Google Maps is a place of great discovery — and the latest sighting may be one of the oddest yet.
In East Antarctica, just southeast of Japanese research outpost Showa Station, eagle-eyed users spotted a mysterious “doorway,” which has become the topic of wild theories online, with some speculating that it’s Bigfoot’s vacation home or a marooned shuttle craft from “Star Trek.”
One Reddit user who noticed the ominous structure at the coordinates 69°00’50″S 39°36’22″E simply asked, “Mᴀssive door in Antarctica?”
The doorway has been the topic of fantastical theories online. Google / SWNS
“Just a blown-off Boeing door,” one person suggested, a reference to a shocking midair mishap last January, with another jokingly asking, “Wonder if they get door dash there.”
“What would we do without the conspiracy theorists?” John Smellie, a professor and volcanologist at the University of Leicester, joked to the Daily Mail regarding the many suggestions offered.
But scientists have revealed what they believe the structure really is — and it’s not nearly as exciting as any Reddit theses.
A Reddit user noticed the ominous door at the coordinates 69°00’50″S 39°36’22″E. Google / SWNS
After looking at the coordinates on Google Earth Pro and seeing historical imagery, Bethan Davies, a professor of glaciology at the University of Newcastle, told the publication that the mysterious doorway “is in an area of fast sea ice … just offshore of the coast” that is littered with “a series of islands” where shallow water exists.
“This is an iceberg that became grounded and is now stuck and melting out [in place],” Davies explained. “You can see many other icebergs in the area.”
Professor Martin Siegert, co-director of the Imperial College London’s Grantham Insтιтute on Climate Change and the Environment, agreed with Davies, telling the outlet: “This is simply ice flow around a solid subglacial obstacle, influenced also by melting and re-freezing of ice and by katabatic winds.
“The ice is quite thin here, as evidenced by other outcrops of rock nearby, so the influence of the bed on ice flow will be strong,” he continued. “It’s an interesting pattern, but not unusual or surprising glaciologically.”
Smellie added that it looked “like a short rocky ridge outcrop has been exhumed due to a lowering of the ice, explaining that the protrusion “forms the ‘top’ of the ‘doorway.’ And there are two prominent parallel snow tails forming the sides of the ‘doorway.’ The snow tails show you the orientation of the predominant wind direction.”
