Satellite Spots Massive Object Hidden Under the Frozen Wastes of Antarctica (thesun.co.uk)

schwit1 quotes a report from The Sun: Scientists believe a massive object which could change our understanding of history is hidden beneath the Antarctic ice. The huge and mysterious "anomaly" is thought to be lurking beneath the frozen wastes of an area called Wilkes Land. It stretches for a distance of 151 miles across and has a maximum depth of about 848 meters. Some researchers believe it is the remains of a truly massive asteroid which was more than twice the size of the Chicxulub space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs. If this explanation is true, it could mean this killer asteroid caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event which killed 96 percent of Earth's sea creatures and up to 70 percent of the vertebrate organisms living on land.This "Wilkes Land gravity anomaly" was first uncovered in 2006, when NASA satellites spotted gravitational changes which indicated the presence of a huge object sitting in the middle of a 300 mile wide impact crater.

Comments

Here we go

[Isendur]

So, "Alien" or "The Thing"? What are your bets guys?

Re:Here we go

[Z80a]

I'll bet on lavos due the catchy tune.

Re:Here we go

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's black, and its edges have the ratio 1:4:9.

Re:Here we go

[Anonymous Coward]

City of the Elder Things beyond the Mountains of Madness

Re:Here we go

[Mr D from 63]

Most likely a large frozen nest of Godzillas.

Re:Here we go

[rsmith-mac]

What are your bets guys?

A Stargate, of course. Those silly things have a tendency to show up in the Antarctic.

Re:Here we go

[sudon't]

"...a huge object sitting in the middle of a 300 mile wide impact crater."

Yes, I think we can dismiss "asteroid" as too far-fetched. I mean, why would an asteroid choose to specifically land in the middle of an impact crater? Now, a Nazi base for alien flying saucer landings? It's the only thing that makes sense.

Re:Here we go

[sl3xd]

Cthulhu wasn't really involved in the Mountains of Madness.

Obvious anomaly answers

[Anonymous Coward]

1) It's the collected lost socks and keys of the planet. They all fell to the bottom.

2) It's Cowboy Neal's porn stash.

Seriously?

[ledow]

Seriously? You linked to the fucking Sun newspaper? For a science article?

I'm done with this site.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot and the sun are pretty much on the same level.

Re: Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. BeauHD should be ashamed for posting this. While there are a lot of sources that there is, indeed, a crater buried under the ice, there are no credible sources about a massive object being detected. In fact, a lot of the posts about thr supposed object are speculating that there's either a Nazi base or a UFO buried under the ice. Although either one might make for an interesting X-Files story (and this was done in Fight the Future), there doesn't seem to be any credible science involved here. It's a bunch of lunatic conspiracy theories, with no reputable sources. BeauHD should be ashamed of posting this. It marks a new low for Slashdot.

Re:Seriously?

[bruce_the_loon]

Link to a scientific paper published last June with a decent set of arguments as to why it is more likely an impact crater than other types of geological formation. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273313440_The_Wilkes_Land_Anomaly_revisited

Re: Seriously?

[Rei]

Indeed. Large (dangerous) asteroids do not survive their descent. Ever. The largest single meteorite ever found is only 60 tonnes (Hoba meteorite), and it took exceptional circumstances for it to survive (an extremely shallow entry trajectory). If an impact is excavating a large (or even small) crater, it's turning to gas and/or plasma in the process.

Re:Seriously?

[frovingslosh]

Slashdot and the sun are pretty much on the same level.

No, The Sun has editors that actually edit.

Re: Seriously?

[DutchUncle]

On the other hand, maybe something REALLY HUGE cracked the planet into the separate tectonic plates. Comparing it to the largest single meteorite that humans have found, on land, and recognized for what it was, leaves out all of the underwater area and things not recognized (assumed to be part of mountain ranges or other terrain). Random collisions might also explain why the different planets all have different axial tilts, despite being in (pretty much) the same plane of rotation around the sun. I believe that humans have a problem comprehending the immensity of forces involved and the insignificance of any particular life form.

