems beneath Mount
8:05 arabus and after analyzing its
8:07 composition they discovered that the
8:09 soil contain DNA traces of things like
8:12 algae and mosses but most tantalizing of
8:14 all DNA traces of small animals that
8:16 might be living down there as well in a
8:19 sub Antarctic Oasis Of Life most of
8:21 these animal rated DNA traces they found
8:23 were similar to species that we already
8:25 know of living up on the surface but not
8:27 all of them some of the traces couldn't
8:29 be linked to species we already know
8:32 about but were most closely related to
8:34 anthropods species like shrimp
8:36 centipedes or spiders meaning that there
8:38 could be anthropod like species down in
8:40 these warm caves beneath Mount arabus
8:43 that remain unknown to Mankind and
8:45 indeed there are 15 other active or
8:47 semi-active volcanoes located across
8:49 Antarctica that could contain similar
8:51 warm steam carved tunnels and caves
8:53 beneath them all as well meaning that
8:55 there could be more than a dozen of
8:57 these oasis-like ecosystems beneath the
8:59 ice of Antarctica that we presently know
9:02 virtually nothing about planes flying
9:05 over Antarctica with radio Echo sounding
9:07 data have revealed a vast landscape
9:09 beneath the ice of rolling valleys
9:10 riverbeds and Hills similar to the
9:13 landscape seen Elsewhere on Earth only
9:15 Frozen in time and locked beneath
9:17 colomet of ice one of the most
9:19 interesting geographic features on the
9:20 continent that was only recently
9:23 discovered in 2019 however is what we
9:25 now know as the deepest canyon anywhere
9:27 on the earth's land surface a canyon
9:29 that if it wasn't hidden by the ice
9:31 above it would put the Grand Canyon in
9:33 America to shame within greater
9:35 Antarctica beneath the Denman Glacier
9:37 exists the canyon that we Now understand
9:40 plummets to 3 and 1/2 km deep beneath
9:43 the sea level which is just insanely
9:46 deep for reference this Canyon in
9:48 Antarctica sinks to a depth that is
9:50 roughly the same as the average depth of
9:52 the Atlantic Ocean and it's roughly half
9:55 as deep as Mount Everest is tall the
9:57 deepest point below sea level on exposed
9:58 land on the planet is the shoreline
10:01 around the dead sea between Jordan
10:03 Israel and the West Bank and it only
10:06 sinks to as low as 413 m beneath sea
10:09 level this Canyon in Antarctica sinks
10:12 nearly 8 and 1/2 times deeper than that
10:14 only in the oceans do Canyons dip deeper
10:16 below the surface and we didn't even
10:19 know about this super deep Canyon on
10:22 Antarctica until 2019 because it's been
10:24 covered up by kilometers worth of ice
10:27 for millions of years now imagine what
10:29 looking out at this Canyon would be like
10:30 without without all of the ice obscuring
10:33 it but the deepest canyon on the earth
10:35 is far from the only interesting
10:36 geographic feature that the ice of the
10:38 Frozen continent has been hiding from us
10:41 in 1958 a team of Soviet researchers in
10:44 Antarctica discovered a massive mountain
10:46 range beneath the ice sheet that nobody
10:48 knew about beforehand that became known
10:50 as the gamertv mountain range named
10:52 after the Soviet geophysicist gregori
10:55 gamertv these mountains are roughly the
10:57 same length and height as the Alps in
10:59 southern Europe are running for about
11:02 1200 km long with Peaks soaring up to as
11:05 much as 2700 M High they're also
11:07 completely obscured from the surface
11:08 because they are buried beneath more
11:11 than 600 M of ice and snow pack and
11:13 they're still far from the only
11:14 interesting thing hidden beneath the ice
11:15 of the
11:18 continent in the late 1950s and early
11:20 60s researchers began detecting a large
11:22 gravity anomaly in East Antarctica where
11:24 the gravity present was weaker than what
11:27 would be naturally expected the anomaly
11:29 spanned across a huge area beneath
11:31 antarctic ice sheet that was about 243
11:33 km wide and sunk down to a depth of
11:37 about 848 M for decades there were
11:39 several hypotheses about what exactly
