People have let their imaginations run wild and weighed in on what appears to be a doorway found in the remote snows of Antarctica.
We know quite a lot about our planet in the modern world, even in some of the most remote parts of it.
However, all it has taken is for one image from Google Maps to go viral to spark the wildest theories from people on what is hidden in Antarctica.
On social media, people have come up with conspiracy theories ranging from hollow Earth to Bigfoot based on the image.
The location, easily found on Google maps, is the southeast of the Japanese-run Showa Station and admittedly does look like a bit like a door.
Yup… this bit of ice has been sparking people’s imagination(Google Maps)
Writing on a Reddit post one user wrote: “Great find. Could be an underground base entrance of some sort. Could be nothing. Excellent find either way.”
“Cthulhu has to live somewhere, now shut the door so no drafts get inside,” another commented” a commented another.
“It’s just an entrance to Monsters Inc. Yeah abominable snowman is probably lurking somewhere nearby,” a third wrote.
What is the Antarctica ‘doorway’?
However, despite the rampant speculation, a professor of Glaciology at the University of Newcase, Bethan Davies, weighed in and gave a much more reasonable explanation.
Speaking to the Mail Online and looking at the coordinates, she said: “This feature is in an area of fast sea ice in East Antarctica, just offshore of the coast.
“There are a series of islands there and the water is pretty shallow.
“This is an iceberg that became grounded and is now stuck and melting out in situ. You can see many other icebergs in the area.”
And would you look at that… more ice, snow and rocks in the Arctic(Google Maps)
Another professor, Martin Siegert, the co-director of the Grantham Institute, agreed with Davies’ assessment.
So unlucky if you hoped life on this blue rock was going to get a whole lot more interesting with a secret Antarctic portal.
He said: “This is simply ice flow around a solid subglacial obstacle, influenced also by melting and re-freezing of ice and by katabatic winds.
“The ice is quite thin here, as evidenced by other outcrops of rock nearby, so the influence of the bed on ice flow will be strong.
“It’s an interesting pattern, but not unusual or surprising glaciologically.’
