On day 3 of leftovers for lunch, have a day off. Switch it up with a double cheeseburger for £249 on the McDonald's savor menu. Leftovers left the chat. Talk about savor satisfaction. Served from 11am, price and participation may vary. These apply to delivery orders, subject to availability. 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 long lost ancient civilizations. Alien artefacts. Peculiar radio signals emitting through snow layers and even secret wartime strongholds. There 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 7th continent. For the first time in Antarctica's long history, science is on the front foot. Producing the most in-depth, rigorous set of insights and analysis we have ever seen. And now, Antarctica's real secrets are finally coming to light. I'm James Stewart and you're watching Astrum Earth. Join me in this video as we journey to this continental enigma to dismantle some of those outrageous rumours, thaw out the truth and finally provide the answer to the question, what's really hiding in Antarctica? Antarctica is the world's 5th largest continent, covering approximately 14.2 million square kilometres. 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 kilometres 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. Researchers here can reach as low as minus 89 degrees Celsius, as measured in Vostok 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 minus 98 degrees Celsius. But unlike any other continent on the planet, Antarctica doesn't actually belong to anyone. Antarctica has the bizarre acclade of being one of, if not the only place on Earth, the world leaders agreed on. In 1820, either a British vessel under the command of Edward Bransfield, or three days earlier a Russian vessel, captured by Fabian von Bellingthausen, 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, sink of the rush to Antarctica is 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 60 degrees south, between 20 degrees west and 80 degrees west. Not to be outdone, Australia made the largest of all the claims, equivalent to 42% of the entire continent, nearly 6 million kilometres squared. Meanwhile, Argentina, Antarctica's closest neighbour, only has 1.5 million square kilometres. While all of that sounds impressive, it doesn't actually mean anything. Today all claims to land on Antarctica are held in abeyance, which essentially means they do exist but are neither recognised 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 Birdland 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 conspiracy theory I've been thinking about today? Why don't I VPN to Antarctica? I mean, that is genius, isn't it? Here's a quick message from today's sponsor, CyberGhostVPN. And I'm sure if you spend a lot of time online, you've heard of VPNs by now, but what do they actually do? Well, in simple terms, a VPN encrypts your internet traffic and hides your IP address, helping protect your data and keep your browsing private. The truth is that plenty of eyes can track your online activity, including your incident provider, workplace or school networks, they can even do it on public Wi-Fi. With over 38 million users worldwide and more than 20,000 excellent reviews on TrustPilot, CyberGhost is one of the most trusted VPN services out there. With just one click, you can connect to one of their servers in over 100 countries, encrypting your traffic and keeping your online activity private. My favorite thing about it is I can unlock geo-restricted content in other countries. By changing my virtual location, I can access games and shows from over 40 different streaming platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+. It works across all major devices like Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, and one subscription protects up to 7 devices at once. So you can have your phone, laptop, tablet and whatever else you want. And here's the good news for you right now, you can get CyberGhost for just $2.03 per month, plus 4 months free. That's a bonkers 84% off, and it even comes with a 45-day money-back guarantee. How awesome is that? If you're interested in the content of this incredible offer, check out the link in the description to help support the channel. Let's 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 there is historical evidence of them visiting Antarctica. And 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 whaling base in the Southern Ocean would be there for 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 four months from December 1938 to April 1939, on a ship called the MS Schwabenland. 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 Schwabenland was equipped with a steam catapult and two Dornier-Do-Jay-Val flying boat seaplanes, which were used to make a photographic survey of some 600,000 square kilometres, 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 Nu-Schwabenland, or Nu-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 rumours of a hidden German ice fortress actually come from? While 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 U-boat arrived at the Argentine naval base at Mardel Platter near Buenos Aires, two months after the Germans surrendered on the 8th of May 1945. Rumours spread that the boat had brought Hitler and some of his high-ranking Nazi officials to Antarctica. And a week later, a Hungarian journalist in Argentina, Ladislas Sabo, wrote a very detailed account in a local newspaper about how Hitler and his crew had escaped Germany. The story caught on, fuelled by the arrival of another U-boat in August 1945. 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. 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 U-boats 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 Falkland Islands Dependency Survey, which later became the British Antarctic Survey. That's important, we'll come back to that. This isn't a history video, so I'll wrap this up quickly. But soon after the war, the United States got involved too, launching operations High Jump and Wimil between 1946 and 1948. This was the largest ever US Navy group to go to Antarctica, and it consisted of 4,500 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. Ok, one more rumour here to put to bed in amongst the Nazi secret base theory, Nuclear Testing. There were 3 nuclear explosions conducted by the US in a classified operation codenamed 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 lore 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 perpated to show flying sources 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 slews of course speculated it was a crashed alien spacecraft half buried in the glacier. 