What a spot in Antarctica. Majestic Antarctica is the keeper of secrets. Antarctica is a "multipolar" continent

The most severe, most mysterious, least explored continent of the earth is Antarctica. We do not know what lies under its kilometer-long ice shell. Although someone probably has information inaccessible to mere mortals. And keeps silent. Our story is about what the white silence of Antarctica can hide.

antarctic race

The sailors of the Bellingshausen and Lazarev expedition in 1820 were the first to see the shores of the unknown southern land through telescopes. It is Russia that has the honor of discovering the last unexplored continent of the planet. However, in the West lately they do not like to remember this. They are trying to prove that either a Spanish or a British whaler was the first to set foot on "terra incognita". And the point here is not only in the traditional for the West Russophobia, but also in the desire to press the competitor in the struggle for the resources of the Earth's "refrigerator". However, the denial of Russia's priority in the discovery and development of the polar latitudes extends to the northern polar regions. They do not know or prefer not to remember that the expedition of Willem Barents discovered traces of Pomors on Novaya Zemlya, that our sailors went to the shores of Grumant (Spitsbergen) back in the days of Veliky Novgorod. Both the Arctic and the Antarctic are regions where, in the 21st century, a grandiose rivalry between the great powers is unfolding for the remaining untouched founts of minerals, a colossal reservoir of fresh water.

The Russian government approved the Antarctic strategy until 2020. It provides for the construction of new icebreaking ships, the modernization of existing polar stations and the reconstruction of another, previously mothballed, expansion of research in the harsh south of the planet. In the course of studying the mainland, many unexpected things can be found that change our view of the history of earthly civilization.

History lovers with geography, of course, know the names of Dumont d'Urville, Ross,
Scott, Amundsen, who heroically fought and searched on the ice continent. In the 1930s, Germany entered the Antarctic race. Interest in the mysterious land at the South Pole was awakened by their compatriots Heinrich Weber and Otto Gott.

Heinrich Weber, in his book "Ideas of the Southern Land in the Ancient East", argued that Antarctica is the ancestral home of the ancient cultures of the Middle East and South Asia. Otto Gott in his work "Antarctic Civilization" placed on the ancient mainland the cradle of the Nordic race. His book once ended up on the table of one of the leading figures of the Third Reich, Rudolf Hess. Soon, Antarctica became the object of close attention of the Ahnenerbe Institute, which was engaged in the search for traces of disappeared civilizations in various regions of the world. German expeditions led by Alfred Richter, one after another, go to the area of ​​Queen Maud Land, which was claimed by Norway. After the occupation of Norway, the coast and the adjacent waters of "New Swabia" (as the Queen Maud Land was now called) are entirely at the disposal of the Nazi polar explorers. Base 211 was created here, which became a springboard for moving deep into the unknown mainland. Several years of work by the Germans on the continent lead to unexpected results: they manage to discover some under-ice and underwater voids, traces of the existence of a mysterious civilization that left runic inscriptions on the rocks and even a whole dead city (I involuntarily recall Howard Lovecraft's story "The Ridges of Madness", written before the start of German research Antarctica). But is this evidence to be trusted?

Skeptics (and there are many of them) say: all these are fairy tales of esoteric lovers, documents and diaries are fake. Among the skeptics are very authoritative personalities in their field, including the famous polar explorer, State Duma deputy Artur Chilingarov. He is categorically set: there were no bases on the sixth continent, German pilots and sailors simply stuck flags with a swastika into the ice or scattered them from aircraft in order to stake out the territory - just like a predatory beast marks its grounds.

However, do not rush to declare everything that contradicts generally accepted statements as pseudoscience and falsification. Once upon a time, the theory of continental drift, developed by Weber and Gott's compatriot Alfred Wegener, was perceived in academic circles as charlatanism. And today, few people doubt it, and even schoolchildren know that once Antarctica, Australia and South America formed a single whole, and then split into separate continental plates. And in the 18th century, the "immortal" French academics claimed that meteorites were nonsense, because there were no stones in the sky ... until a meteor shower broke out over France, shaming the academics.

