It’s far away, it’s unlike anywhere else on the planet, and most people will never go there. As Apsley Cherry-Garrard observed in the introduction to his classic book The Worst Journey In The World (01922): “Even now the Antarctic is to the rest of the earth as the Abode of the Gods was to the ancient Chaldees, a precipitous and mammoth land lying far beyond the seas which encircled man’s habitation.” But despite the hundred-plus years of exploration, habitation, and documentation since then, Antarctica remains utterly Other. Photograph by Christopher Michel.Īt the turn of the 20th century, Antarctica was still largely unknown. The “ice wall,” or the idea that Antarctica is not a continent at the bottom of the globe but really a wall that circumscribes the Flat Earth, is a common refrain as is the concept that “nobody is allowed” to go to Antarctica: that “they” (shady government agents) will prevent anyone from visiting, in order to keep whatever lies behind the ice wall hidden. “They don't really deserve much air in my mind.” “ are more just to show people the reality, rather than actually address the ridiculous conspiracy theories,” Neff told me, calling from McMurdo Station on the tail end of his field season in Antarctica. At the same time, he doesn’t give them too much thought. He responds to many of these comments with humor. He’s a glaciologist and ice scientist, stationed in Antarctica over the summer and conducting vital experiments on Antarctica’s vast ice sheets and glaciers. Peter Neff’s TikToks are filled with this sort of stuff. The only continent with no history of human habitation, the vast ice fields of Antarctica have formed a blank slate onto which humanity can project itself: all of itself, from the imperial superego to the conspiratorial id.Īllegra Rosenberg 21, 02023 “Can we see what’s beyond the ice wall?” “Quick question is there land beyond the ice wall?” “Record the ice wall :)”

New flat earth map