11:41 could be causing this weaker gravity in
11:43 the area of East Antarctica until in
11:46 2006 a team of researchers from Ohio
11:47 State University using data from
11:49 satellites owned by NASA and the German
11:51 Aerospace Center managed to identify
11:54 what they believed to be an ancient 480
11:57 km wide meteorite impact crater that was
11:59 buried beneath the ice sheet
12:01 but because of the area's extremely
12:03 remote location and distance beneath
12:06 several kilomet worth of solid ice
12:08 there's still to date have never been
12:10 any direct samples taken from the area
12:12 to actually test for this impact event
12:14 hypothesis and so the idea that an
12:16 asteroid could have impacted this area
12:19 and caused a massive crater in anarctica
12:22 is still only a theory for now but a
12:24 highly likely Theory
12:26 nonetheless If the gravity anomaly here
12:28 turns out to indeed be a meteorite
12:30 impact crater it would be by far the
12:32 largest one ever discovered in the world
12:34 with a width that's nearly three times
12:36 as large as the chick Club impact crater
12:38 in the yukatan peninsula of Mexico that
12:40 is believed to have been formed by a 10
12:42 km wide asteroid that struck the area
12:45 roughly 66 million years ago and likely
12:46 contributed to the annihilation of the
12:48 dinosaurs in order to create an impact
12:51 crater nearly three times larger than
12:53 that one in Antarctica the asteroid that
12:54 might have hit the area would have had
12:56 to have been four to five times larger
12:59 than the dinosaur killer asteroid was so
13:03 roughly 40 to 50 kilm wide an asteroid
13:03 that would have been big enough to
13:05 stretch from Central Park in New York
13:07 City all the way into Connecticut now
13:10 because of effects like erosion impact
13:11 craters on the Earth's surface gradually
13:14 disappear over time because of this
13:15 phenomenon the Ohio State University
13:17 researchers who concluded that the
13:18 structure hidden beneath the Antarctic
13:21 ice sheet was an impact crater believe
13:22 that it happened no more than 500
13:25 million years ago and no less than 100
13:27 million years ago because the structure
13:29 seems to also have been geographically
13:31 disturbed by the rift valley in the area
13:33 that only formed around a 100 million
13:34 years ago during the separation of
13:36 Antarctica and Australia from the
13:39 ancient gondwana superc continent and
13:41 that timeline between 100 and 500
13:43 million years ago is extremely
13:46 interesting because it potentially lines
13:48 up more or less with the greatest mass
13:50 extinction event that ever happened in
13:53 our planet's history the perian Triassic
13:55 Extinction event that took place
13:56 sometime around
13:59 21.9 million years ago an a
14:00 apocalyptically traumatizing event that
14:03 is also often referred to as the great
14:06 dying something happened on our planet
14:08 all that time ago that quickly
14:10 annihilated 57% of all biological
14:12 families that existed at the time
14:15 including a wipe out of 81% of the
14:17 Earth's marine species and 70% of the
14:19 Earth's land-based vertebrate species it
14:22 is by far the biggest mass extinction
14:24 event that ever took place on the planet
14:25 and we still don't have a precise
14:27 explanation of what exactly happened
14:30 that caused it but it could just be that
14:32 the deep and mysterious antarctic ice
14:34 sheet has been hiding the cause of the
14:37 Great dying from us this entire time if
14:38 indeed it turns out that the East
14:41 Antarctic gravity anomaly is truly the
14:43 biggest impact crater that we have ever
14:45 discovered and it's been even further
14:46 hypothesize that if it really was an
14:48 impact event that caused it it could
14:50 have been so massive and destructive
14:52 that it directly contributed to the
14:55 breakup of the gandana supercontinent by
14:57 severely weakening the crust at the
14:59 location of impact which eventually led
15:00 to the separation of that ancient
15:02 continent between Antarctica Australia and
15:03 and
15:05 India also hidden beneath the surface of
