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Category: futurism – Page 1,059

Beneath Antarctica’s Ice Is a Graveyard of Dead Continents

The eastern section of Antarctica is buried beneath a thick ice sheet. Some scientists simply assumed that under that cold mass there was nothing more than a “frozen tectonic block,” a somewhat homogeneous mass that distinguished it from the mixed up geologies of other continents.

But with the help of data from a discontinued European satellite, scientists have now found that East Antarctica is in fact a graveyard of continental remnants. They have created stunning 3D maps of the southernmost continent’s tectonic underworld and found that the ice has been concealing wreckage of an ancient supercontinent’s spectacular destruction.

The researchers, led by Jörg Ebbing, a geophysicist at Kiel University in Germany, reported their discovery earlier this month in Scientific Reports.

Researchers propose an explanation for the mysterious onset of a universal process

Magnetic takes place when the magnetic field lines embedded in a plasma—the hot, charged gas that makes up 99 percent of the visible universe—converge, break apart and explosively reconnect. This process takes place in thin sheets in which electric current is strongly concentrated.

According to conventional theory, these sheets can be highly elongated and severely constrain the velocity of the that join and split apart, making fast reconnection impossible. However, observation shows that rapid reconnection does exist, directly contradicting theoretical predictions.