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, its Antarctic heritage becomes the object of the claims of the superpowers. The United States immediately after the war sent its ships and planes to the shores of Antarctica. The USSR establishes the Lazarevskaya station on the lands of the former "New Swabia". Meanwhile, other states are joining the Antarctic race.

The mainland is divided like a cake into meridional sectors. The USSR and the USA object to this approach. All-terrain vehicles rush into the heart of the mainland, space satellites photograph its territory, drills bite into the ice cover. By the beginning of the 21st century, it would seem that the mainland had been explored up and down, and there should not be white spots on the map.

White silence of a white spot

Even as a child, I happened to see a map of Antarctica without an ice shell in one popular science yearbook. Mountain ranges, valleys, plains that you want to mentally cover with forests and meadows, populate with animals and intelligent beings, build cities. Since then, the map of the under-ice relief, albeit imperfect, has not caught my eye. Fumbled on the Internet - it's useless. On one of the maps, where the details of the subglacial relief of the mainland are marked, its central part is a huge white spot. But what about aerial and space photography, long-term expeditions? Has this large territory really remained “terra incognita”?

Not only that: those wishing to penetrate into some areas of the mainland are not allowed there by representatives of the special services. So, two Australians, who went to travel through the icy expanses, were overtaken by American helicopters, from which officers came out ... for some reason, NASA. Although, however, behind the uniform of the space department, most likely, were hiding personalities in civilian clothes. The surprised travelers were told that they had come to save them. “But we do not need salvation,” the women wondered. They were very insistently asked to proceed to the helicopter. Then they were talked to and just as insistently asked to keep their mouths shut about everything they could see and hear in the heart of Antarctica. Since then, ladies in Antarctica - not a foot and in every possible way avoid contact with the press.

It is easier to assume that the governments of those countries that have their own interest in Antarctica are hiding some information that could damage their interests. Well, for example, information about mineral deposits. He staked out the deposit - and classified it so that competitors would not sniff out. Is it logical? Quite.

And in the ice, bacteria unknown to science can wait in the wings. So, as a result of drilling, a lake was discovered under the ice near the Russian polar station Vostok, and microorganisms were found in it. What if among them there are pathogens against which a person has no immunity? They will break free from the ice captivity and then... I can't help but recall Valery Bryusov's fantastic story "The Republic of the Southern Cross", in which the inhabitants of the Antarctic colonial cities are suddenly struck by an epidemic of psychosis.

Meanwhile, in addition to economic interests and medical security, there is SOMETHING around which there is a conspiracy of silence, only occasionally broken.

Ridges and depths of madness

Fragmentary facts add up to a mysterious and frightening picture. Perhaps some of this information is just speculation and fantasy. But don't rush.

The American expedition to Antarctica, undertaken in 1947 in the wake of the Ahnenerbe, is faced with some kind of hostile force ... US Navy ships are attacked by disc-shaped objects suddenly emerging from the sea, striking not with projectiles, but with some kind of rays. What is this? Nazi secret weapon? Alien base? An underwater or subglacial civilization disturbed by human interference?

Shortly after the war, Soviet polar explorers in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bBase 211 find ... an oasis with a hot spring, traces of human activity, including crops (in Antarctica!), Buildings resembling hangars. A few years later, a new expedition does not find anything! Smooth white field, snowy desert.

Another Soviet expedition in the icy expanses was attacked by plasma-like objects - either fireballs, or life forms unknown to science.

Otto Gott wrote in his book: “Studying the history of the southern continent, it is impossible to get rid of the idea that the brave pioneers had to face some unknown force that did not want to discover itself, but, as far as it could, prevented the exploration of Antarctica, and quite consciously and purposefully . To understand the nature of this force, we must plunge into a past so distant that there is no written evidence of it, at least not in our country.

Let's remember these words and continue our acquaintance with the "crazy" facts.

According to the Russian polar explorer Pyotr Pol, in the pictures taken from space, geological quarries were discovered ... at the bottom of the Antarctic seas, under the shelf ice. These traces of human activity extend for many tens of kilometers. Is it human? After all, the shelf was dry land many millions of years ago, when Homo sapiens did not yet exist on earth!