15:08 the vast Antarctica I sheet are around
15:11 675 liquid subglacial Lakes the
15:12 researchers have only started
15:15 discovering since the 1990s little more
15:17 than only three decades ago several of
15:18 these liquid Lakes have been discovered
15:20 Deeper Than 3 kilm beneath the surface
15:23 of the Antarctic ice sheet and by far
15:24 the largest of them discovered to date
15:27 is the infamously mysterious Lake VTO
15:29 which was only discovered by a team of
15:30 Russian researchers in the east of the
15:33 continent in the early 1990s and its
15:34 Discovery wasn't announced to the
15:36 general public until it was published in
15:38 the scientific journal Nature in
15:42 1996 it turns out the lake VTO is a
15:44 massive body of liquid water that exists
15:46 about 4 kilm deep beneath the surface of
15:48 the Antarctic ice sheet and by the
15:50 volume of water contained within the
15:53 lake lake VTO is surprisingly the sixth
15:55 largest known lake in the world
15:57 containing an amount of water within it
15:59 that is even greater than that of Lake
16:01 Michigan in the United States and we
16:02 didn't even know about it at all until
16:05 the same year that Tiger Woods made his
16:08 professional debut at the PGA Tour
16:10 interestingly the liquid water contained
16:12 within Lake VTO is below freezing
16:14 temperature maintaining an average of
16:18 about -3° C or about 27 F this is
16:19 possible because it's believed that
16:21 there's a geothermal vent beneath the
16:23 Lake's floor that's providing it with
16:25 some heat while the pressure from the 4
16:27 km of thick ice above the lake reduces
16:29 the Ice's melting point and provides the
16:31 Lakes water with insulation from the
16:34 abominably cold temperatures above it
16:37 and while -3° C temperature water is too
16:39 cold for most marine life we know of to
16:41 survive it's still warm enough for many
16:43 other species we know of that have
16:44 adapted to extremely cold environments
16:47 to thrive in Antarctic Krill ice fish
16:49 arctic cod and certain species of sea
16:51 stars sea urchins and mollusks that we
16:54 already know of are capable of surviving
16:57 in extremely cold Subzero Waters so what
16:59 mysterious life forms that we're
17:01 presently unaware of could be existing
17:03 Down Below in the depths of lake vosto
17:05 and the hundreds of other Lakes dotted
17:07 across Antarctica hidden beneath the ice
17:09 sheet Lake VTO is a particularly
17:11 interesting case because it's believed
17:13 to have been completely sealed off from
17:14 the rest of the outside world by the
17:17 Antarctic ice sheet for at least the
17:20 past 15 million years meaning that if
17:22 life exists within the lake it has
17:24 evolved in complete separation from
17:26 everywhere else in the world for
17:30 millions of years now in 2012 a team of
17:32 Russian researchers successfully carried
17:34 out the first ever drilling from the
17:36 surface of the Antarctic ice sheet all
17:38 the way down nearly 4 km deep to the
17:41 liquid surface of Lake VTO where samples
17:42 of the water were taken and carried back
17:45 to the surface however this initial
17:46 drilling sample taken from the lake by
17:49 the Russians has been widely criticized
17:51 for not being properly sanitized and as
17:53 a result the data they took is known to
17:55 be heavily contaminated subsequent
17:57 analysis of the Lakes water sample has
17:59 revealed kerosene contam ination and
18:01 outside bacteria contaminants that were
18:03 present on the drill bit before it even
18:04 reached the lake
18:07 255 previously known contaminant species
18:09 of bacteria have been identified by
18:11 researchers in the 2012 Russian Ice
18:12 sample since then but they have also
18:14 managed to identify at least one
18:16 bacteria species from the sample that is
18:18 presently unknown and has no matches in
18:21 any International databases which the
18:23 team hopes is evidence for at least one
18:25 unknown bacteria species that exists
18:27 down there the Russian team apparently
18:29 drilled another second bore hole down
