2011年11月18日星期五

Surveying these mountains was an incredible challenge

The Gamburtsevs were first discovered in the 1950s, taking the science world completely by surprise wearing moncler jackets.

Far from the flat and featureless rock expected under the Antarctic ice, a craggy range the size of the European Alps was found in the deep.

Survey data now suggests the mountains first formed more than a billion years ago, a study published in the journal Nature says.

The Gamburtsevs are thought to be the location where the ice sheet we know today began its march across the frozen continent.

Unravelling the mountains' history will therefore inform climate studies, helping scientists understand both past changes on Earth and possible future scenarios of moncler jackets for women.

"Surveying these mountains was an incredible challenge, but we succeeded and it's produced a fascinating story," Dr Fausto Ferraccioli from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) told BBC News.

Ferraccioli was a principal investigator on the AGAP (Antarctica's Gamburtsev Province) project, completed in 2009.

To map the mountains scientists flew an aircraft back and forth across Antarctica, scanning the Earth with radar. Other instruments recorded the local gravitational and magnetic fields and seismometers were used to probe the ground.

The scientists believe the collision of continents to form the landmass known as "Rodina" first gave life to the range more than a billion years ago.

The impact pushed up the mountains, also creating a dense, cold "root" that sat deep in the Earth's crust where cheap moncler women vest is popular.

While the mountains eroded over the course of hundreds of millions of years, only the root remained. And when, 250-100 million years ago, the crust began to pull apart again the root was rejuvenated.

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