"The map gives us a clear view of the white continent as if its 27 million cubic km of ice have been removed, revealing the hidden locations of the tallest mountains and the deepe

Antarctica isn’t a floating chunk of ice like the Arctic. Beneath its frozen surface sits a solid continent of mountains, rocky terrain, and gold-spewing volcanoes. This hidden world has now been revealed in stunning detail thanks to a groundbreaking map developed by international scientists led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

The place thought to have had the thickest overlying ice was Astrolabe Basin, in Adélie Land, but a reinterpretation of data reveals it is in fact an unnamed canyon - at 76.052°S, 118.378°E in Wilkes Land, where the ice here is 4,757m thick, which is more than 15 times the height of the UK's tallest skyscraper, the Shard in London.