At the bottom of the world lies a
continent shrouded in ice and intrigue.
So secretive is this land that less is
known about the topography beneath the
ice of Antarctica than any other
planetary surface in the inner solar
system. Since its discovery, there have
been whispers of strange secrets buried
beneath the ice. mutterings of longlost
ancient civilizations,
alien artifacts, peculiar radio signals
emitting through snow layers, and even
secret wartime strongholds.
Antarctica was one of the last great
wildernesses on Earth. But in 2025, that
all changed. Never before have
scientists conducted such a
comprehensive analysis of this
mysterious seventh continent. For the
first time in Antarctica's long history,
science is on the front foot, producing
the most indepth, rigorous set of
insights and analysis we have ever seen.
And now, Antarctica's real secrets are
finally coming to light. I'm James
Shuitt and you're watching Astramm
Earth. Join me in this video as we
journey to this continental enigma to
dismantle some of those outrageous
rumors, thor out the truth, and finally
provide the answer to the question,
what's really hiding in Antarctica?
Antarctica is the world's fifth largest
continent, covering approximately 14.2
million square km. That's twice the size
of Australia and bigger than the
entirety of Europe. Around 98% of that
is covered in an ice sheet up to 4.8 km
thick in some places. In fact, the ice
is so heavy that it's even pushed some
of the land below sea level. This truly
is a frozen wilderness. Temperatures
here can reach as low as -89°
C as measured in Vashto in July 1983.
At the time of recording, that still
holds the record for the lowest
temperature recorded by a weather
station on Earth. Although satellite
observations suggest the actual
temperature on Antarctica could drop to
as low as -98°
C.
But unlike any other continent on the
planet, Antarctica doesn't actually
belong to anyone.
Antarctica has the bizarre accolade of
being one of, if not the only place on
Earth that world leaders agreed on. Sort
of. In 1820, either a British vessel
under the command of Edward Bransfield
or three days earlier, a Russian vessel
captained by Fabian von Bellingshausen
first saw Antarctica, depending on which
historical account you believe. A year
later, in 1821,
American seal hunter John Davis claimed
to be the first person to have landed on
the continent, which is a claim not
fully backed up by historians, but we'll
go with it. Back in these times, think
of the rush to Antarctica as our sort of
modern equivalent of a space race.
Countries were trying to outdo each
other and fund more and more expensive
trips to new frontiers to try and
uncover what or who might be hiding
there to gain a political or strategic
advantage. Sound familiar? By virtue of
a series of expeditions funded by
different countries early in the 20th
century, Antarctica is also in the
unique position of having several claims
to different sections of it. For
example, the UK made a claim comprising
the sector of the Antarctic South of
roughly latitude 60° south between
longitudes 20° west and 80° west. Not to
be outdone, Australia made the largest
of all the claims, equivalent to 42% of
the entire continent. That's nearly 6
million km squared. Meanwhile,
Argentina, Antarctica's closest
neighbor, only has 1.5 million km. Now,
whilst all of that sounds impressive, it
doesn't actually mean anything. Today,
all claims to land on Antarctica are
held in obeyance, which essentially
means they do exist, but are neither
recognized nor disputed internationally,
which yes, is as confusing as it sounds.
And yes, means the claims are
essentially useless.
And amazingly, there is actually still
one piece of this giant political pie
that remains unclaimed and by default
therefore is the largest piece of
unclaimed land in the world. Marie Bird
land is entirely desolate, barring a US
abandoned research base. So despite the
best efforts of all those countries to
get a piece of the pie, Antarctica is
instead governed by a group of countries
bound together by the Antarctic Treaty
established in 1959. The treaty ensures
the continent is used for peaceful
purposes. Ultimately, different
countries have different political
agendas and so the sharing of
information wasn't always clear and in
the absence of unified scientific data,
conspiracy has thrived. You know what
support the channel and lets us keep making videos just like this one. Let's
address the biggest of all those rumors
first. that the Nazis had a secret base
in Antarctica.
Okay, spoiler alert here. There is
absolutely no evidence of a secret Nazi
base on Antarctica, but but there is
historical evidence of them visiting
Antarctica. And that well, that's pretty
interesting.
Hitler had a grand vision for his new
Germany, a country at the forefront of
world conquest with an empire that
rivaled Britain, France, and the United
States in terms of global reach. In the
late 1930s, whale oil was still a vital
resource for making explosives, greasing
machines, and of course, feeding people.
