Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: Legendary explorers

braving a deadly, frozen world.

-A massive government expedition... -(barking)

...shrouded in secrecy.

And strange new life-forms

buried beneath miles of solid ice.

Antarctica.

This frozen continent at the bottom of Earth

is a massive polar desert.

This desolate yet beautiful place

has captivated brave explorers for centuries.

And while its natural wonders are undeniable,

Antarctica is also steeped in myth,

legend,

and strange phenomena.

What secrets lie hidden

within the world's most mysterious continent?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

Antarctica.

Earth's southernmost continent.

This vast frozen world covers 5.5 million square miles

and is nearly the size

of the United States and Mexico combined.

Only 1,000 to 5,000 humans

are on Antarctica at any given time,

and most of these temporary residents

are small groups of scientists from around the world

who work and live in research outposts

that dot the landscape.

Those who are willing to endure

the extreme conditions of the White Continent

find themselves in a world

like no other.

My first visit to Antarctica was almost 20 years ago now.

I've always found Antarctica to be fascinating

because it is enigmatic.

When you get there, you're in awe of the sights that you see.

Antarctica is essentially covered in a huge slab of ice

that can be up to three miles thick in places.

And it has the coldest temperatures in the world,

but, also, it's the highest continent,

the driest continent, the windiest continent,

and the least populated place on the planet.

And it feels like nowhere else on Earth.

My first time getting to the ice,

it's otherworldly.

There's not a tree in sight.

Depending when you get there,

you're often either in 24-hour daylight

or 24-hour darkness.

The threshold between being perfectly safe

and "oh, my God, we're in trouble" is very thin.

Humans aren't built to survive in Antarctica.

It's mysterious and wondrous

because so few people get a chance to go.

The scientists visit it,

the explorers visit it,

but we all leave.

(chirping)

The things that catch your eye,

like the penguins and whales

and things, that's all on the coastal regions.

Once you go into the interior,

there's nothing that lives there that we know of.

So it's got an allure already.

There are so many questions to be answered.

Everything's unexplained about Antarctica.

SHATNER: While those who have ventured

to Antarctica have experienced freezing temperatures,

blinding storms,

and endless snow-covered terrain,

scientists have recently discovered geological evidence

that, millions of years ago,

the continent looked very different than it does today.

(birds singing)

Antarctica hasn't always been covered in ice.

Just by fossils found in Antarctica,

we know that Antarctica was once covered in jungle,

that it was once covered in forest.

There are some people

who theorize that there could have been

ancient men in Antarctica.

And then all that was covered in ice.

So we know that there's a lot there.

But we don't know what's gonna be found.

-(birds singing) -SHATNER: It's fascinating

to think that, 90 million years ago,

the South Pole was likely a lush forest

filled with plants, trees, and animals.

It would take a dramatic climate shift

around 56 million years later

to create the frozen landscape that we know today.

And while explorers would not lay eyes

on Antarctica until the 1800s,

great thinkers like Aristotle

had proposed the existence of a land at the bottom of Earth

thousands of years before it was discovered.

TIM SWARTZ: In ancient times, Antarctica captured our imaginations.

People suspected that Antarctica existed because it seemed right.

But it was an undiscovered land.

It seemed like there should be a land

in the southern regions of the planet.

It was suspected to be there, but there was no proof.

SHATNER: While cataloguing antiquities at the Topkapi Palace library,

German scholar Gustav Adolf Deissmann finds an unusual map

printed on gazelle skin parchment.

The remarkable 16th-century document is quickly recognized

as the work of the distinguished cartographer Piri Reis

and becomes an object of great importance

and heated controversy.

LANCE: Piri Reis was an Ottoman admiral and cartographer.

In 1513, he produced an extraordinary map.

Only about a third of the map survives.

But that third offers something that's really surprising.

It looks like it is showing a coastline

of a southern continent.

And some argue that that coastline

looks very much like the coastline

of part of modern Antarctica.