18:32 from the surface into Lake VTO in 2015
18:33 that they claimed was cleaner and more
18:35 properly sanitized that resulted in
18:38 another 1 lit sample of Lake V's water
18:40 being acquired but the results on that
18:42 water to date have never been published
18:44 or reported on so it's unclear what if
18:47 anything they may have found in it most
18:49 researchers involved with Lake VTO
18:50 expect that if life actually does exist
18:52 down there it'll be limited to simple
18:54 life forms like bacteria which might not
18:57 really sound all that exciting or sexy
18:59 but it could carry with it signific ific
19:01 implications for other simple life forms
19:03 that might be existing Elsewhere on
19:05 other worlds in our own solar system
19:07 deep in the liquid oceans we also know
19:09 exist beneath kilometers of Frozen ice
19:10 on some of the moons of Jupiter and
19:12 Saturn like Europa and
19:15 Enceladus but there might also just be
19:17 the chance that there actually is more
19:19 complex life existing down there in Lake
19:22 vosto than we might expect in 2020 a
19:25 study conducted by researchers kby gura
19:27 and Scott Rogers of Lake vosto accretion
19:29 ice rather than the liquid water within
19:31 the lake itself revealed additional
19:34 unknown bacteria species and most
19:37 fascinatingly of all an rrna sequence
19:39 that was more than 97% similar to that
19:42 of a species of rock codfish that is
19:44 common along the Antarctic Coastline
19:46 representing the first scientific report
19:49 of an unknown fish species that could
19:51 possibly be existing down within Lake
19:54 VTO it would be incredible to one day
19:56 see a sea drone with a camera and L
19:57 attached to it get deployed down into
19:59 Lake vok to see more of what's actually
20:01 down there because based on a similar
20:03 event that happened just a few years ago
20:06 in 2021 the results could indeed be
20:08 wildly unexpected in the final days of
20:11 December in 2021 a team of scientists
20:13 from New Zealand melted a small hole
20:15 through a glacier in West Antarctica
20:18 here at the cam by stream the team knew
20:20 that a large Cavern of liquid water
20:23 existed about 500 M beneath the glacier
20:25 surface here carved out over time by a
20:28 small flowing river beneath the ice but
20:30 when the team actually lowered a camera
20:32 down into the hole they carved down into
20:35 the liquid waterfill Cavern below what
20:38 they saw shocked everybody involved they
20:41 actually saw animals hundreds of them
20:43 swimming around in the isolated Cavern
20:45 below the team later identified these
20:47 blurry orange blotches to be shrimp-like
20:50 Marine crustations called aods and here
20:53 in this cold isolated Cavern of water
20:56 500 M beneath the ice and a whopping 500
20:59 km away from the nearest sunlight locked
21:02 in complete darkness were hundreds of
21:04 these more complex life forms absolutely
21:07 thriving practically nobody expected to
21:10 find that much life down here and so
21:12 what implications does that 2021
21:14 Discovery have for what unknown life may
21:16 be existing within Lake VTO or within
21:18 any of the hundreds of other Lakes
21:20 locked beneath the Antarctic ice sheet
21:22 that we haven't ever seen so far the
21:24 area of the West Antarctic ice sheet
21:27 spans across a vast area that is roughly
21:29 the same size as Mexico and yet to this
21:32 date Humanity has only managed to
21:34 actually witness a fraction of the
21:36 unknown world that exists beneath the
21:39 ice here a few dozen small B holes
21:40 dotted around the region that has
21:43 exposed a disjointed area to us only
21:45 about the size of a regulation
21:47 basketball court the world beyond that
21:49 basketball court in an area that's the
21:51 size of Mexico remains unobserved
21:55 unknown and mysterious and I deeply want
21:58 to know more about it and in addition to
22:00 all the unknown life and geographic
22:02 features that probably exists beneath
22:04 the Antarctic ice sheet there's also
22:06 almost certainly a vast amount of
22:09 undiscovered and completely untapped
22:11 natural resources beneath the ice sheet