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 slid 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 no-go zone enforced by shadowy authorities to conceal big secrets, thinks of a frozen Area 51 vibe. 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 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 minimise interference, allowing Anita to detect signals from space that bounce off the ice. They use balloons to lift detection instruments more than 25 miles above the icy continent, in an attempt to identify neutrinos, high-energy cosmic particles that are abundant throughout the universe. These neutrinos 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 Vistle, 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 appeared 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 believe these anomalous signals could not be explained by the current understanding of particle physics. 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 signal detected by Anita in the end could not have been caused by neutrinos, thus characterising 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 crystallised. At its thickest point, nearly 5 kilometres, 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 analyse 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 40,000 kilometres squared in those tiny little recombines. As you might imagine, the information was slow to come in, and at best, we mapped only about 10% of the landmass. Nevertheless, despite the laborious man hours, 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 Vostok station, a hint that something uniform lay beneath. In 1993, satellite and airborne radar instruments capable of peering through the ice confirmed 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. It's a whopping 15,000 square kilometres in size, and depths reaching more than 800 metres. Lake Vostok 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 feet of ice, but in 2012, Russian scientists finally broke through to Lake Vostok'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 3,500 organisms, including bacteria and even hints of larger lifeforms. Most were extrema-files, 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 suggested at some distant time in the past, maybe 15-20 million years ago. Lake Vostok or its predecessors might have even had a connection to the ocean. Today, cut off from the outside world, any life in Vostok eeks out an existence likely by chemo-synthesis, 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 Vostok 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 entombed under East Antarctica's ice sheet. These are the Gambertsev subglacial mountains, often nicknamed the ghost mountains because no human eye has ever seen them. Only our instruments know they're there. And inadvertently, by a Soviet seismic survey in 1958, the Gambertsevs were a true enigma. The Russian scientists were astonished. Their seismometers, echoing through the ice, revealed jagged peaks and valleys where they expected flat, ancient bedrock. Finding mountains preserved under a 3km 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 750km long and 2.5-3,000m high, was completely hidden under the ice. Think about it like this, right? We have samples of the moon, but none of the Gambertsevs. 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, Bedmap 3, as the name suggests, is the third attempt by the British Antarctic Survey, to draw a picture of Antarctica's rockbed 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 500m 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 kilometres 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 Wilkesland, East Antarctica, where the ice reaches a depth of 4,757m. 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 BAS, said that in general the ice is thicker than we first thought, 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 rockbed 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. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, an audit dread. It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it calm-pliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Get started at Vanta.com slash calm. Essentially what BedMap 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 teaming with now extinct animals like saber toothed 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 degrees Celsius 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 in 2026, where 2025 left off full of revelations. Using high resolution satellite data and a novel technique called ice flow perpabation analysis, Helen Ockenden and her team did something different. Using this technique, they leveraged the physics of ice flow to invert the ice's surface undelatient into a picture of the terrain below. By combining satellite measured ice elevations with sparse radar depth measurements, the team created a continent wide sub-glacial topography map that resolves features just 2 to 30km 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 sub-glacial 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 alpine-like terrain, which creates extra friction at the ice base and slows glacier flow. By capturing such fine details of the bed, the study provides valuable insight into basal 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 behaviour. Incorporating the more faithful sub-glacial 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 glacier valleys to sub-glacial lake basins, that merit targeted geophysical 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 Antarctic harbours some staggering secrets, hidden lakes that haven't seen sunlight in 15 million years, mountains taller than the Alps sealed away, and ice faults preserving slices of Earth's climate history millions of years old. We didn't find Hitler's bunker, 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. It's 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 wait? Wait, stop. Before you go. I'll put the link in the description to grab our special CyberGhost 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 $2.03 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.
