A vast and mysterious ‘door’ that was recently sighted in the frozen wastes of Antarctica using Google Maps may have been explained.
The bizarre anomaly was spotted in the region of Queen Maud Land, situated close to Showa Station, a Japanese facility on East Ongul Island.
It has also led to a number of equally strange conspiracy theories, with internet users claiming that the door is everything from “Bigfoot’s house” to a Star Trek shuttle.
Another notable theory was one that suggested that the door is the entrance to a clandestine base where top leaders, aliens and mole men take shelter from the elements.
Sadly, the true answer could be something far more mundane, according to Professor Bethan Davies, a lecturer in glaciology at Newcastle University.
Professor Davies checked out the coordinates on Google Earth Pro and revealed that “it is an iceberg that has run aground and is melting in place.”
The sighting of the ‘door’ was initially made by a Reddit user at the coordinates 69°00’50″S 39°36’22″E, sparking online chatter about the origin of the puzzling structure, reports the Daily Mail.
In addition to the more outlandish theories, one user suggested it could be an aircraft door, while another said it may be a “big seed vault like the one in Svalbard, Norway”.
Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and most remote continent on the planet and holds 90% of the world’s ice, according to the British Antarctic Survey.
The Explorer’s Passage says the lowest recorded temperature on the continent was -128.6° F (-89.2° C) and many areas haven’t been fully explored.
The beautiful but perilous continent is also no stranger to other, more explainable bizarre phenomena, including a glacier pouring with blood-red meltwater and a pyramid-shaped mountain, according to Greenpeace.
There’s also an unnerving phenomenon known as the Antarctic singing ice; scientists discovered an inaudible humming sound using seismic sensors at the Ross Ice Shelf, although this reportedly occurs when the wind blows across the shelf.
It also isn’t the first time that people have spotted unusual things around the world using Google. Some of the stranger discoveries include a huge pentagram in Kazakhstan and what appeared to be human remains in Chernobyl, reports the Mirror.
