Mysterious 'pyramid' discovered beneath the ice in Antarctica sparked wild conspiracy theories
The rumor mill has ramped up its efforts after a mysterious shape was spotted in Antarctica underneath the bed of ice.
Well, it’s not just a shape. It’s actually a pyramid (allegedly).
Now, I’m no scientist, but if it’s been an uninhabitable area for thousands of years, how the hell could a pyramid be built there?
Unless the penguins are smarter than we thought?
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Probably not, but it had to have been built by someone, right?
That's a question that a lot of people have been asking since the huge, pyramid-shaped mass was spotted in satellite images taken over the southern part of Antarctica's Ellsworth Mountain range.
It all began when several bizarre peaks were spotted in the area, with one in particular measuring 2 kilometres square in each direction at its base.
This is kind of like the shape of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
Naturally, once the internet found out, it went into a frenzy, especially given the fact that humans don't tend to hang out in Antarctica for long, given its freezing temperatures.
Anyway, after images of the pyramids resurfaced, people soon began to share their theories for the structures.
Everyone has their own ideas, with one X user suggesting: "This structure belongs to the civilization which existed before the flood. Around 10,000 years ago Antartica was warm."
Another commented: "illuminati confirmed."
Someone else asked: "Wait how they moved the pyramids from Egypt to Antarctica?"
Ah, face palm.
This isn’t the first time Antarctica has left people baffled over. Google Earth users spotted what appeared to be a ship on an iceberg not long ago and the internet freaked out, mega.
However, before you go too far down the rabbit hole, there is another explanation for the pyramid…and that’s the fact that it's not a pyramid at all.
After rumours about the structure began to circulate, Irvine geology professor Eric Rignot spoke with CBS to get to the bottom of it.
Even though the image appears to show a pyramid shape and its peaks, Rignot explained: "This is just a mountain that looks like a pyramid."
It turns out the 'pyramid' is actually a feature of glaciated areas known as a 'pyramidal peaked mountain'. They're formed from the convergence of glaciers on the sides of an existing landmass.
Rignot, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California, added: “Pyramid shapes are not impossible — many peaks partially look like pyramids, but they only have one to two faces like that, rarely four.”
According to Dr Mitch Darcy, geologist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, who told IFLScience: "The pyramid-shaped structures are located in the Ellsworth Mountains, which is a range more than 400km long, so it's no surprise there are rocky peaks cropping out above the ice.
"The peaks are clearly composed of rock, and it's a coincidence that this particular peak has that shape.
“It's not a complicated shape, so it's not a special coincidence either. By definition, it is a nunatak, which is simply a peak of rock sticking out above a glacier or an ice sheet. This one has the shape of a pyramid, but that doesn't make it a human construction.”
I suppose there are some other pyramid-shaped mountains out there to support this point, including Mount Búlandstindur in Iceland, and Bordoyarnes Mountain on the Faroe Islands.
So, there really wasn’t anything to rave about after all.
Topics: Conspiracy Theories, Weird, Antarctica
Britt Jones