Re: Seriously?

[Rei]

You're not getting that it's physically impossible for a large object to survive. "Releasing enough energy to cause mass extinctions across the entire planet" and "remaining with large pieces intact" are mutually exclusive. The "immensity of forces" is precisely the problem. It's like expecting pieces of the casing to survive the detonation of an atomic bomb. Only many orders of magnitude less likely.

As for cracking the planet into separate plates, however, that's not that far fetched; there is a legitimate (although controversial) scientific hypothesis that such an impact weakened the crust there and helped allow for Antarctica to break off. And collisions are a leading, relatively non-controversial theory to explain axial tilts - although primarily collisions during formation and potentially the late heavy bombardment.

Re:Seriously?

[lgw]

I remember when JonKatz was blamed for everything!

Nowadays, it's systemd.

To be fair, everything wrong with the world is acutally systemd's fault.

Better source?

[piggz1]

Im not sure 'thesun.co.uk' is the best source for science news!

Re:Better source?

[Epeeist]

Im not sure 'thesun.co.uk' is the best source for science news!

Well at least it wasn't the Daily Mail.

Look at the bright side

[Chrisq]

Look at the bright side. It could be Superman's Fortress of Solitude

Re:Look at the bright side

[dunkelfalke]

Or it could be another giant UFO full of alien colonists missed by Mulder in 1998.

Re:Look at the bright side

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Nah, entrance to the stargate.

With Macguyver stuck at the bottom.

Is it Iron?

[wisebabo]

Unfortunately I'm not a mining expert but isn't much (most?) of the iron available to humanity basically meteorites? I mean most of the iron that the earth formed with sank to the core since it is (much?) denser than the surrounding molten rock?

And wasn't this thing detected because it was a gravity or mass anomaly? A chunk of iron that big could be quite valuable! Here comes the despoiling of the Antarctic, a job made possible by global warming and the "who cares" approach to the environment of our soon to be in office leader.

Re: Is it Iron?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although there is a concentration of mass at the center of the proposed Wilkes Land Crater, as discovered about ten years ago, it's not the remnants of an asteroid. Instead, it's believed to be due to upwelling of molten rock from the mantle as a result of the impact.

Re: Is it Iron?

[Rei]

Yep - just like the Sudbury deposit. Probably a great spot to mine, if it wasn't buried beneath ice and in an area where mining is illegal. Large impact crater floors tend to stay molten for so long that they stratify, so you can find portions of the deposit rich in different minerals, such as nickel, copper, and precious metals.

It's one thing that Mars has over Earth in terms of mineral deposits. While Mars lacks relevant recent fluvial mineral concentration mechanisms, as well as those aided by life, by oxidation, and a number of other processes, it's also struck more often by large asteroids, and thus probably has more common stratified impact deposits.

Re:Is it Iron?

[athmanb]

No, all commercially mined iron ore is from sediments formed in the precambrian when the increasing oxygen supply on Earth converted the iron in solution in the oceans to iron oxides.

Erm

[looptron]

The Sun doesn't really do "news" or "facts". Given that they're doing "science" does this mean they've run out of celebs and immigrants to pick on?

Seriously? The Sun?

[Lisandro]

Why don't you post a link to The Mirror as well? At least they don't dance around and call it a lost Nazi UFO base right away.

What the fuck is going on with this site?

Linky...

[Svenberg]

And for those that want to see the actual article...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GC002149/full

Get it right

[AndyKron]

A 151 miles wide by 848 meters deep? Be more consistent with your units please

Re:Get it right

[Archibald Buttle]

For the UK, and this was in a UK paper, that is pretty normal and consistent with most other publications.

Newspapers will measure large distances in miles, as that's what we use for our roads, but short distances in metres, as they're what we are taught in school.

I know what it is

[skovnymfe]

Obviously, this is the weapons platform the Ancients built. They already made about 10 seasons worth of TV documentary about it.

