Massive ‘Grand Canyon’ Found Hidden Beneath Greenland’s Ice

There’s a “Chuck Norris fact” that says Chuck once went skydiving but promised never to do it again, saying one Grand Canyon is enough. But Chuck must have taken another jump millions of years ago.

Data gathered by NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an aerial science observation mission, has uncovered a previously unknown massive canyon in Greenland, hidden under a kilometer of ice.

The canyon, found by airborne radar data, has the same characteristics of a winding river channel like the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It is at least 750 kilometers (460 miles) long, making it longer than the Grand Canyon. In some places, it is as deep as 800 meters (2,600 feet), on scale with parts of the Grand Canyon. This immense feature is thought to predate the ice sheet that has covered Greenland for the last few million years.

“One might assume that the landscape of the Earth has been fully explored and mapped,” said Jonathan Bamber, professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the study. “Our research shows there’s still a lot left to discover.”

While additional airborne radar data was used, the majority of the data was collected by IceBridge flights over Greenland during flights from 2009 to 2013. IceBridge’s Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder can see through vast layers of ice to measure its thickness and the shape of bedrock below.

In their analysis of the radar data, Bamber and his team discovered a continuous bedrock canyon that extends from almost the center of the island and ends beneath the Petermann Glacier fjord in northern Greenland.

At certain frequencies, radio waves can travel through the ice and bounce off the bedrock underneath. The amount of time the radio waves took to bounce back helped researchers determine the depth of the canyon. The longer it took, the deeper the bedrock feature.

The researchers believe the canyon plays an important role in transporting sub-glacial meltwater from the interior of Greenland to the edge of the ice sheet into the ocean. Evidence suggests that before the presence of the ice sheet, as much as 4 million years ago, water flowed in the canyon from the interior to the coast and was a major river system.

“It is quite remarkable that a channel the size of the Grand Canyon is discovered in the 21st century below the Greenland ice sheet,” said Studinger. “It shows how little we still know about the bedrock below large continental ice sheets.”

The IceBridge campaign will return to Greenland in March 2014 to continue collecting data on land and sea ice in the Arctic using a suite of instruments that includes ice-penetrating radar.

Bamber and his team had their findings published in the journal Science.

Source: NASA

35 Replies to “Massive ‘Grand Canyon’ Found Hidden Beneath Greenland’s Ice”

  1. Evolutionists believe time – erosion create life – canyons
    Their brains are saturated in denial – foolishness

      1. We live in a troubled world. Science has not turned it into a Paradise. Neither have secularism nor humanism helped. More often parts of the globe seem like hell. Violence, corruption, impurity, blasphemy, theft, mendacity, and covetousness prevail in every land. They exist in the very forces appointed to control such evils—the state and the church.

        http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Worldwide-Calvary-AntiChrist/dp/1440172846
        what’s taking so long

      2. Really? Take a step back and look at the current state of the world in the context of the entirety of human history. Violence, war, etc is much, much reduced than it was before humanism and secularism became as widespread as they are now. Centuries ago, religions defined peoples and dictated their wars. Constant sectarian and inter-religious violence was the norm. Now? Not nearly so much. History shows us secularism and humanism have helped the world out quite a bit.

      3. And how about some examples of how secularism and humanism have helped the world quite a bit. BTW, religion STILL defines people and their wars. Just turn to islam.

      4. You actually bring up an interesting question: what parts of the world are – and have historically been – the most free, with the highest standard of living, and the least warfare? The answer to all three questions is shocking to most people. The more spiritual (not necessarily formally religious) an area is, the greater the crime rate, the more wars there are, and the lower the standard of living. This trend continues even in the modern world. As spirituality decreases, all of those indicators travel in the right direction.

        That doesn’t necessarily mean that spiritualism (and by association, religion) is bad, but it does allow you to draw an interesting set of conclusions about how human society works on large scales.

        For instance, it’s possible that religions simply can’t operate on a large scale without become corrupt and warmongering.

      5. I get it
        In anarchy – evolution crime – morals reality doesn’t exist
        Civilization – God is an anomaly

      6. Europe and the US, historically at least, fit the “highest standards of living” criteria you adduce. I will leave you to ponder where most of the wars have been, and where they all originate from, even today.