And that leaves you to wonder,

how did he possibly know the coastline

of a continent that we didn't even know existed yet?

So it presumes

that some civilization either lived there

or was close enough to it in order to map it

and somehow that information made it back to Piri Reis.

It's certainly not proven, and we don't know.

SHATNER: Did Piri Reis create a map of the Antarctic coast

based on lost knowledge from a mysterious ancient civilization?

And if so, how did the famous mapmaker

come to learn about it?

Some experts think the answer can be found

in the folklore of a great seafaring people

who came not from the frozen desert

but instead from a tropical paradise.

ANDREW COLLINS: The Polynesian peoples

of the Pacific have many culture heroes,

and these were great navigators

that would journey for many thousands of miles

from one end of the ocean to the other.

And these legends tell us

that they also went to a southern continent

that was naturally very, very cold.

They say that it's a place that's beneath the Earth itself.

It's a place of darkness,

but it's also a place of light,

in that the sun shines all the time there.

-(chirping) -And it's a place where rocks grow out of the sea

and there are strange animals

and what appears to be what we would describe as snow and ice.

And it seems very obvious

that they were reaching Antarctica.

SHATNER: It's intriguing to think

that the ancient world may have discovered Antarctica

centuries before explorers would catch a glimpse of it.

And while the belief in an unknown southern land

was well established in the 15th and 16th centuries,

the ability to actually set foot on this mysterious continent

would finally be possible in the late 1800s

in an era known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

-(barking) -MacFERRIN: At the time

of the age of exploration in Antarctica,

the South Pole, no one had ever been there.

Much like the highest point on Earth

or the lowest trench in the ocean,

getting to that point would be an historic achievement.

The two powers that were pushing to get to the South Pole first

were Great Britain and Norway.

Ernest Shackleton was a British polar explorer

in the early 1900s,

and he made a record at the time

of reaching the closest location to the South Pole,

getting within nearly 100 miles before having to turn around.

JOHN GEIGER: In 1911, Roald Amundsen,

the great Norwegian explorer,

becomes the first to reach the South Pole.

So Norway steals the glory.

These early explorers of Antarctica,

they were going into, kind of, almost like a black hole.

SHATNER: From 1897 to 1922,

ten countries were involved

in launching 17 major Antarctic expeditions

in the pursuit of scientific and geographical exploration.

Polar exploration is complicated.

At its core is a sense of national pride.

These early explorers were carrying

the flag of their country.

But it was also an effort to understand the world.

No one had been to Antarctica.

Was it one continent? Was it several large islands?

I mean, geographic knowledge was being gathered during that time.

It was also scientific-- learning about animal species.

They were kind of early field researchers.

It was this willingness to go forward and explore

and learn and advance human knowledge

that was one of the driving factors.

And whether they would come out or not was the question.

SHATNER: Despite the inherent dangers of Antarctic exploration,

-brave adventurers risked everything... -(barking)

...to reach the White Continent.

But once there, survival would require strong ships,

adequate supplies, trusted crewmates,

and, at times, help

from an otherworldly source.

SHATNER: November 13, the year 2000.

Famous polar explorers Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen

set out on a truly extraordinary expedition.

Their formidable goal is to become

the first women in history

to ski across the most dangerous continent on Earth.

BANCROFT: For our expedition,

the goal was to pull sleds

all the way across Antarctica.

And it's incredibly perilous.

People do fall into crevasses.

Mishaps happen.

If you got injured,

it's very hard to get out.

It's sort of "do it or die."

The trip was 97 days across Antarctica.

It was about 1,700 miles.

We went from tip to tail, basically,

with the South Pole in the middle.

Liv and I became the first women

to cross the continent of Antarctica.

SHATNER: Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen made history on Antarctica.

But something strange

happened on their quest across the continent

that's not easily explained.

BANCROFT: In the first half of the journey,

it was very steep

up into the interior,

and it was just blizzards all the time.

