Is this the site of a giant UFO crash?
About 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period an asteroid called Chicxulub (pronounced Cheeksalahb) crashed into what is now Mexico.
The asteroid was 10 to 15 kilometres in diameter (6 to 9 miles) and left a crater over 150 km (93 miles) across. It is generally agreed among scientists that this asteroid was responsible for the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs.
But in 2006, NASA satellites, as part of the Gravity Research and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, detected gravitational changes in an area of Antarctica which indicated the presence of a huge object sitting in the middle of a 483 km (300 mile) wide impact crater (you can fit the state of Ohio into it).
It is buried under 800 metres of ice and is known as the Wilkes Land Gravity Anomaly, centred on north central Wilkes Land in Antarctica.
This impact is much bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs and we know that about 250 million years ago in the Permian Period of Earth’s history some 90% of marine life and nearly 75% of terrestrial life on Earth was wiped out (the Permian-Triassic extinction – largest extinction event ever).
It is believed that this event may have been caused by the suspected asteroid at the centre of the Wilkes Land crater.
There is even speculation that the impact of this asteroid was responsible for the breakup of the Gondwanaland supercontinent and the separation of Australia from Antarctica.
None of this has been confirmed yet but that hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs from wading in to the debate. Some claim it is a giant UFO, a city under the ice or a portal to the ‘Hollow Earth’.
Somehow I doubt it but we will just have to wait and see.
Antarctic aliens in popular fiction
Books
According to the Gaia website (https://www.gaia.com/article/have-aliens-visited-antarctica). “Between the time of the Great Depression and WWII, Admiral Richard E. Byrd of the U.S. Navy pioneered explorations of both poles. After a multitude of trips to the arctic territories, there is one Byrd narrative that sticks out more than the rest: his record-setting flight over the North Pole.
According to an alleged diary entry written during his polar flight, Byrd came across a warm, lush climate with Mammoth-like creatures and an ancient human race that had been residing within the Earth.
His plane was commandeered mid-air and landed for him by some entity — what some say were Antarctic aliens, or what others claim where a race of entities living inside the Earth who intercepted his plane with saucer-shaped aircraft. Upon landing, he was met by emissaries of some previously unknown civilization, who expressed their concern about humanity’s use of atomic bombs during WWII and employed Byrd as their ambassador to return to the U.S. government and relay their sentiment”.
Some people believe this diary actually exists and is a true version of events. I am totally unconvinced by this one as there is no proof that the diary actually exists or that Admiral Byrd actually wrote a secret diary which is why I am putting it in this section on popular fiction. He never did make a flight to the North Pole in 1947 as he was down south at the time and the North Pole at that time of year that he was supposed to have gone there was in complete darkness, as it was winter. The first mention of this supposed flight was by a man called Giannini in 1959 with the publication of his book ‘Worlds beyond the Poles: Physical Continuity of the Universe’. There was a diary produced as well but it was a fake, possibly made by Giannini to back up his claims and has now entered into popular myth.
A number of books have an Antarctic Alien theme and this is just a brief selection that you might want to look out for: 1)The Thing under the Ice. Marshall Field. 2) End Game (Harbingers Book) Alton Gansky Amaris Media International. 3) Ice Rift – Salvage, Ben Hammott. www.benhammottbooks.com, 2017. 4) Subhuman – A Unit 51 Novel. New York: Pinnacle Books (Kensington Publishing), 2017. 5) Antarctica Infiltration, Lee Swift & Lana McLemore, Kindle Edit. Hammott, Ben. Ice Rift. www.benhammottbooks.com, 2016. 6) Ice. Kevin Tinto. Tiburon (California): Three Dog Publishing. Kindle Edition.
TV series
My favourite and one of the longest running sci-fi series of all time was the series ‘Stargate‘ based on the movie. At one point well into the series a second stargate is found in Antarctica and it controls defences that can destroy an alien invasion. Antarctica also appears in the pilot episode of Stargate:Atlantis.
In the fourth season of Dr Who in 1966 in the second serial entitled ‘The Tenth Planet’ ,Aliens (Cybermen) attack an Antarctic base though much of this material has been lost due to the previous policy of the BBC of destroying earlier film in their archives. Antarctica was also featured in another Doctor Who episode in 1976 called ‘Seeds of Doom’.
Movies
A number of films dealing with Aliens in Antarctica have been produced. A few that come to mind are John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing‘(1982), a great movie that was very under-rated at the time, then there is ‘Alien vs Predator‘ (2004), ‘Alien Hunter‘(2003) and ‘The X-files (film)‘(1998). There are more . of course because Antarctica is a great place to set a sci-fi alien film since many people know little about the place (some even think that you can’t go there – you can), it is exotic and has a certain amount of mystery about it since much of it is unexplored.