ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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What you're probably thinking is, "Bud, how the hell do the explorers get down to this New Land Unknown you've described in several posts if it's under a mile ice?"

Well . . . I haven't got that worked out yet, but it probably starts with an ice drilling project to get core samples from deep in the ice (they've done that several times in Antarctic). and the drill punches into a gap. The scientist get all excited when they learn it is NOT an underground lake!

They could then lower a laser device down into the hole on a long wire and get back readings that indicate an impossibly large cavern below the ice.

I found out that the mean depth of the Antarctic ice is 1.32 miles. But the thickness of the ice above the New Land Unknown could be much less than that — say about 1,000 feet. Because of the extreme cold below the upper surface (-100° F), the hardness of Antarctic ice is close to 6 Mohs, which is as hard as concrete!

I Googled "How long has Antarctica been frozen?" and got this.
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The polar ice caps melted for a while after that and it wasn't until Africa and Antarctica separated around 160 million years ago that it began to cool again. By 23 million years ago, Antarctica was mostly icy forest and for the last 15 million years, it has been a frozen desert under a thick ice sheet.
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Perfect! A big part of the "icy forest" was miraculously preserved under the ice (somehow) and kept warm by geothermal heat which warms a big lake.

Remember, my fictional New Land Unknown has several conveniently located mountains down the center, and their peaks are embedded in the the ice ceiling, supporting it. I'm no engineer, but I wouldn't be surprised if a 1,000-ft-thick ceiling of ice as hard as concrete might actually hold up.

Just to give you an idea of what I have in mind, I whipped up the picture below with Paint.net in about 20 minutes, using a nice picture of New Zealand with the sky replace by an aerial photo of the North Pole . . . turned upside down.

~ Click on the image to view a larger version.*





Naturally the bright sunlight is all wrong, but you get the idea.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)