A whailing base in the southern ocean
would be therefore an important
strategic position, particularly for a
nation planning to start a war.
And so a little known German expedition
to Antarctica was ordered that took
place over 4 months from December 1938
to April 1939
on a ship called the MS Schwarban.
With a crew comprising meteorologists,
biologists, geologists, and aerial
photographers, the mission's main aim
was to investigate the biology,
geography, and oceanography of the area.
And while they were there, claim an area
for the Nazis.
The Schwaban land was equipped with a
steam catapult and two Dornia do J Val
flying boat sea planes which were used
to make a photographic survey of some
600,000
km with 16,000
photographs. They were able to map a
large area and some of the German names
they gave to these geographic features
still appear on maps to this day.
That land was eventually claimed by
Germany in August 1939 as New Schwaban
land or New Schwabia. The team even
caught some penguins whilst they were
there which incredibly did in fact make
it back to Germany and ended up in the
Berlin Zoological Garden.
Their presence on Antarctica was
short-lived, however, with the outbreak
of war preventing two further planned
expeditions, and therefore no secret
Nazi base. So, where did the rumors of a
hidden German ice fortress actually come
from? Well, this great land hadn't been
forgotten. Flash forward to the end of
the war and on the morning of the 10th
of July 1945,
a German yubot arrived at the Argentine
naval base at Mardell Platter near
Buenazeres, 2 months after the German
surrender on the 8th of May 1945.
Rumors spread that the boat had brought
Hitler and some of his highranking Nazi
officials to Antarctica.
And a week later, a Hungarian journalist
in Argentina, Lattislas Sabo, wrote a
very detailed account in a local
newspaper about how Hitler and his crew
had escaped Germany. The story caught
on, fueled by the arrival of another
Yubot in August 1945.
Now, despite all members being
interrogated and with no sign of Hitler
on board, our journalist friend
published a book two years later titled
Hitler is alive. Ev voila. Essentially,
the book claimed a base had been built
between 1938 and 1939, around the time
of the first expedition we mentioned
above. Like any good tale, the story
gained momentum. There were more books,
more submarines, more drama, and now
we're sitting here in 2026 still talking
about it. While the Germans were not
active in Antarctica during the war, the
British were. From early 1944, Great
Britain occupied parts of the region,
claiming they were there to obtain
information about German shipping
raiders and hubot under operation
Tabarin. During this time, there was
some good news for science. A lot of
data was collected and after the war,
work continued as the Faulland Islands
Dependency Survey, which later became
the British Antarctic Survey. Now,
that's important. We'll come back to
that. Now, this isn't a history video,
okay? So, I'll wrap this up nice and
quickly. But soon after the war, the
United States got involved, too,
launching operations high jump and
windmill between 1946 and 1948.
This was the largest ever US Navy group
to go to Antarctica, and it consisted of
4,000 men, 13 ships, and 33 aircraft.
The main purpose was to prepare for and
practice techniques for cold weather
warfare in polar conditions with of
course one eye on Russia. It was
primarily a military exercise. But there
was some surveying of the
electromagnetic, geological and
hydrographical aspects of the physical
environment.
Okay, one more rumor here to put to bed
in amongst the Nazi secretbased theory.
Nuclear testing. There were three
nuclear explosions conducted by the US
in a classified operation cenamed
Operation Argus. These weren't reported
until the 1960s, and still today, not
much is really known about them as a
hangover from the Cold War. But when you
add a huge US troop presence to a bunch
of secret nukes going off, it's not
entirely surprising that some people
would connect them to produce a large
German base existing in Antarctica.
Now, no exploration of Antarctica law
would be complete without UFOs and
shadowy governments. What a combo. So,
yes, we are digging into that
conspiracy, too. Over the years, various
photos and videos have perpeted to show
flying sauces over Antarctic skies or
mysterious objects buried in the snow. I
mean, one viral claim in the 2010s
revolved around a Google Earth snapshot
from South Georgia Island near
Antarctica that appeared to show a long
skid mark ending in a sort of strange
oval shape. Internet sl of course
speculated it was a crashed alien
spacecraft half buried in the glacia.
But then along came glaciologist Richard
Waller. And it turns out our UFO was
actually something equally dramatic to a
glaciologist at least. the aftermath of
a massive avalanche.
The flying saucer was nothing more than
a gigantic block of ice that broke off
and slit, carving a trail in the snow.