And who built in the depths of Antarctica a 28-meter structure similar to a medieval tower of hundreds of ice blocks, which appeared to the bewildered gaze of Norwegian polar explorers after a hurricane that freed the “ice castle” from snow drifts?

Science fiction literature about Antarctica also has its own mysteries. The heroes of Jules Verne's novel The Ice Sphinx cross the sixth continent on ships along a long strait that divides Antarctica into two large islands. Only at the very end of the twentieth century, scientists found that the mainland is actually an archipelago, separated by a strait.

On the map of Philippe Buache (1737), Antarctica is represented by several large islands and an inland sea near the pole. Perhaps Jules Verne borrowed geographical realities from an old map. But how could a cartographer, who lived at a time when the mainland had not yet been discovered, know them?!

Let's get back to our cards. Even more ancient and amazing. Our journey through the ridges of madness continues.

Mysterious card

Admiral Piri Reis lived in Turkey in the 16th century. His name would have been known only to a narrow circle of specialists in Ottoman history, if it were not for the map belonging to the admiral, discovered by scientists in the Sultan's Topkapu Palace in Constantinople. It depicts the world known to the navigators of the Magellan era: Europe, Asia, part of Africa, South America ... and Antarctica. Yes, the coast of the mainland, discovered only in 1820! And at the same time, the southern continent is shown free of ice, with images of mountains, rivers, animals, which are accompanied by inscriptions. The relief of Antarctica, reflected on the Turkish map, corresponds to the data of American aerial photography.

Explanations to the map written in Arabic script tell: the longest day here is 22 hours, the shortest is two (which is natural, if we are talking about the polar latitudes). It is very hot during the day (in Antarctica!), and dew falls at night. “White-headed monsters” (?) live here, and local residents graze “six-horned bulls”. Further lie the ruins, in which huge snakes live.

You know what shocked me the most? Not heat near the Pole, not snakes and ruins, but a six-horned beast! You know, since childhood I was fond of paleontology. So, six-horned ungulates really lived on earth - 40-50 million years ago. Wintatherium (in translation - “amazing beast”) is not a bull and not even a relative of a bull, but something like him: he wandered in the meadows along the banks of ancient rivers and plucked grass.

It appears that several different medieval portolans were used in the compilation of the Piri Reis map. This assumption is supported by the fact that the Amazon on the Reis map is shown twice - an obvious blunder of the cartographer.

Another map detail that catches the eye: Antarctica and South America are connected
there is no isthmus separating them from the Drake Strait. Yes, they really were one land - about the time when six-horned wintertathers roamed the earth. Even earlier (in the era of dinosaurs), Australia also connected with Antarctica. From America to Australia through Antarctica there was a migration of marsupials and ostriches.

So the realities of what era is displayed by the mysterious map of 1513?!

Palm trees and penguins

The pre-glacial fauna of Antarctica is known to us from the excavations of paleontologists on Seymour Island off the coast of the now deserted mainland. Lived then in Antarctica, as now, various types of penguins, some of which reached enormous sizes, as well as marsupials, primitive ungulates - for example, litopterns, elephant-like astrapoteri, ostriches and remotely resembling fororacos with deadly beaks-axes, edentulous (relatives of now living anteaters and sloths). Paleontologists believe that it was from Antarctica that the ancestors of ducks scattered around the world. The forests were noisy: palm trees, southern beeches, araucaria, eucalyptus trees… Why not subtropics, right? Palm trees, and under them - penguins.

The heat-loving flora and fauna at that time was also widespread in the Arctic: fossilized remains of tropical plants, crocodiles, turtles, and ancient rhinos were found on Ellesmere Land (Canada). On Svalbard, in the coal seams, a trace of a large ungulate was recently found - perhaps a relative of the untatherium. Such a climate dominated the entire globe. Perhaps the reason for this is the tilt of the earth's axis: the planet, as it were, "lyed on its side", and the natural conditions from the poles to the equator were approximately the same. About 35 million years ago, it became noticeably colder in Antarctica. The climate has also changed in the northern hemisphere. What happened?