So we're getting stuck all the time,

and all of the continent is ahead of us.

And so the dilemma for us was,

how do we overcome what was before us?

Because we're going into a place of despair.

It was so incredibly cold

and hard,

and you're so scared.

And you're thinking, "We're never gonna do it.

"We're never gonna get there.

This is just too formidable."

And, suddenly,

I felt like I was getting help.

I felt like they were people in my life who had passed on,

uh, my grandmother, for one.

And you have a dialogue.

And I had a dialogue.

There is a presence that you can get.

But what is that?

What is that phenomenon?

SHATNER: Could the spirit of a loved one

have been the unseen force that helped Ann

during her expedition?

Or might it have been something else?

Remarkably, there have been other polar explorers

who have experienced a very similar phenomenon

called third man syndrome.

JOHN: Third man syndrome,

also called third man factor,

is a sense of being in the company

of an unseen friend, a presence

who guides you,

who encourages you,

and is a key factor

in an individual's survival during extreme stress.

So it-it often happens in mountaintops,

it happens at sea,

it happens in Antarctica--

extreme environments.

And it's a sense of guidance and help and support--

almost, if you will, an angel.

There are countless examples like that,

where people have had the-the very same experience.

SHATNER: Could there really be an angelic presence

that guides those in need of help during extreme conditions?

It's a comforting thought

and perhaps best illustrated in what's considered to be

the most remarkable Antarctic survival story in history.

(gulls calling)

The British vessel the Endurance sets sail with 28 men

on a historic adventure

known as the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

The ship's owner and captain is Sir Ernest Shackleton,

a seasoned explorer

who led an expedition to the South Pole seven years earlier.

Shackleton's plan for the Endurance expedition

is to be the first to complete a land crossing of Antarctica.

MacFERRIN: In 1914,

Sir Ernest Shackleton set out in what would become one

of the most fateful expeditions in Antarctic history.

He was tasked with crossing the continent from west to east

via the South Pole.

But their ship, the Endurance,

got locked in sea ice,

leaving them stranded,

and they had to give up on the South Pole expedition.

So it was now an expedition of survival for hundreds of miles.

LANCE: In 1915,

Endurance got stuck in the Weddell Sea,

which is very icy sea in-in Antarctica.

So then, having spent almost, you know, more than a year

living in this frozen ship,

it was quite clear the ship was going to sink.

They had to take the lifeboats,

take everything that they could off the ship,

and push those across the ice

to search for help.

JOHN: 28 men shipwrecked, marooned in Antarctica.

This incredibly horrific effort to get out of that situation--

crossing the rotting ice,

eating their sled dogs.

They were at one point covered in ice from the sea spray.

And they all looked like, kind of, ghosts.

-(braying) -And then they finally reached

this place called Elephant Island.

SHATNER: Shackleton and his crew of 27 men reach Elephant Island

on April 16, 1916--

nearly 15 months after getting stuck in the ice.

But their journey is far from over.

LANCE: On Elephant Island, it was clear

that they wouldn't be rescued from there.

And so Shackleton and other men take one of these boats,

which has been dragged all the way across the ice,

and they decide to go to South Georgia Island

in order to get to a whaling post to search for help.

It's 800 miles across the ocean to get there.

If they miss the island,

it's over.

It's an open boat,

and they're on the ocean in these waves.

They're wet all the time.

There's nothing left in the tank.

If you were a betting person,

you would not bet for them.

And yet they achieved it.

SHATNER: Against all odds,

the men land safely on South Georgia Island.

But still ahead of them is a treacherous climb

over an uncharted mountain,

-where, on the other side... -(gulls calling)

...there's a whaling station

and their last hope for getting help.

With barely any strength left to survive,

Shackleton and two of his men begin the long, dangerous trek

through the mountains.

And it is then that all three men begin to sense

that they are not alone.

