Word: antarctica
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...than they are today (all that extra water is locked up in ice). During interglacial periods - we are enjoying one now, East Coast blizzards notwithstanding - the ice sheets retreat, the glaciers melt and sea level rises. The expansive but quickly melting ice sheets of Greenland, the North Pole and Antarctica are all that is left of our last glacial period, which reached its peak about 20,000 years...
More often associated with penguins and whales than science and peace, 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice - much of which is a mile and a half deep. The continent holds the record for the coldest temperature in recorded history: a numbing -128.6°F on July 21, 1983, in the middle of the southern hemisphere's winter. Nearly one and a half times as large as the United States, Antarctica is geologically classified as a desert, garnering less than an inch of precipitation each year. It is the coldest, driest and windiest continent, not to mention the highest - Antarctica...
Scientists have suspected the existence of a southern landmass that balanced the globe's northern continents since as early as 150 A.D., when Greek astronomer Ptolemy suggested the existence of a "unknown southern land." But no humans actually set eyes on Antarctica until 1820. In a great race to the bottom of the world, ships from Russia, Britain and the U.S. all spotted the landmass within months of one another in 1820. The first explorer to discover Antarctica is widely believed to have been Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, whose expedition first spotted land in January 1820. But further...
...Antarctica has no permanent residents, just the 1,000 to 5,000 scientists who staff its research centers, usually for a few months at a time. But more and more are coming to visit: more than 45,000 tourists visited Antarctica during its most recent summer, and on average about 30,000 visitors flock to the frigid continent each year. Trips don't come cheap: a round-trip ticket - most likely by cruise ship - to the bottom of the earth can cost between $5,000 and $10,000. Nevertheless, at least five people have been born in Antarctica, the first...
Read "East Antarctica, Long Stable, Is Now Losing...