Earth’s continents are always splitting apart and drifting all over the place. If every land mass was still united into the supercontinent Pangaea, the world would be a much different place, eh? But even on something as large as the Earth, some parts just seem to go missing sometimes. It’s like losing your keys in the couch, they’re always in the last place you look. In this case, the “last place you look” is buried under half of Antarctica.
Newly published research in ‘Scientific Reports’ shows us footage from the decommissioned Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (or GOCE) satellite than operated from 2009 to 2013. The GOCE mapped out the Earth’s gravitational field and lithosphere, the tectonic layer that contains the planet’s crust. What the satellite discovered is that multiple landmass chunks have been drifting on smaller continental plates called cratons. Cratons are already a known phenomenon, but what we didn’t know was that several cratons containing landmasses from around the world had drifted to Antarctica and ended up frozen beneath its ice. The research team has studied the structures of the landmasses GOCE discovered, and linked them to India and Australia, Antarctica’s former neighbors.
This research has given some additional understanding of Antarctica, which is always beneficial as it is such a difficult region to explore.