JOHN: It was during that final leg

over the mountains in-in South Georgia that he

and the other two men who were with-with him

had the sense of a fourth having joined their party.

And Shackleton described it as "the divine companion."

In his book South, he wrote of this presence experience

that he had had on South Georgia Island.

It was a spiritual, a religious experience

that they felt they had had.

They felt that they were in the company of an unseen friend.

BANCROFT: The other two guys he's traveling with

feel the same...

I call it a spirit, you know?

The-the same essence.

It is a benevolent presence.

Kind of rides on your shoulder.

It appears, oftentimes when you need it.

It feels like there is a person, a being with them,

aiding them, helping them.

JOHN: They somehow managed to get over this mountain range

to the whaling station.

It's just unbelievable.

They were absolutely, totally malnourished.

Their clothing was in tatters.

They were not recognizable, really,

as-as civilized men when they arrived.

And Shackleton, he was so changed

by what he had gone through.

It was a horrific, horrific experience.

And yet he survived

and they went back to Elephant Island

and collected the other men.

SHATNER: On August 30, 1916,

more than a year and a half after the Endurance

became trapped in ice,

the stranded crew on Elephant Island are finally rescued.

Miraculously, all 28 men that set out on the journey survive,

perhaps with the help of an otherworldly presence

that no one can explain.

Third man syndrome

always comes back to the question, what? What is it?

Is it purely a psychological coping mechanism?

Or is it some sort of spiritual entity?

Neurologists continue to study the phenomenon.

Psychologists continue to study the phenomenon.

But I don't think any of them have solved the-the mystery.

I think it remains very much unexplained.

Could Shackleton and Bancroft

have really been guided to safety by something supernatural

or was it simply a hallucination?

The answer remains a mystery.

Just like the case of an American military hero

whose top secret polar adventure

has led to controversial theories

about what may lie deep

beneath the ice.

SHATNER: A fleet of 13 ships,

33 aircraft,

and almost 5,000 troops

arrive under the command of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd,

the famed naval officer and polar explorer who,

in 1929, along with his crew,

was the first to fly an airplane over the South Pole.

Now he is leading a massive classified operation

for the United States government

known as Operation Highjump.

MacFERRIN: Operation Highjump was

by far the largest expedition on the Antarctic continent.

At this point in history, it was right after World War II,

and Highjump's stated missions were about

-exploration and scientific discovery. -(barking)

They explored new places.

They set up bases,

and they took thousands of airborne photographs.

They took measurements that nobody had ever taken

over a vast swath of the Antarctic continent.

LANCE: Operation Highjump was a massive operation.

It's like a World War II invasion,

but it also gives rise to some various theories,

because why would we send an entire fleet

to Antarctica just to do scientific research?

Do we really care that much about science?

Or is there some secret government goal down there

that we don't know about?

SHATNER: For over 70 years, the question has persisted:

What was the true mission of Operation Highjump?

One of the prevailing theories

is that Highjump's secret objective

may have been to locate a hidden Nazi base.

MIKE RICKSECKER: Starting in 1938

and arriving there in January of 1939,

Adolf Hitler had sent a Nazi research expedition

to Antarctica.

They established a presence there.

Now, one of the purposes of this was

to establish a whaling industry there.

However,

a lot of people believe

that they were also storing weapons there.

So this opens up the question,

was Operation Highjump looking for

a hidden Nazi base there in the ice

that could contain secrets and weapons

that the Third Reich may have left behind?

SHATNER: The possibility that Operation Highjump was

searching for a secret Nazi base

remains an unproven theory.

But over the decades, others have proposed

that Admiral Richard E. Byrd's true objective in Antarctica was

to find something even more shocking:

the entrance to a secret world hidden below the ice.

SWARTZ: Richard Bird was probably

one of the last of the great explorers.

He was the first man to fly

over the North and South Pole.

And he was determined

to uncover the secrets of the land beyond the poles.

When Byrd said "The secrets of the land beyond the poles,"

he was probably using that as a romantic metaphor.