22:13 that Humanity will likely begin to
22:16 deeply covet one day soon as well for
22:17 decades it has been theorized that
22:20 Antarctica is likely home to massive
22:22 deposits of energy resources like oil
22:24 and gas and coal owing to the fact that
22:26 for hundreds of millions of years in the
22:28 past the continent was not frozen and
22:30 existed in a warmer part of the world
22:32 that likely contained eons worth of
22:34 animal and plant life it was only around
22:37 35 million years ago that Antarctica
22:38 drifted far enough South to begin
22:41 acquiring its ice sheet and for hundreds
22:42 of millions of years before that it
22:45 never had any allowing plenty of time
22:47 for complex life to evolve and die and
22:49 gradually transform into hydrocarbons
22:51 like petroleum over the eons but it
22:53 wasn't until just a few months ago
22:55 before this video was published in May
22:58 of 2024 that we had any idea of the
23:00 actual potential extent of these
23:02 Antarctic oil and gas reserves early
23:05 that month evidence presented to the UK
23:07 parliament in London revealed that a
23:09 Russian research ship operating in the
23:11 wed sea region between the Antarctic
23:12 peninsula in the west and greater
23:15 Antarctica in the East discovered a
23:17 truly gargantuan oil field there
23:19 estimated to contain a deposit of approximately
23:20 approximately
23:24 511 billion barrels which is an
23:27 absolutely absurd amount of oil for
23:29 reference the oil contained within this
23:31 one Antarctic superfield is roughly
23:33 double the amount of oil reserves
23:35 controlled by Saudi Arabia or put
23:37 another way the oil in this Antarctic
23:39 super field is roughly 10 times the
23:41 amount of oil that the entire North Sea
23:43 has collectively produced over the past
23:46 50 years British members of parliament
23:48 cautioned in 2024 that the Russian
23:51 Discovery here could become a Prelude to
23:53 countries or companies hauling in their
23:55 offshore drilling platforms to exploit
23:58 the field and most alarmingly of all the
23:59 Discover was made directly in the
24:01 epicenter of the most widely disputed
24:03 part of the Frozen continent that is
24:05 simultaneously claimed by the United
24:07 Kingdom in Argentina and partially by
24:10 Chile as well but for now straight up
24:12 drilling for oil in the wetle sea here
24:14 is illegal under international law
24:16 because of something known as the
24:18 Antarctic treaty an international treaty
24:20 that has its origins in the mid 20th
24:23 century you see up until the late 1950s
24:24 Antarctica was theoretically a
24:26 free-for-all land open to exploitation
24:28 settlement and colonization from anyone
24:31 brave enough to try it it was simply the
24:32 continent's extremely remote location
24:34 and extremely hostile environment that
24:37 kept most people from Ever trying but
24:40 not everyone seven countries officially
24:42 staked out their own territorial claims
24:43 to Antarctic territory during the early
24:45 20th century including New Zealand
24:47 Australia France and Norway and the
24:50 sharply competing overlapping claims of
24:52 the United Kingdom Argentina and Chile
24:54 all of these countries territorial
24:56 claims in Antarctica were based on their
24:58 pre-existing legal claims or control of
25:00 territory nearby to Antarctica such as
25:02 New Zealand's and Australia's home
25:04 territories France is relatively nearby
25:07 cro and kulan islands and Norway's
25:10 bouvet Island similarly the UK's claimed
25:12 territory in Antarctica largely came out
25:13 of an extension of their claims to the
25:15 fauland islands along with South Georgia
25:18 and the South Sandwich Islands nearby
25:19 while Argentina's almost identical
25:21 overlapping claim to Antarctica was
25:23 based not only on their own territorial
25:25 Mainland but also on their identical
25:27 competing claims to the same Islands
25:29 claimed by Britain the fauland along
25:31 with South Georgia and the South
25:33 Sandwich Islands while Chile's
25:34 territorial claims were also based on