I dare to offer my version. Huge Popigai crater found in Taimyr
whose age almost coincides with the onset of progressive cooling. Perhaps a large celestial body hit the physiognomy of the planet so that the earth's axis shifted. IN
the same era there are dramatic changes in the fauna. For example, brontotheres are disappearing - huge rhinos the size of an elephant, which once shook Asia with their stomp. And many other animals leave the historical arena. Ice appears at the poles.

Antarctica was gradually covered with an ice shell. Three million years ago, vast areas of land were free of ice; along with the tundra in Antarctica, there were still forests; near the pole (!) scientists found the stumps of ancient trees. A million years ago, ice almost completely hid Antarctica. And today 98% of its territory is solid ice. A modern man is at most a hundred thousand years old. So who tended the six-horned cattle, who left the ruins marked on the medieval map?

Those who were before

In the sixties, the Peruvian doctor Javier Cabrera received from an Indian, a collector of antiquities, from the town of Iki, several thousand andesite pebbles, on which absolutely incredible pictures were engraved: some human-like creatures hunt dinosaurs (!), look at the moon through a telescope, do a transplant hearts ... They were not like the Incas and Quechua Indians, and in general they only remotely resembled Homo sapiens. More likely a Neanderthal - but they did not live in South America. Or some intelligent monkey. Or…

The surprising find was quickly declared a falsification. Say, someone walked over the stones with a drill and cut out fantastic pictures to fool scientists. But you must admit that painting thousands of stones is a big waste of time and effort; the joker had to work for many days, tirelessly - for what: a practical joke? But maybe only a part of the stones (say, those depicting people and dinosaurs) are fabricated and mixed with genuine artifacts? However, as experts have established, all the drawings are covered with patina, so they were obviously not made on the eve of the opening.

And now about who the intelligent humanoid creatures depicted on the stones could actually be. I mentioned in passing that Antarctica served as a kind of transshipment base for marsupials migrating from America to Australia. On this mainland you will find analogues of most orders and families of mammals of the Old World: marsupial squirrels, marsupial badgers, marsupial martens, marsupial mice, marsupial flying squirrels, marsupial bears. And once lived marsupial wolves, lions, leopards. In South America, millions of years ago, such goodness was also in abundance. In this far from complete list, there is not enough ... you guessed who? Sapiens marsupials!

But what if in Antarctica, connected with South America by a land "bridge", over millions of years of evolution, intelligent marsupials appeared that managed to create a civilization of a quite decent level? They built cities, mastered the natural resources of the southern mainland, developed science, art, and writing. They made maps of their land, visited neighboring continents, where they left evidence of a visit. What destroyed them? Glaciers inexorably advancing from the Antarctic mountains? Wars? Epidemics? Or the formidable forces of nature unleashed by the marsupial people?

American science fiction writer Howard Lovecraft wrote a lot about "Those who were before" - a certain
non-humanoid race that inhabited the southern mainland from time immemorial. According to Lovecraft, the Antarctic cities were built by some kind of thinking mollusks that arrived on Earth from outer space. Rave? Well, the writer was very peculiar. However, the very idea of ​​a pre-human, pre-glacial civilization in Antarctica does not seem entirely crazy. Modern authors also turn to it - suffice it to name James Rollins with his novel "The Cave", where in underground voids under the Antarctic continent, researchers encounter a civilization of marsupials (more precisely, egg-laying) and surviving dinosaurs. The remains of lizards, by the way, were also discovered by paleontologists in Antarctica.

This article was published a few years ago in the pages of the People Fly magazine. Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge and sensational information has been added. Let's go back to South America. “In 1928, archaeologists made an amazing discovery: in the Paracas desert (southern coast of Peru), they found a burial site with a complex structure, which contained unusual human remains. The skulls of the dead looked unusually large and had an elongated shape. In total, more than 300 skulls were discovered, about 3 thousand years old.
Despite the fact that the discovery was made back in the 20s of the last century, DNA analysis was carried out relatively recently, and the results were very unexpected.
First of all, I would like to note that in many cultures, deliberate deformation of the skull was practiced. For example, the South African tribes of small children pulled the head with a cloth or clamped it between the planks, as a result of which the shape of the skull changed over time, but the weight, volume, or any other standard characteristics remained unchanged.
But the situation with the Paracas skulls is completely different. Their volume is a quarter larger than that of modern people, moreover, they are 60% heavier. This prompted scientists to think that the reason for the change in shape was not intentional deformation at all.

