Antarctica is Hot

The Landsat 7 image of Antarctica, the most detailed view from Space yet.

Having found polar "hot spots" on Saturn and even its little Moon Enceladus, this blog has often wondered whether Earth's Antarctic is "hot" too. Beneath the ice we have found huge subsurface lakes, indicating a hideden source of heat. Last year Cassini found a lake the size of Lake Ontario at Titan's South Pole. Today in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the Antarctic Survey report that a volcano beneath the ice erupted 2000 years ago. It may still be active today.

The volcano in the Hudson Mountains must have created a plume 12 km high. It occurred close to the Pine Island Glacier, where movement of ice toward the sea has been accelerating inrecent years. Heat from such subsurface sources may even affect Earth's climate. One wonders whether the North Pole is also a hot spot.

In 1935 KING KONG producer Merian C. Cooper made a film of H. Ryder Haggard's SHE. In this version there is a tropical kingdom at the North Pole, warmed by a source of energy far greater than anything man has imagined. Many other fantasy stories have placed similiar oases here at the South Pole. We have a subconscious desire to seek hot spots in the cold places. If Earth's poles are indeed "hot spots," it is one more indication that our planet contains a tiny Black Hole.