25:36 the proximity of their Mainland
25:38 territory the territorial disputes on
25:40 Antarctica itself between the UK
25:42 Argentina and Chile and between
25:43 Argentina and the UK over all of these
25:45 other Islands was heating up in the mid
25:48 20th century and risked escalating into
25:50 violence and So within the context of
25:52 the greater cold war that was going on
25:53 between the United States and the Soviet
25:55 Union at the time a group of 12
25:57 countries got together in 1959 and
25:59 signed the Antarctic treaty which
26:01 primarily sought to figuratively freeze
26:02 the antartic continent in a sort of
26:04 stasis just as it was and prevent the
26:06 use of the continent for any military
26:08 purposes while preserving it for
26:10 scientific research and access military
26:12 operations on Antarctica were agreed by
26:14 everyone to be severely restricted
26:16 nuclear tests and detonations as well as
26:18 dumping of nuclear waste on Antarctica
26:20 were all agreed to be banned and a
26:21 powerful independent monitoring system
26:23 was put into place that enabled any
26:25 country to inspect any other country's
26:26 facilities on the continent without
26:28 warning to make sure they were actually
26:29 abiding by all of the terms of the
26:32 treaty Antarctica as defined by the
26:34 treaty consists of all the land ice
26:36 islands and ocean below the 60 degrees
26:38 of latitude line the seven countries who
26:40 had already made territorial claims to
26:42 Antarctica before the treaty was signed
26:43 had their claims Frozen and they became
26:45 legally unenforceable the US and the
26:47 Soviet Union and later Russia reserved
26:49 themselves the right to stake out their
26:51 own territorial claims to Antarctica at
26:53 some undetermined point in the future
26:54 will any country from around the world
26:56 was eligible to join the treaty and
26:57 establish research bases on the
26:59 continent wherever they deemed fit
27:01 regardless of any other country's
27:03 territorial claims and perhaps most
27:05 importantly the treaty explicitly
27:07 forbids the harvesting of any of
27:09 Antarctica's potential resources or even
27:10 prospecting for the continent's
27:13 potential resources no mining or
27:15 drilling for resources on Antarctica
27:17 have been allowed ever since as a result
27:20 up to the present day in 2024 there are
27:22 dozens of active research stations and
27:23 bases dotted all across the Antarctic
27:26 continent that belong to no less than 55
27:27 different countries from all around the
27:29 world many of them being within the
27:31 zones of the continent's territory
27:32 that's theoretically claimed by other
27:35 countries the United States runs by far
27:36 the biggest base on the continent at
27:38 McMurdo within the part of the continent
27:40 that's claimed by New Zealand during the
27:42 warmer summer months McMurdo can host up
27:45 to 1,500 residents which is also about a
27:47 third of the entire human population
27:50 that's on Antarctica during those months
27:52 the US also runs the amonson Scott
27:53 research station at the geographical
27:56 South Pole and while the dozens of other
27:58 Count's bases are located all across the
27:59 rest of the continent most of them are
28:01 heavily concentrated in the relatively
28:03 warmer Antarctic Peninsula that
28:05 stretches up towards the southern tip of
28:07 South America Argentina and Chile
28:09 however as the two countries that are
28:11 geographically the closest ones to
28:13 Antarctica have put much more effort
28:14 than any of the others into actually
28:16 solidifying their territorial claims to
28:19 the continent they are the only two
28:20 countries who have so far gone to the
28:22 lengths of actually establishing
28:24 permanent civilian settlements on the
28:26 Frozen continent the argentinians at
28:28 esparanza base on the antartic Peninsula
28:30 and the Chileans nearby the peninsula on
28:33 King George Island with their Vias
28:35 estras the populations of each of these
28:37 settlements only ranges from a few dozen
28:39 in the winters to only a little more