The researchers also noted that differences in structure were identified: the Paracas skulls have one parietal surface, while humans have two, the source writes.
In order to deal with all this, the director of the Museum of the History of Paracas named Juan Navarro decided to send samples for genetic analysis.
During the tests, mitochondrial DNA was found, which is inherited from the mother, with an unknown mutation. Interestingly, this mutation does not occur in humans, primates, or any other animals.
Here's what Brian Foster from the genetics lab thinks about it:
“This mutation suggests that we are dealing with a new humanoid creature, and very far from Homo sapiens, Neanderthal or Denisov man.”
Foster argues that in creatures with such skulls, genetic differences from humans were very noticeable, which is why the interbreeding of representatives of these species would hardly be possible.
The results of the analysis left more questions than they answered. Who were these mysterious creatures and what did they look like at the beginning of their evolutionary path?

So, before us are mutated humanoids? James Rollins comes to mind again, this time his novel "Amazonia", where an Indian tribe, as a result of a genetic mutation, becomes a separate biological species. And also - the stories of the Mezen coast-dwellers about a village lost among the subpolar swamps, where for hundreds (or perhaps thousands?) of years people have lived cut off from the outside world, whose contacts with the outside world are episodic. Judging by the stories, these inhabitants of the dense taybola lead an extremely secluded life and do not marry Pomeranian peasants.

Okay, let's put aside science fiction novels and peasant tales. Let's take a closer look at the reconstructed images of Paracas humanoids. Their heads are remarkably reminiscent of images from Ica stones!

Perhaps the secret services of different countries are hiding from mankind some evidence of the activity of a civilization that has long disappeared from the face of the planet? Hence the white spots on the maps, and the strange silence of the travelers, forced to remain silent about what they happened to see among the ice of the sixth continent.

What's at the end of the tunnel?

Finally, the craziest hypothesis that has long been discussed in popular science literature: is Antarctica (as, indeed, the Arctic) an entrance to a parallel world, another corner of our Universe, or even an entrance to another universe unknown to us? A world from where flying disks appear, plasma life forms, builders of ice palaces of unknown purpose, stone pavements going under the thickness of the glacier ... and something else that two unlucky Australians pledged to keep silent about.

"The worm passage" - this is how the researchers of the unknown dubbed this tunnel between the worlds. Crossed, flew over an invisible line - and you are in another corner of the galaxy, on an unknown planet, in another time. What will we encounter there? Will this breakthrough be good or bad for people? And isn't the entrance to such a tunnel hiding a white spot on the map?

I would very much like our compatriots to be the pioneers of the entrance to the unknown world - after all, it is Russia that has the honor of discovering Antarctica. But we should not forget the warnings of Howard Lovecraft:

“These truly cosmic secrets should not have become the property of the general public, the subject of scoffing ... In the interests of the safety of mankind, one cannot unceremoniously look into the hidden corners of the planet and penetrate into its bottomless depths.”

But the temptation is always great to make the secret clear to everyone!

Anatoly Bednov

Polar scientists and weather forecasters jokingly call Antarctica the “weather kitchen” for the entire planet. Experts know exactly when the conditions are more or less favorable for traveling in the vicinity of the South Geographic Pole. Ordinary people are often at a loss: “What is the warmest month beyond the Antarctic Circle? Are there positive temperatures in Antarctica? It is not easy to figure out what is going on in the "kitchen of the weather", everything is different here, not like on other continents.

The white continent becomes more accessible

Until the 20s of the 19th century, scientists and travelers argued about the existence of land near the South Pole. Many believed the famous navigator J. Cook, who declared that the territory south of 71 ° S was inaccessible. sh. The Russian expedition to Antarctica on the ships "Vostok" and "Mirny" on January 20, 1820 discovered unknown lands, despite many insurmountable obstacles. After 120 years, the first excursions to the waters of the Antarctic began, another 50 years were needed for the development of a new tourist destination.

