Antarctica

**Antarctica** is Earth's southernmost continent. Home to the South Pole, the continent is largely uninhabited by humans. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean.

## Name

The name Antarctica means "opposite to the Arctic" or "opposite to the north". Aristotle wrote about an "Antarctic region" in his book *Meteorology* about 350 BCE.

The long-imagined but undiscovered south polar continent was originally called *Terra Australis*. In the nineteenth century, the colonial authorities in Sydney removed the Dutch name from New Holland. Instead of inventing a new name to replace it, they took the name Australia, leaving the south polar continent nameless for some eighty years. During that period, geographers used clumsy phrases such as "the Antarctic Continent". Some suggested names such as Ultima and Antipodea. Eventually, Antarctica was adopted as continental name in the 1890s; the first use of the name is attributed to the Scottish cartographer John George Bartholomew.

## History

Antarctica is the only continent with no indigenous population. Belief in the existence of a vast continent in the far south of the globe had prevailed since the times of Ptolemy in the first century CE. In February 1775, during his second voyage, Captain Cook called the existence of such a polar continent "probable," and in another copy of his journal he wrote, "[I] firmly believe it and it's more than probable that we have seen a part of it". Cook's ships, HMS *Resolution* and *Adventure*, crossed the Antarctic Circle 17 January 1773, in December 1773, and again in January 1774. Cook came within about 120 km of the Antarctic coast before retreating in the face of field ice in January 1773.

Ships captained by three men sighted Antarctica or its ice shelf in 1820: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (a captain in the Imperial Russian Navy), Edward Bransfield (a captain in the Royal Navy), and Nathaniel Palmer (a sealer from Stonington, Connecticut). The First Russian Antarctic Expedition, led by Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on the 985-ton sloop-of-war *Vostok* and the 530-ton support vessel *Mirny*, reached a point within 32 km of Queen Maud Land and recorded the sight of an ice shelf, later called Fimbul Ice Shelf, at 69°21′28″S 2°14′50″W, on 27 January 1820. Three days later, Bransfield sighted the land of the Trinity Peninsula of Antarctica. The first documented landing on Antarctica was by the American sealer John Davison 7 February 1821. The first recorded and confirmed landing was at Cape Adair in 1895 by the Norwegian-Swedish whaling ship *Antarctic*.

During the *Nimrod* Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1907, parties led by Edgeworth David became the first to climb Mount Erebus and to reach the South Magnetic Pole. From December 1908 to February 1909, Shackleton and three other members of his expedition were the first humans to traverse the Ross Ice Shelf, the first to traverse the Transantarctic Mountains, via the Beardmore Glacier, and the first to set foot on the South Polar Plateau. An expedition led by Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen from the ship *Fram* became the first to reach the geographic South Pole on 14 December 1911, using a route from the Bay of Whales and up the Axel Heiberg Glacier. One month later, the doomed Scott Expedition reached the pole.

## Geography

Antarctica is currently atop the South Pole, almost completely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. There are a number of rivers and lakes in Antarctica, the longest river being the Onyx. The largest lake, Lake Vostok, is one of the largest sub-glacial lakes in the world.

Antarctica is divided in two by the Transantarctic Mountains close to the neck between the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea. The portion west of the Weddell Sea and east of the Ross Sea is sometimes called West Antarctica and the remainder East Antarctica, because they roughly correspond to the Western and Eastern Hemispheres relative to the Greenwich meridian.

The highest peak in Antarctica is Vinson Massif at 4892m (16,050 ft), located in the Ellsworth Mountains.

## Territorial Claims

Seven sovereign states have made territorial claims in Antarctica. However, since the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961, most countries do not recognize these territorial claims.

* Argentina - Argentine Antarctica
* Australia - Australian Antarctic Territory
* Chile - Chilean Antarctic Territory
* France - Adélie Land
* New Zealand - Ross Dependency
* Norway - Peter I Island, Queen Maud Land
* United Kingdom - British Antarctic Territory