Vast canyon found entombed under Greenland ice
A vast and previously unmapped gorge 800 metres deep has been found under ice in Greenland, comparable in size to parts of the Grand Canyon in the United States, scientists said.
A vast and previously unmapped gorge 800 metres deep has been found under ice in Greenland, comparable in size to parts of the Grand Canyon in the United States, scientists said.
Other studies have also revealed a rift valley entombed in Antarctica’s ice last year that scientists said may be speeding the flow of ice towards the sea, and a jagged “ghost range” of mountains buried in Antarctica in 2009 similar to the Alps.
“It’s remarkable to find something like this when many people believe the surface of the Earth is so well mapped,” lead author Jonathan Bamber, of the University of Bristol in England, said of the canyon described in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
“On land, Google Street View has photographed just about every building in every major city,” he said of the study, using ice-penetrating radar and carried out with colleagues in Canada and Italy.
The canyon is 750km long in central and north Greenland and comparable in scale to parts of the Grand Canyon that is twice as deep – 1.6km – at its deepest, they wrote. The Greenland canyon is buried under about 2km of ice.