The BBC captured this rare timelapse video of Antarctic creatures feeding on a fallen seal carcass. Its estimated that they see this kind of bounty just once every ten years or so, and the critters have taken the opportunity to swarm the body, picking it down to its skeleton. Several species of worms from the phylum Nemertea use their sometimes venomous proboscises to pierce the seal's flesh, while starfish attach themselves to the carcass, pushing their stomachs out through their mouths to feed. Sea urchins and sea spiders, the latter of which can grow up to 30cm across, also flourish here, with no crabs and few fish.

Be warned, the video below contains graphic images of these animals feeding, but it's also fascinating to watch them pick apart a rare, meaty find.

Monster worm and sea star frenzy [BBC]

Like the Aurora Borealis, the Aurora Australis occurs when solar winds carry charged particles from the sun into our atmosphere, where it reacts with the Earth's magnetic field. These particular images come from Antarctica's Amundsen-Scott Station, home of the South Pole Telescope. Keith Vanderlinde of the National Science Foundation took these photos of the Aurora against the unusually clear Antarctic Skies.

[National Science Foundation via Sci-Fi-O-Rama]

The Alps-like landscape revealed with cutting-edge imaging technology is a reminder that the Antarctic was once a thriving biosphere. That's why HP Lovecraft set his famous short story "At the Mountains of Madness" in an Antarctic mountain range hidden by snow, which had once held a thriving civilization. There's nothing like digging up 14,000,000 year old mountains if you want to find some weird alien life. According to a news report on the findings:

The imaging comes from a gruelling effort by Chinese glaciologists to probe the mysterious realm beneath the East Antarctic heights, one of the most forbidding places in the world.

In 2004-5 and again in 2007-8, the team hauled deep-penetrating ground radar around a box-shaped sector, measuring 30 kilometers (18 miles) by 30 kilometres, at a point called Dome Argus, or Dome A.

Dome A lies at 4,093 metres (13,302 feet) above sea level and has an average annual temperature of -58.4 degrees Celsius (-73 degrees Fahrenheit).

Beneath it is an ice sheet between 1,649 and 3,135 metres thick that smothers the Gamburtsev mountains, a range named after a Soviet geophysicist, Grigoriy Gamburtsev, who detected the peaks in 1958.

The radar reflections revealed "classic Alpine topography" similar to Europe's Alps, showing that once there were river valleys that cut their way through the mountains.

Later, these valleys were gouged and deepened by glaciers.

"The landscape has probably been preserved beneath the ice sheet for around 14 million years," says the paper.

Guillermo Del Toro was at one point going to direct a version of "At the Mountains of Madness," though the project seems to have fallen by the wayside. Maybe this discovery will reawaken his interest.

Via AFP

In 1950, German explorers were surprised to discover the rocky peaks far from Antarctica’s shores. As mountain ranges usually appear near the edges of a continent, geologists have been at a loss to explain the presence of the Gamburtsevs. The area also shows no evidence that two separate landmasses may have collided there, nor that volcanic activity has occurred beneath the surface. Commented Dr. Robin Bell of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory:

I like to say it's rather like being an archaeologist and opening up a tomb in a pyramid and finding an astronaut sitting inside. It shouldn't be there.

A highly-coordinated international team of researchers from the UK, US, Germany, Australia, China, and Japan has been assembled to explore the region, in part because it presents such distinct challenges from geological exploration anywhere else on Earth. Said Dr Fausto Ferraccioli from the British Antarctic Survey, "You can almost think about it as exploring another planet - but on Earth."

To reach the mountains, the team will may dig up ice that is over a million years old. But they hope that, by understanding more about the Gamburtsevs and how they formed, they will get a clearer picture of Antarctica’s geological history, and how climate change could impact the continent.

Images from the BBC.

Expedition set for 'ghost peaks' [via Metafilter]

Here you can see pictures taken by Tony Travouillon of giant chunks of ice in Antarctica that have been sculpted by the wind to look like huge waves erupting out of the ground.

You can see more beautiful ice bubbles here and here.

Cranberry Lake photo via BLDGBLOG and New Scientist. Antarctic wave via Travouillon's website.

Earlier this week I pondered whether dark energy is just a new version of an outdated theory, but a team of astronomers in Antarctica is doing the hard work of trying to find out. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) uses 1,000 advanced optical sensors to peer at distant galaxy clusters looking for subtle variations in the cosmic background radiation. Those variations will give scientists a better idea of the structure of the universe, and whether or not dark energy is part of it.

The SPT is the largest Antarctic telescope. Despite the frigid cold of the region, the optics are further shielded from background heat by being chilled to a temperature not far from absolute zero. Photo by: The University of Chicago.

Cosmologists Probe Mystery Of Dark Energy With South Pole Telescope. [Science Daily]

Huge icebergs in Antarctica are actually relatively common. All ice shelves eventually collapse and form icebergs. When Antarctic glaciers (essentially massive, slow rivers of ice) reach the ocean, the ice floats, forming a shelf that remains attached to the glacier. Tidal and wave action flexes the shelf until it breaks - this can be accelerated by temperature increases. Just a few years ago, a chunk of the Larsen Ice Shelf almost as big as the Wilkins piece floated around for a few months until waves battered it against shore and broke it apart.

The total meltdown of the world's glaciers would raise sea level worldwide 200 meters. Even a small percentage of that would be bad news. And once they start melting, the loss of sun reflectivity would only serve to boost global warming.

So what's the good news? Icebergs are made of fresh water. Someone with the wherewithal could tow this iceberg to a hot region and use it as potable water. It's not exactly a new idea. In 1973, the RAND Corporation published a study called "Antarctic Icebergs as a Global Fresh Water Resource." They figured out that if someone could harvest just ten percent of Antarctica's total annual iceberg yield, it would provide water for 500 million people and make $10 billion each year (that's $48 billion today, if I did the inflation adjustment correctly). It would cost about $8 (again, in 1973 value) to deliver 1,000 cubic meters to Southern California. Factor in increased annual iceberg yield due to global warming and by 2018 the phrase "it's like a goldmine" could be replaced by "it's like an iceberg." Photo by National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Massive ice shelf on verge of breakup [cnn.com]

Image of camera by Elisfanclub Undersea image by SCINI.