A team of British researchers claim they have discovered a large
rift valley beneath an Antarctic ice sheet that could be bigger
than the Grand Canyon. The findings were published this week in
the journal Nature and state that the valley is located in West
Antarctica. "If you stripped away all of the ice here today,
you'd see a feature every bit as dramatic as the huge rift
valleys you see in Africa and in size as significant as the
Grand Canyon," Robert Bingham, lead researcher and glaciologist
at the University of Aberdeen, said in a press release. The
researchers used a new method which utilizes ice-penetrating
radar over an ice sheet that was more than 1,500 sq. miles in
size. But when scientists looked at the data they discovered
that the part of Antarctica that is losing the most ice is
located over the deep sea valley. Fausto Ferraccioli, a
geophysicist from the British Antarctic Survey, explained that
the valley allows warmer ocean water to reach glacial ice, which
increases the rate of melting seen o