A supposed “door” in East Antarctica has been spotted on Google Maps, southeast of Japan's Showa Station research base, and has been generating a series of bizarre theories among users of social networks and online forums since March.
Some even speculated that it was a Bigfoot vacation home or even an abandoned spaceship.
The discovery was made by a user of Reddit (a digital platform classified as a “social news aggregator”), who located the structure in coordinates 69°00'50″S 39°36'22″E He asked the question: “A giant door in Antarctica?”
The “door” in Antarctica is shaking the Internet
Many comments appeared on the Internet. One of them suggested that it might be “an exploded door on a Boeing plane,” referring to a recent aviation accident. Others linked it to the alleged discovery of extraterrestrial artifacts by a US Marine in 2003.
According to a report from tiltjust one of the conspiracy forums on Reddit, which has 2.1 million members, has already received 166 comments and more than 400 reactions with various theories. Six other forums were identified, as well as several videos on TikTok and posts about the topic on X (formerly Twitter).
However, experts quickly dismissed the controversial theories. John Smillie, a professor and volcanologist at the University of Leicester, laughed off these speculations when the newspaper interviewed him. Daily Mail. “What would we do without conspiracy theories?”
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The stranded iceberg is breaking
Analysis of coordinates and historical photographs of the area provided a scientific explanation for what was observed. Bethan Davies, a professor of glaciology at Newcastle University, examined the area on Google Earth Pro and said the “gateway” was located in an area of fast-moving sea ice, near islands and shallow waters. According to her, it is a stranded iceberg that is now slowly melting.
For Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, Davies is right. He explained that this phenomenon results from the flow of ice around a solid subglacial obstacle, as well as being affected by melting, refreezing, and cleavage winds. “Although interesting, this pattern is not unusual or surprising from a glacial perspective.”
Smillie added that the structure appears to have been caused by the erosion of a small rock outcrop exposed by thinning ice. The “snow tails” observed on the sides of the formation indicate the prevailing wind direction in that area.
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