An event not common in steep glacial
areas. Alongside these UFO sightings is
the notion of a forbidden sector of
Antarctica, a nogo zone enforced by
shadowy authorities to conceal big
secrets. Think sort of frozen Area 51
vibes. Conspiracy theorists often point
to the Antarctic Treaty as evidence,
saying that because no one owns
Antarctica and ordinary people are
restricted, they must be hiding
something. Sorry to burst the bubble,
but there are no secret police
patrolling an Antarctic Area 51 and no
reports of ET under the ice.
Yes, certain areas are logistically off
limits to tourists or require permits
for safety and conservation reasons. But
I mean, you and I could literally go to
Antarctica tomorrow if we wanted to and
if someone else footed the bill. If
that's left you feeling slightly
unsatisfied, then you might be happy to
hear there is still one unexplained
phenomena in Antarctica, and it lies in
cosmic particles.
Between 2016 and 2018, NASA's Antarctic
Impulsive Transient Antenna or Anita
picked up strange radio pulses.
Antarctica is the perfect place for such
a test because, as we've established, it
is vast. But more than that, the ice
sheets act like a sort of giant
detection medium for radio signals from
cosmic particles. While the continent's
extreme cold, dry air and isolation from
human radio noise minimize interference,
allowing Anita to detect signals from
space that bounce off the ice. They use
balloons to lift detection instruments
more than 25 mi above the icy continent
in an attempt to identify nutrinos, high
energy cosmic particles that are
abundant throughout the universe. Now,
these nutrinos can pass through many
types of matter, even the plasma of
stars, and remain unchanged. As such,
they are incredibly difficult to detect.
So difficult, in fact, they've been
nicknamed ghost particles. If or when
they are detected, they do something
pretty impressive. According to
Professor Stephanie Vissell, an
astrophysicist from Penn State
University, she explained that they can
reveal information about the nature of a
cosmic event that took place light years
away. And as they don't interact with
much of anything, in theory, we should
be able to trace their direction of
travel backward to their point of
origin. Mind blown.
What puzzled scientists in this case,
however, was that these strange signals
appear to come from far below the
horizon, suggesting that they had passed
through thousands of miles of rock
before reaching the detector, which was
strange because the radio waves should
have been absorbed by the rock. The
Anita team believed these anomalous
signals could not be explained by the
current understanding of particle
physics. Now, this naturally led some to
assume that they therefore must be from
outside our planet. So perplexing were
these signals that a 2025 study
comprising 15 years of Anita data and
featuring literally hundreds of
scientists was arranged to try and
explain what was going on. Two methods
were deployed by the team. The first
tried to find high energy particles by
tracking their interaction with water in
tanks on Earth.
The second method looked for particle
interactions with ultraviolet light high
in the atmosphere, but they found
nothing. The study concluded that the
signals detected by Anita in the end
could not have been caused by neutrinos,
thus characterizing them as anomalous or
in other words, totally not normal.
Ultimately, scientists are still not
sure today what exactly caused the
strange radio pulses, but they did find
something.
Finally, after 60 years of investigation
by planes, satellite imagery, and even
dog drawn sleds, the real picture of
Antarctica has slowly but surely
crystallized.
at its thickest point nearly 5 km.
Simply drilling down into the ice even
today presents huge logistical
challenges, let alone in the decades
before. Indeed, it's widely accepted
that we know more about Mars than what's
below the ice sheet here. So rather than
drilling through it, the primary way
we've obtained information thus far has
been by flying planes over it and
sending radio waves down to the ice
below to analyze the way the waves echo
back up on the plane. Radio echo
sounding.
I tell you what, I do not envy those
pilots having to fly up and down over
14,000 km squared in those tiny little
recon planes. As you might imagine, the
information was slow to come in and at
best we mapped only about 10% of the
land mass. Nevertheless, despite the
laborious man-hour, it did yield some
results. The first clues came when a
Russian pilot flying over East
Antarctica noticed an oddly flat smooth
stretch of ice near the Soviet Vosto
station. A hint that something uniform
lay beneath. In 1993, satellite and
airborne radar instruments capable of
peering through the ice confirm the
existence of a vast lake under the
station, at least 15 million years old.
Its waters have been in the dark since
long before early humans, even before
our earliest ape-like ancestors walked
the Earth. At a whopping 15,000 square
kilometers in size and depth reaching
more than 800 meters, Lake Vosto is
similar in size to Lake Ontario in North
America. It is a monster.