        ATN is actually correct. Science as described is completely bankrupt and bogus. Its theories are just that, especially in the pure science field, where the big questions of where we come from, and where we’re going, are left open to fraudsters and total plagiarists like Albert Einstein. ( “The manufacture and sale of St Einstein” by Christopher Jon Bjerknes is the online resource you need in order to reverse the decades of propaganda you have swallowed. )
        This bankruptcy is particularly evident in the area of major theories which are claimed to be facts, but which remain only theories, eg the heliocentric universe. Before you laugh, I challenge anyone to provide proof that the earth orbits the sun. Just because the infidel world has claimed it to be true since 1543, does not make it so.
        Just to kickstart your investigations, perhaps you should begin by asking how it is that a world which is allegedly spinning on an axis at 1000 mph at the equator, whilst covered with water, does not get immediately swamped by that water, responding, as it is obliged to do, to the “force” of inertia.
        And please do not cite the force of gravity. That prevents the water from leaving the surface of earth, but does not prevent it from rotating around that surface, or welling up upon it.

        For Rob Stuart, above, who wishes to undermine religion in order to progress, allow me to remind him that that is exactly what was done by the jews in Russia in the earlier years of the last century. All the churches were demolished, and the synagogues left standing, and then 60 million Christians were brutally tortured and murdered by the Cheka. Then another 10 million were starved to death in the Ukraine. Another hellish atheist scenario played out in Mao’s China.
        Having said that, I do agree with him that the RCC and to a lesser extent the Moslem religion are behind a great deal of death and destruction, but when you realise that the Pope wears a hat upon which is written “Vicarius Filii Dei” ( add up the Roman numerals V, I, C, I ( U=V ), D, L, etc, and you will arrive at a number which is probably familiar to you. )
        Oh, and wrt religion being mumbo-jumbo, everything complex is, or appears to be, which is not the same thing, until you learn the rules and the grammar and the logic, which Rob has not bothered to do in this case.
        I would direct him to “The Other Bible Code”, a w/s put together by Vernon Jenkins, where he will discover to his horror that God’s mathematical skills leave his own, no matter his level, trailing very much in the dust.
        And as a final shot, YHVH is the Name of God. Every Hebrew letter has an intrinsic meaning; it is not just a symbol, which is the case in English.
        The meaning of YHVH, at this level, is “Behold the Hand, Behold the Nail”.
        And the first word of Genesis, treated in the same way, gives
        “The Son of God will die by His own hand upon a cross”.
        Makes you think, eh ?

      7. “Before you laugh, I challenge anyone to provide proof that the earth orbits the sun. Just because the infidel world has claimed it to be true since 1543, does not make it so.”
        Too late, I was already laughing…

      8. The most hellish places on Earth are those where the church and other supposedly ‘religious’ people misuse their power to brainwash, exploit and abuse less powerful people.

      9. After you take the fancy stolen costumes off of the evolutionists all you get are 3rd world savages – retrogrades

      10. “After you take the fancy stolen costumes off of the evolutionists all you get are 3rd world savages – retrogrades”

        This is a very funny comment. You should re-read it a few times over.

      11. Thanks for proselytizing your religious nonsense on a science website. Just a suggestion, but you might have more luck peddling your nonsense elsewhere.

      12. How very naive. Understanding a phenomenon is very different from being able to do anything to alter it. Hence, science may explain why the world works the ways it does (e.g. “gravity”) but that doesn’t mean we can control those forces (e.g. “hoverboards”).

      13. It would help if evolution would be reality based someday
        the dog ate my homework gets old

      14. It happens
        no evidence – proof – explanation
        just keep tweeking the mindless masses
        plato’s cave parody is a good example

      15. You should leave your cave someday
        your cargo cult masses
        waiting for the missionaries – military
        are dying on the beaches
        send them some stolen goods
        empty rhetoric

    1. to “allthingsnew”: The difference between you and evolutionists is that they use their brains. If you are so opposed to the scientific method, why do you read websites on science subjects? Why not stick to the Bible and other primitive mythology?

      1. I Like Ur Way Of Thinking Buddy….Rest Have Lower Mental Level Than U…..Honestly
        They Can’t See What U See

  2. I found a couple of typos:

    ” The amount of times the radio waves” -> amount of time

    “on scale parts of the Grand Canyon” -> on scale with

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