28:41 than a hundred in the Summers which is
28:43 interestingly roughly equal to the
28:45 population of the first permanent Colony
28:47 that the English established in America
28:49 at Rano back in the 16th century in the
28:52 1970s and 80s the Argentinian and
28:54 Chilean governments both began sending
28:56 pregnant women to their settlements in
28:57 Antarctica so that they would give birth
28:59 to Argentinian and Chilean citizens on
29:02 Antarctic soil and therefore strengthen
29:04 their National claims to the territories
29:05 of Antarctica that they claimed
29:07 sovereignty over this culminated with
29:09 the first human being ever born on the
29:11 Antarctic continent with amelo Marcos
29:14 Palma on the 7th of January
29:16 1978 who's been followed by at least 10
29:18 additional Argentinian and Chilean
29:20 children since then since that time
29:22 Argentina and Chile have even built up
29:24 schools in their permanent settlements
29:25 on Antarctica that children are
29:28 currently busy attending right now and
29:29 remember that in addition to disputing
29:32 territory in Antarctica Argentina and
29:34 the United Kingdom also more bitterly
29:36 dispute the sovereignty of the nearby
29:37 Faulkland Islands along with South
29:39 Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
29:42 as well this dispute has historically
29:44 been far more controversial than their
29:47 disputed claims in Antarctica because
29:49 unlike Antarctica thousands of people
29:51 actually live here the Falklands are
29:52 presently controlled by the UK and have
29:55 a population of about 3,600 British
29:57 citizens which is gigantic compared to
29:59 the population of settlements in
30:02 Antarctica the UK has nearly
30:03 continuously administered the fauland
30:06 islands for nearly two centuries since
30:09 the 1830s but for various historical and
30:11 Geographic reasons Argentina has heavily
30:13 disputed bren's control of them for the
30:15 two centuries ever since the dispute
30:18 infamously came to a climax in 1982 when
30:20 Argentina unexpectedly launched a
30:22 fullscale amphibia invasion of the
30:24 Falklands along with South Georgia and
30:26 the South Sandwich Islands which sparked
30:28 a 10-week long war between Argentina and
30:30 the UK around the islands that killed
30:32 nearly a thousand soldiers and wounded
30:35 more than 2,000 others with major Naval
30:37 losses suffered on both sides
30:39 Argentina's invasion of the islands
30:41 ended up being decisively defeated by
30:43 the British the islands have remained
30:45 within the UK ever since and the dispute
30:47 over the Faulkland between them while
30:49 continuing has largely moved away into
30:51 the very far background of geopolitics
30:53 that is rarely brought up today in the
30:55 context of much larger disputes going on
30:58 in Ukraine and the Middle East but when
31:00 that recent russian-made discovery of
31:02 511 billion barrels of oil down there in
31:04 the middle of both of their claims in
31:06 Antarctica the Falin question could be
31:08 brought back to the Forefront for both
31:10 London and Buenos arees sooner rather
31:12 than later with the current market price
31:14 for a barrel of Brent crude oil being
31:17 $86.40 when I wrote this video on the
31:21 3rd of July 2024 those 511 billion
31:23 barrels of oil in the wetle sea could
31:25 theoretically be worth something to the
31:28 tune of $44 trillion
31:30 almost double the entire GDP of the
31:33 United States if a country or a
31:34 corporation could control this Antarctic
31:36 oil field and didn't give a damn about
31:38 international law and the Antarctic
31:40 treaty system they could literally
31:43 manage to Eclipse even Saudi Arabia as
31:45 the world's Mightiest oil power and
31:47 completely transform their entire
31:49 civilization in the process which is a
31:51 whole hell of an incentive to actually
31:54 do it the only thing standing in the way
31:56 right now from anybody doing that on
31:58 paper is the Antarctic treaty system
32:00 that strictly forbids anyone from
32:02 harvesting Antarctica's resources
32:04 beneath the 60° latitude line but that
