Antarctica has a river, huge waterfalls and flowers bloom (5 photos)

Antarctica is the sixth continent that was not known about for a long time and the presence of which was suspected solely on the grounds that "on at the other end of the earth "there must also be some large piece of land, because otherwise the earth would turn over. But even when people have already been there, exploration of this ice-covered area was yet to be generations.





Onyx River in Antarctica

For example, for a long time there was an opinion that Antarctica is just a large layer of ice on top of a huge stone surfaces. Of course, there were many speculations about what might be there. some traces of ancient civilizations are hidden, etc.

At the same time, information that there is no information in Antarctica only lakes hidden under the ice, but also rivers - many still have causes surprise.

True, there is only one river, and even that does not always flow, but still. They call this river Onyx, and the water flows in it only in summer, which is Antarctica is just ending in the days that we are ending winter - that is, summer in Antarctica lasts from December to February.



The bed of the Onyx River among the Antarctic ice

What is a river in Antarctica? In a way, it looks like a mountain rivers, when the snow on the tops of the mountains begins to melt and the water rushes down. Particularly turbulent streams are not observed here, but the length of the streams can be very large - the channel of the same Onyx river has a length of about 30 kilometers.

And there are also numerous streams and small rivers that can have a length of up to 130 km and the water of which forms various kinds temporary reservoirs, the width of which can reach 80 kilometers. On such ponds even form waterfalls, some of which are as wide as over 100 meters.





Waterfall in Antarctica

However, if all these streams and rivers flow directly on the icy surface, cutting a "rut" for itself, then Onyx in some places grinds through the ice to the earth itself. More precisely, to the stones - its channel passes through stony valleys where water drains and continues to move towards the edge mainland. The center of Antarctica is higher than its shores - so both water and ice move north, towards the ocean.

By the way, for the same reason, the so-called ice shelves (which do not lie on land, but already on the surface ocean).

In the case of our southern continent, such glaciers make up more than 15 percent of its area - 930 thousand of more than 14 million square kilometers.



Ice shelves in Antarctica

The most interesting thing is that after a long observation it turned out that that at least part of the reservoirs in Antarctica is annually formed in one and the same place. In a certain sense, this just protects the glaciers from thawing and destruction - it turns out that the formed network rivers act as a drainage system.

However, it is now said as a given that Antarctica is still thawing a little - parts are breaking off ice shelves, where the ice used to lie, the earth is visible and even flowers bloom.



Flowers in Antarctica