This discovery electrified the
scientific community. Here it was an
untouched aquatic ecosystem sealed away
in freezing darkness for eons.
It took years of planning and drilling
through more than 12,000 ft of ice, but
in 2012, Russian scientists finally
broke through to Lake Vosto's waters.
They carefully sampled the lake, making
sure not to contaminate this pristine
environment. And what they found was
astounding. They found life.
DNA from more than 3 and a half thousand
organisms, including bacteria and even
hints of larger life forms. Most were
extreophiles, microbes that thrive in
harsh environments. Some similar to
species found in deep oceans or even in
fish digestive tracts. The presence of
marine-like DNA suggests that at some
distant time in the past, maybe 15 to 20
million years ago, Lake Vosto or its
predecessors might have even had a
connection to the ocean. Today, cut off
from the outside world, any life in
Vostto eks out an existence likely by
chemosynthesis,
deriving energy from chemicals in rocks
or hydrothermal vents, much like life
deep under the sea.
Researchers even speculate hydrothermal
vents might be present on the lake
floor, nurturing life as they do in our
oceans. And Lake Vstto was just the tip
of the iceberg.
Using these traditional methods of
searching, scientists have identified
over 400 subglacial lakes across the
continent. These lakes aren't static
pools, either. Recent satellite
observations show that some of them fill
and drain periodically under the ice,
forming a sort of invisible plumbing
system.
Each of these isolated lakes is a
potential incubator of microbial life
and holds clues to Antarctica's climatic
past.
Plans are underway to explore more of
them, such as Lake Ellsworth with
sterile drills and underwater robots.
It's a cautious frontier science. Humans
peering into one of Earth's last
uncharted ecosystems right under our
feet. And it gets bigger still.
If the notion of a hidden world beneath
Antarctica still intrigues you, consider
this. A whole mountain range as tall and
expansive as the Alps lies intombed
under East Antarctica's ice sheet. These
are the Gambertv subglacial mountains,
often nicknamed the ghost mountains
because no human eye has ever seen them.
Only our instruments know they're there.
Discovered inadvertently by a Soviet
seismic survey in 1958, the Gambertvs
were a true enigma. The Russian
scientists were astonished. Their
seismma meters echoing through the ice
reveal jagged peaks and valleys where
they expected flats ancient bedrock.
Finding mountains preserved under a 3 km
thick ice cap was like finding a
dinosaur alive in your backyard.
Normally over millions of years, erosion
would grind down such old mountains into
hills. But the ice has protected them
like a time capsule.
An entire alpine chain roughly 750 km
long and 2 and a half to 3,000 m high
was completely hidden under the ice.
Think about it like this, right? We have
samples of the moon, but none of the
Gambertvs,
spurred on by discoveries like this, in
2025,
scientists hit the motherload. They
embarked on the largest ever mapping of
Antarctica's bedrock, ice thickness, and
surface topography, and the hidden
structures it revealed, surpass any of
those conspiracy theories. Incorporating
82 million data points, Bed Map 3, as
the name suggests, is the third attempt
by the British Antarctic Survey, I told
you we'd come back to them, to draw a
picture of Antarctica's rock bed that
began in 2001.
This new effort, however, represents a
dramatic refinement and includes more
than double the number of previous data
points rendered on a 500 meter grid
spacing.
This map has rewritten even the little
we thought we already knew. It shows a
clear view of the icy continent as
though its 27 million cubic km of ice
have been removed, revealing unseen
hidden locations of the tallest
mountains in the deepest canyons. It
pinpointed the single thickest point of
ice in Antarctica in an unnamed canyon
in Wilksland, East Antarctica, where the
ice reaches a depth of 4,757
m. Critically, this new map will also
help researchers figure out how
Antarctica might respond to warming
temperatures, and that news is alarming.
Peter Fretwell, mapping specialist and
co-author at BASS, said that in general
the ice is thicker than we thirst, which
although may sound positive, might have
significant ramifications for global sea
level rise. Because the map also
revealed a larger volume of ice that is
grounded on a rock bed sitting below sea
level, this actually puts the ice at
greater risk of melting due to the
incursion of warm ocean water that's
occurring at the fringes of the
continent. Essentially, what Bed Map 3
is showing us is that we've got a far
more vulnerable Antarctica than we
previously thought. Just months later,
in July 2025, the European Space Agency
also revealed their findings to the
world. Thanks to a decade of data from
the CryoSat satellite, researchers were
able to identify 85 previously unknown
lakes several kilometers under the
frozen surface surrounding the South
Pole, increasing the known population of
active subglacial lakes by more than
half and bringing the total to 231.