32:07 treaty is actually up for review in only
32:10 24 years from now in 2048 and any
32:12 country involved with the treaty is
32:14 legally able to walk away from it and
32:17 withdraw whenever they want to right now
32:19 the 511 billion barrels of oil that the
32:21 Russians apparently discovered here are
32:23 better to think of as deposits rather
32:25 than as reserves since nobody can
32:28 legally access them but when the Artic
32:30 treaty comes up for review in 2048
32:33 Argentina the UK Chile and maybe even
32:35 other outside Powers will become heavily
32:37 motivated to begin allowing Drilling and
32:40 Mining to take place in Antarctica if
32:42 they stand to gain trillions of dollars
32:44 by doing so the ice cover in the wetle
32:46 sea where the oil field was discovered
32:48 is thinning out with climate change and
32:49 is increasingly becoming easier to
32:52 access by ship or offshore oil rig while
32:54 the Antarctic Peninsula to the West
32:55 protects the sea a bit from the often
32:58 violent Oceanic swell that swer SS
33:00 around the continent above it
33:02 nonetheless Antarctica in the wed sea is
33:04 still a very difficult place to actually
33:06 work in for now the location is
33:08 extremely remote and thousands of
33:10 kilometers away from civilizational
33:12 centers in Argentina or South Africa
33:14 while icebergs and Ice flows within the
33:16 sea can still pose a grave challenge to
33:18 the stability and safety of offshore oil
33:20 platforms extracting the oil deposit
33:23 here will undoubtedly be a prohibitively
33:25 expensive venture to try and undertake
33:27 which means that for now even if a
33:28 country like Russia didn't really care
33:30 about violating international law by
33:32 extracting the oil they'd still have to
33:34 deal with the cold Financial calculus
33:36 being against them that simply makes
33:38 extracting the oil not very economically
33:41 feasible but again in the not too
33:42 distant future as the ice cover in the
33:45 wettle sea thins out with climate change
33:46 and as the Antarctic treaty officially
33:49 comes up for review in 2048 some states
33:52 may be open to trying out their shot and
33:54 if Argentina can actually finally get
33:56 its economic act together over the next
33:58 couple of decades they might also become
34:00 interested in challenging the United
34:01 Kingdom over the status of the Faulkland
34:04 Islands again it is the UK's control
34:05 over the Falklands along with the
34:07 uninhabited South Georgia and the South
34:09 Sandwich Islands that forms the legal
34:11 basis for the UK's territorial claim in
34:14 Antarctica nearby that overlaps directly
34:16 with the argentinians claim and with the
34:19 gigantic Russian discovered oil field
34:22 hypothetically if and it's a huge if
34:24 Argentina were to somehow miraculously
34:26 become capable of pushing the British
34:29 out of the faland then Argentina would
34:30 greatly weaken the British claim in
34:32 Antarctica that overlaps their own and
34:34 they would greatly strengthen their own
34:37 claim to the gigantic oil field which
34:39 could allow the country to radically
34:41 transform itself the same way that Saudi
34:43 Arabia or the United Arab Emirates did
34:44 after the antartic treaty comes up for
34:47 review in 2048 by allowing themselves to
34:50 actually begin extracting some to even
34:53 all of that oil and at the same time the
34:55 UK will be well aware of this potential
34:56 challenge in the coming decades that
34:58 Argentina and potentially other nations
35:00 like Russia could Mount against them in
35:02 the area and so they will also be
35:04 heavily incentivized to maintain their
35:06 control over the Faulkland South Georgia
35:08 and the South Sandwich Islands at all
35:10 costs to maintain their own claim in
35:12 Antarctica and to the giant oil field as
35:14 well for whoever maintains control over
35:17 the field after 2048 could potentially
35:20 become the world's next Saudi Arabia and
35:22 for that reason the future of the
35:24 Antarctic continent is a deeply uncertain
35:25 uncertain
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