Re:I know what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed!

Come on...

[damacus]

I can't believe you guys posted this crap. This is stale - the news itself about the land crater dates back to 2006. Next, this article is from *The Sun* which is akin to National Enquirer. Nazi UFO base? Give me a break...... The WLC itself is pretty cool and interesting, but there are other articles that would've sucked a lot less. Here's an example: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/heres... CHOOSE A BETTER SOURCE.

Which one?

[Meneth]

So is this Homeworld, Alien vs Predator, or Stargate SG-1? I'm hoping for the first. "One hundred years ago, a satellite detected an object under the sands of the great desert..."

It's either paywalls or tabloids

[joneil]

Here's the problem. A very quick google search will turn up research papers on on the Wilkes Land Anomaly, but they are mostly behind paywalls or "free registration", etc, etc.

A person can play video games, read tabloids, browse conspiracy websites, watch porn or gamble for "free" online all day long, but the minute you want serious information on any topic nowadays, the serious research is almost always behind "paywalls". For the average person who is not involved in some form of academia, how many east to find alternatives (other than wikipedia) are there out there? More importantly, hwo easy are they to find and access as compared o the others? As long as we as a society continue to operate this way, then society as a whole will continue to "dumb down" in general. "idiocracy" here we come. :(

Re:It's either paywalls or tabloids

[dgatwood]

Agreed. Paywalled, for-profit scientific research journals have done more to contribute to the dumbing down of society than just about anything else in modern history except television (and not just because of the paywalls).

Rather obvious now that it's almost certainly

[sabbede]

a crashed spaceship, with an outside chance of being the lost city of R'lyeh. Either way the course is clear - we have to dig it up and find out for sure. If we unleash a horde of alien conquerors or awaken mighty Cthulhu from his slumber in the process... well, we can figure out how to cross that bridge when we get to it.

The Sun does Science

[Roger W Moore]

Well Slashdot is quoting a science article from the Sun 'newspaper' so I think we are pretty much well beyond the Mountains of Madness now and heading out over the Seas of Stupidity.

Re:The Sun does Science

[nukenerd]

Well Slashdot is quoting a science article from the Sun 'newspaper'

I missed that. Non-UK Slashdotters might not know that The Sun (a Murdock newspaper) is the trashiest daily paper in the UK, even worse than the Mirror. A Sun factoid is that the editorial policy imposes a ~1000 word vocabulary set up in the spell checkers (it may be 2000, variable, but very low anyway), to use a word outside which a writer needs special permission from the editor.

Re:The Sun does Science

[Hognoxious]

Say what you like about The Sun's journalists, but they can all spell Murdoch.

"Mutineers' Moon" reference

[Walking The Walk]

I can't believe I'm the first one to post a reference to Mutineers' Moon. Clearly this is Anu's stronghold, and we need to invade it before he finds a way to take over the ship that replaced our moon.

David Weber for the win!

Old news?

[Mockylock]

Wasn't this found to be a mascon in 2006? https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

Re:I wonder

[quenda]

It was only 15 years ago.

Crappy Reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

The anomaly was actually discovered in 1959-1960:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antarctic-science/article/the-wilkes-land-anomaly-revisited/44DCA3FC303E6FF82CD3259AD41A2437

by this guy

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/canyoncourier/obituary.aspx?pid=173344814

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkes_Land_crater

The mass concentration (ie. asteroid remnants) was first discussed in 2006.

Re:Unusual that so many hit continents

[RockDoctor]

The transient crater from a multi-km impactor hitting the Earth is tens of km deep. That wouldn't change much regardless of depth of ocean basin that was hit - which average around 4-5 km deep. The really deep toughs of the oceans are no more common than the really high areas of the mountains - very unlikely to be hit. They're also not very wide, so a 10km deep by 100km wide transient crater would extend beyond the sides of the deep ocean trench.

Big impacts don't matter if they're on the continents or on the oceans. They're really good events to watch from a different planet.