 "An eagle-eyed Reddit user found a peculiar \"doorway\" in the snowy continent Antarctica, just southeast of the Japanese-run Showa Station. Image courtesy: Google Maps")
Google Maps is often the gateway to unexpected discoveries, but this latest discovery may be its most bizarre yet.
An eagle-eyed Reddit user found a peculiar “doorway” in the snowy continent Antarctica, just southeast of the Japanese-run Showa Station.
The new “find” has ignited a flurry of speculations. Online sleuths are buzzing with theories, suggesting it could be anything from Bigfoot’s vacation home to a portal to a “secret” Nazi base—or even a marooned Star Trek shuttlecraft.
What exactly is this mysterious formation? And what’s the real story behind it? Let’s take a closer look at the puzzle surrounding this icy “doorway”.
Wild, wild theories
“69°00'50"S 39°36'22"E,” a Reddit user mentioned the location coordinates while sharing the screenshot of his discovery, and simply posted a question— “Massive door in Antarctica?”
The image displays a satellite view of Antarctica’s icy expanse, primarily covered in frost with scattered patches of exposed rock. At the centre of this viral photo, lay an an unusual structure that piqued everyone’s curiosity.
“Just a blown-off Boeing door,” quipped one user, referencing a shocking midair mishap last January, while another jokingly asked, “Wonder if they get DoorDash there.”
Someone chimed in “That’s actually Bigfoots vacation home.” Others posited that it was the “door to Agartha” or even a “big seed vault like the one in Svalbard, Norway”, which contained millions of seeds as an “insurance policy for the world’s food supply”.
The theories continued to snowball—from Nazi bunkers hidden in the ice to a secret city deep within Earth’s crust.
That said, this is not the first time Antarctica has piqued the fascinated conspiracy junkies.
Back in 2016, Google Maps users noticed a mountain with pyramid-like symmetry, claiming it to be an ancient structure built by a lost civilisation. People also pointed out the striking symmetry of the rocky structure to the Giants of Giza but, the theory was quickly disproved in favour of a more scientifically sound explanation.
University of California Professor Eric Rignot explained to Live Science: “This is just a mountain that looks like a pyramid,” its shape pyramid-like sides are nothing but a result of hundreds of millions of years of erosion.
What is the truth behind the mystery ‘door’?
Much to the disappointment of Reddit users, the truth is rather prosaic. According to the New York Post, the mysterious “doorway” is actually an iceberg.
Bethan Davies, a glaciology professor at the University of Newcastle, reviewed the coordinates on Google Earth Pro and saw historical imagery, after which he told the publication, “This is an iceberg that became grounded and is now stuck and melting out [in place].” He added, “You can see many other icebergs in the area.”
Meanwhile, Professor John Smellie, a volcanologist from the University of Leicester, also weighed in, telling the Daily Mail : “It looks to me like a short rocky ridge outcrop has been exhumed due to a lowering of the ice.”
He explained that the “top” of the “doorway” is the outcrop, with two prominent snow tails on either side that reveal the direction of the wind.
Playfully, he added, “What would we do without the conspiracy theorists?”
If not a door, why door shaped?
Martin Siegert, a professor at Imperial College London, attributed the “door-like” formation to the natural movement of ice due to a strong solid object hidden by the ice, as well as the wind and melting ice, shaping the pattern.
“It’s a normal ice flow pattern,” Siegert explained Daily Mail. “The snow on either side of the ‘door’ shows the wind direction. There’s nothing unusual here—only a natural process at work.”
With input from agencies