Hundreds of adventurers go every year to the white continent. Expeditions and tours are held during the most favorable period of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. What is the warmest month in Antarctica? - the townsfolk ask in bewilderment. Of course, at school everyone was taught the climate of the southern continents, where our winter is summer. It is difficult for many to say exactly which month is better for a tour to the South Pole.

Antarctica and the Arctic - two opposites

Let us briefly dwell on geographical terminology. The land in the south owes its name to the Arctic. This word, denoting the northern polar latitudes of the Earth, of Greek origin, is given according to the position. sh. blocked by the cold waters of the ocean, ice and snow.

The territory in the south, opposite the northern polar region, was called the "Ant (and) Arctic", the mainland - Antarctica. The South Pole is located almost in the center of the continent. The geographic coordinate of this point is 90°S. sh.

The southernmost and coldest continent

Severe climate south of latitude 70°S. sh. called "subantarctic" and "antarctic". During the year, areas of the surface free from snow and ice warm up better on the coast, in oases. In winter, on the coast and in the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula, the temperature is comparable to the Arctic zone (from -10 to -40 °C). In the summer in Antarctica, you can find many islands of land among the icy silence, where the thermometer rises above 0 ° C.

Features of the climate of Antarctica:

• Winter lasts from June to August, this is the coldest period.
• The average temperature in July is between -65° and -75°C.
• Summer comes in December and lasts until February.
• The temperature in the continental part rises from -50 to -30 °C.
• The warmest month in Antarctica is January.
• The polar day lasts from September to March. The sun remains above the horizon, warming the surface more.
• The night lasts for almost half a year, illuminated by bright flashes of the aurora borealis.

Inland climate

Antarctica is a continent where regular meteorological observations began later than on the inhabited continents. For the last 50-60 years, the data obtained at stations in the mainland and coastal parts of the white continent have received special attention from weather forecasters. The coldest regions are the southeastern ones, where the average annual temperature is about -60 °C. The temperature maximum in the area of ​​the Vostok station is -13.6 ° C (December 16, 1957). The average monthly temperature from April to September is below -70 °C.

The weather at the South Pole is a bit milder, this part of the mainland is closer to the coast. Meteorological information at a point with a coordinate of 90 ° S. sh. collected by employees of the American Amundsen-Scott station, named after the Napoleon of the Polar Countries, Norwegian Roald Amundsen and another discoverer of the South Pole, an Englishman. The station was founded in 1956 at the South Pole and gradually “drifts” towards the coast. Antarctica has the shape of a dome, the glacier slowly slides from the center to the edges, where its pieces break under their own weight and fall into the ocean. In winter, near the Amundsen-Scott station, the thermometer shows -60 ° C, in January it does not fall below -30 ° C.

Weather on the coast of Antarctica

In summer, on the shores of the oceans and seas washing the southernmost continent, it is much warmer than in continental regions. Over the Antarctic Peninsula, the air warms up to +10 °C in December-February. The average January temperature is +1.5 °C. In winter, in July, the average monthly temperature drops to -8°C on the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, to -35°C - in the area of ​​the margin of the Ross Glacier. One of the climatic anomalies of the mainland is cold katabatic winds, the speed of which reaches 12-90 m/s on the coast (hurricanes). Rain, like high temperatures, is rare in Antarctica. Most of the moisture reaches the continent in the form of snow.

Antarctica is a "multipolar" continent

"Pole of inaccessibility" - this is the name that Russian polar explorers came up with for their station. The Soviet expedition to Antarctica carried out scientific research beyond the 82nd parallel in the most difficult for movement high-mountainous region of the mainland.

On the mainland there is the "Pole of Cold" - this is the area of ​​​​the research Antarctic station "Vostok", created in Soviet times. Here, with the help of ground-based measuring equipment, the lowest air temperature in the history of meteorological observations was recorded: -89.2 ° С (1983).