But 2025 still had one more surprise in
store, and it was the biggest yet. In
the Allen Hills of Antarctica, a
windswept region where ancient ice is
exposed near the surface. Researchers
recently found chunks of ice that are 6
million years old. Yes, 6 million year
old ice. The oldest ice ever directly
dated on Earth. Back when that ice
formed, Earth's climate was warmer, sea
levels were higher, and our planet was
teameing with now extinct animals like
saber-tooth cats and early species of
mammoths roaming elsewhere.
The team analyzed oxygen isotopes within
the frozen deposit to chart temperature
changes over time, revealing a regional
cooling of roughly 12° C across the past
6 million years, marking the first
direct measurement of this kind from the
Antarctic continent. The samples also
capture brief intervals of extreme
warmth. As one scientist put it, ice
cores are like time machines, letting us
glimpse the planet's past beyond
anything we've experienced. So, what's
all the fuss about? Why is this, above
all else, so significant? Well, by
comparing ancient climate data to today,
we gain perspective on how unusual our
current climate trajectory really is. In
other words, we can see how much we
might have messed up. the 6
million-year-old air bubbles tell us the
natural range of greenhouse gases and
how the Earth's climate system behaved
when CO2 levels and temperatures were
different. It helps scientists
understand the baseline of natural
climate change and thus how our modern
industrial era is veering beyond that.
It's both a warning beacon and a guide
to the future. And just a few hours,
literally before this script was about
to go to the editor, more breaking news
about Antarctica's secrets came in.
Starting 2026, where 2025 left off, full
of revelations. Using highresolution
satellite data and a novel technique
called ice flow perbation analysis,
Helen Okendon and her team did something
different.
Using this technique, they leveraged the
physics of ice flow to invert the ice's
surface undelation into a picture of the
terrain below. Now, by combining
satellite measured ice elevations with
sparse radar depth measurements, the
team created a continentwide subglacial
topography map that resolves features
just 2 to 30 km across that were
previously blurred or unknown. The new
map reveals a rugged under ice world of
mountains, deep valleys, and channels
once hidden from view. The IFPA derived
map exposes roughly 72,000
subglacial hills. That's more than twice
the number recorded in early Antarctic
bed models, indicating that past maps
vastly smoothed out the real topographic
roughness. Critically, many regions
thought to be flat are revealed as
jagged, almost alpineike terrain, which
creates extra friction at the ice base
and slows glacia flow. By capturing such
fine details of the bed, the study
provides valuable insight into basil
drag and other forces controlling how
ice sheets evolve. In practical terms,
these findings address a key uncertainty
flagged by the IPCC.
The bed topography is a crucial factor
for predicting ice sheet behavior.
Incorporating the more faithful
subglacial map into climate models will
improve forecasts of Antarctic ice loss
and sea level rise. The new map offers a
blueprint for future Antarctic
exploration, pointing scientists towards
previously inaccessible features from
buried glacia valleys to subglacial lake
basins that merit targeted geoysical
surveys and deeper investigations.
We began this video in darkness, really
a land of speculation where Nazi
submarines slip underneath the ice. But
as we stepped into the bright light of
scientific truth, we found that
Antarctica harbors some staggering
secrets. Hidden lakes that haven't seen
sunlight in 15 million years. Mountains
taller than the Alps sealed away. An ice
vaults preserving slices of Earth's
climate history millions of years old.
We didn't find Hitler's bunker, I know,
or an alien base, nothing like that. We
found something more profound, a
reminder of how much we still don't know
about our planet. and how thrilling the
pursuit of knowledge to find stuff out
can be is brilliant. And perhaps the
greatest lesson of all, therefore, is
one of humility. On our planet's last
great wilderness, we're only just
scratching the surface. Who knows what
other wonders still lie frozen in
weight?
Wait, stop. Before you go, don't forget
to click the link in the description to
grab our special Cyber Ghost VPN
discount available to you, our awesome
viewers. It keeps your data safe while
you browse and unlocks all blocked
content online. All for just $2.3 a
month. It's completely risk- free. So
check it out today. Okay, I'm really
done this time. See you in the next one.