27 Unbelievable Facts About Antarctica That Are 100% True

One cold and lonely December night, an American scientist, who was conducting research on Antarctica, decided to log on to Tinder just for fun. He wanted to see if there were any women out on the icy, lonely continent. At first, no profiles showed up, but after the scientist expanded the app’s location radius, he actually found someone: another researcher, just a 45-minute helicopter ride away. He swiped right and a few minutes later they matched, making it the first Tinder match on Antarctica.

In Antarctica around 1% of the continent (4,000 km or 2,500 mi) is permanently ice-free – such areas are called dry valleys or Antarctic oasis. They are thought to be the world’s harshest deserts and it is estimated that these areas haven’t seen rain or snow in almost 2 million years.

According to one study led by Australian scientists, due to climate change ice-free areas in Antarctica could expand up to 25% by the end of 21st century. This could drastically change the biodiversity of the continent.

Don’t worry – no real blood is running there. 5 million years ago, as sea levels rose, East Antarctica was flooded and a brine lake was formed there. After millions of years, glaciers formed on top of the lake. As they froze, the water below became even saltier. Today, the subglacial lake under Blood Falls is three times saltier than seawater and, therefore, is too salty to freeze.
The water beneath Taylor Glacier, which feeds the Blood Fall, contains a lot of iron (picked up from the underlying bedrock) and when iron-rich water comes in contact with air, the iron oxidizes and takes on a red coloring, leaving blood-like stains on the ice.

According to scientists, meteorites land everywhere with almost equal probability. However, if they fell in a humid jungle climate, moisture and oxygen would corrode them. In Antarctica, where the climate is extremely dry, the likelihood of corrosion is almost non-existent. In addition to this, naturally, the rocks are easier to spot on the white, icy surface of Antarctica. Lastly, sometimes the East Antarctic ice sheet’s path to the sea is clogged by mountains or other obstructions. If the sheet stays in one spot for a long time, strong winds and sunlight can evaporate the top layers and reveal much older ice and large meteorite concentrations within it. This way, more than 20,000 samples of rock from unknown sources were collected since 1976.

Around 90% of the world’s ice and 70% of the fresh water is in Antarctica. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels in the world would rise about 200 feet (61 meters).

Antarctica, the southernmost continent, is almost completely covered in a thick layer of ice (except for dry valleys, which make up around 1% of the area). The thickness of the ice sheet varies depending on the location, with the East Antarctic sheet being much thicker than the one in the West. On average, the ice is more than one mile (1.6 km) thick, but in some sections it can get as thick as almost three miles (4.8 km).

As Antarctica is mostly uninhabited, the continent is not officially divided into time zones. However, a number of existing research stations use either the time zone of the country that operates or supplies them, or use the local time of countries located nearby. For example, McMurdo Station observes New Zealand Standard Time (NZST) during standard time and New Zealand Daylight Time (NZDT) during the Daylight Saving Time (DST) period in New Zealand. Palmer Station (an American research station) keeps Chile Summer Time (CLST) as Chile is the closest country to their station.

The world’s largest recorded iceberg, was Iceberg B-15, which measured around 183 miles (295 km) long and 23 miles (37 km) wide, with a surface area of 4,200 square miles (11,000 sq km) – making it larger than the whole island of Jamaica. In 2000, the Iceberg B-15 broke up into smaller icebergs and later drifted away into the sea.

In 1978 Emilio Marcos Palma made history by being the first person to be born on Antarctica. His father was the head of the Argentine Army detachment at the Esperanza Research Base. Since then, ten more people have been born on the continent, but Palma’s birthplace still remains the southernmost and has featured in the Guinness Book of Records.