Researchers from the United States, armed with satellite data, tried to challenge the "record" of the Russian station. In December 2013, the Americans reported that they were in the area of ​​the Fuji Dome station, owned by Japan. The absolute minimum temperature for Antarctica was -91.2 ° C, which was found out using a satellite.

Antarctica is the prototype of a "multipolar" world without borders and an arms race. The international legal regime was introduced here in 1961. The mainland and parts of the oceans adjacent to it do not belong to the states parties to the treaty and observer countries, they can only conduct scientific research.

What to do in the warmest month in Antarctica and in the Arctic

Exploration of the North and South Poles, the white continent in the south and the ice of the Arctic has always been the lot of the brave and patient. Today there are quite a few people on the planet who have been to Antarctica more than 100 times. Some carry out scientific research, others provide transport accessibility, security, and provide medical care.

There are more and more people who go beyond the Antarctic Circle in search of fantastic experiences. Tours to Antarctica at first glance seem like pure adventurism. In fact, all flights, sailings and excursions are prepared at the highest level. Polar scientists act as consultants, icebreakers and research vessels are used.

The peak of the "tourist season" in the polar regions

The high cost of a flight or a sea cruise to the North and South Poles, the high costs of organizing expeditions do not stop modern adventurers. Let's rephrase the famous statement of the foreman from the film "Operation" Y "and other adventures of Shurik." Now dozens of ships with tourists "plow the expanses" of the Arctic and Antarctic. The day is not far off when there will be many more of them. The "high season" at the South Pole begins in December and lasts until January. At this time, the hemisphere is better illuminated by the Sun, the height of summer comes.

The weather at the North Pole is warmer than at the South. The climate also depends on the small angle of inclination of the Sun above the horizon, the strong reflectivity of snow and ice. The temperature in winter in December-February and in summer in June-August is much higher than in Antarctica. The average winter temperature at the North Pole is -30°C. Often there are thaws (−26 ° C), cold snaps (−43 ° C). The average summer temperature is around 0°C.

Are there any "white spots" in Antarctica?

The era of the Great geographical discoveries was completed in the 20s of the last century by S. V. Obruchev, the son of the scientist, traveler and writer V. A. Obruchev (“Geology of Siberia”, “Sannikov Land”). Sergei Obruchev explored the last "blank spots" in Eastern Siberia and Chukotka. By that time, a significant part of Antarctica was still little studied.

Gradually, the researchers found out the thickness of the glacier and the features of the under-ice relief, collected detailed meteorological information. Many "white spots" on the sixth continent have been closed, but the south polar continent still holds many mysteries and secrets. For avid travelers, a warm month in Antarctica is a new experience, an opportunity to see rare representatives of the animal world and take unique photographs.

Are expeditions to the Antarctic Circle dangerous?

There are reports of any unforeseen situations with tourists in Antarctica, but rarely. For example, in November 2009, the Russian ship Kapitan Khlebnikov got stuck in the ice off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Among its passengers were tourists and a film crew from the UK. The reason for the stop was the weather, but as soon as the tide began, the ship managed to free itself from the "white captivity". A Russian icebreaker with English tourists and television crews on board made a cruise in the region (West Antarctica).

A map of the mainland and the Antarctic Peninsula gives an idea of ​​the location of the sea, but only experienced pilots can navigate ships between icebergs. In December 2013, drifting ice stopped the Russian ship Akademik Shokalsky. Passengers were evacuated aboard the Australian icebreaker in early January 2014.

Tour to Antarctica - a high portion of adrenaline is provided

According to the researchers of Antarctica, the mainland is suitable for organizing cruises, dog sledding and other outdoor activities. The history of sea cruises in Antarctica has more than 90 years. In 1920, enterprising ship owners began to take on board the first tourists who wanted to see the white continent with their own eyes. The cost of modern cruises and other types of travel to the shores of Antarctica and the South Pole ranges from 5,000 to 40,000 dollars. The price of the tour depends on many factors, not the last role is played by the complexity of the route, excursion support.

Part four. "WHITE SPOT" OF ANTARCTIA