So it's been taken over the years

that Byrd was referring to possibly entranceways

into the inner earth.

COLLINS: The concept of an inner earth is

that we live on a shell

and that beneath that shell is a realm,

another world, a parallel existence

that has its own atmosphere, its own sun,

its own land, its own fertility,

its own animals,

and perhaps even its own inhabitants.

SHATNER: Could Admiral Byrd have been searching

for a mysterious land beneath Antarctica?

It's an incredible story if it's true.

And what's even more remarkable is that, according to legend,

Admiral Byrd may have found it.

BILL BIRNES: The story goes

that when Admiral Byrd flew over the South Pole,

he could see that there was an opening.

He directed a squadron to fly into the opening.

And underneath the ice, wasn't frozen.

It was temperate.

There were valleys there, there was flowing water there.

The rumors had it that he had discovered

areas of Antarctica that were free of ice and snow.

Allegations that he discovered

the inner earth circulated

in various books and publications.

And it was alleged that at one point,

they observed a number of flying discs, UFOs,

and received radio communications

ordering them to land near an enormous city

where they met the leaders of this underground kingdom.

There's been all kinds of allegations,

but we don't know if these stories are true or not.

SHATNER: Did Admiral Byrd discover

a highly advanced civilization hiding deep below Antarctica?

It all sounds too incredible to be true.

But some experts are convinced that something very strange

did indeed happen during Operation Highjump

because this massive military undertaking

in 1947 was suddenly cut short.

SWARTZ: Operation Highjump was

supposed to stay for the entire Antarctic summer of 1947.

But they were there less than two months

and came back to the United States.

It would be nice to know

why did they leave so early,

what happened to a lot of the photographs

that were allegedly taken at the time

and did everybody come back safely.

Now, I suspect that the crazy stories

about flying saucers

and men from the hollow earth was

part of a disinformation campaign

to hide what was really going on.

So the question remains,

what actually happened with Operation Highjump?

The true purpose of Operation Highjump is

still shrouded in mystery.

But it is possible the mission did find

something incredible beneath the ice, because...

scientists have since discovered

an absolutely massive object

buried a mile below Antarctica's surface,

and they don't know what it is.

SHATNER: Across the icy continent,

55 countries have established research stations

where scientists come to study topics

like marine biology,

geologic mapping,

ice cores

and objects from space,

like the 50,000 meteorites that have landed

on the snowy surface of Antarctica.

And many believe

there are hundreds of thousands more meteorites

waiting to be found there.

The magnitude of some of these discoveries is amazing.

We've actually found

more meteorites on the ice in Antarctica

than anywhere else in the planet combined.

Roughly 60% of all the meteorites found on Earth

have been found in Antarctica.

So all the time we're finding meteorites

that we didn't even know existed there.

SHATNER: The weather conditions

and uncluttered setting of Antarctica

are said to be helpful

when spotting and collecting space rocks.

But a discovery in 2006--

deep underground in the Wilkes Land region--

could have the potential

to rewrite Earth's history.

Wilkes Land is one of the most remote regions

of East Antarctica.

Gravity satellites run by NASA discovered

that there's a dense segment of rock underneath the ice

that's heavier than everything else around it.

And one of the things that could cause

an anomaly like this is an impact crater.

But it's impossible to say for sure.

SWARTZ: Scientists believe what they discovered was

a massive 300-mile-wide crater

that has been suggested was caused

by an asteroid...

...that struck the Earth maybe as far back

as 250 million years in the past.

And I don't think scientists know what else it could be.

Unfortunately, we'll probably never know

because it's buried under almost a mile of ice.

LANCE: So what we know is that there's something there,

what we don't know for sure is what it is,

but many scientists think that, possibly,

under the ice in Antarctica

is the largest impact crater

that is known ever to have existed on Earth.

SHATNER: It's intriguing to think

that a prehistoric 300-mile-wide meteor crater

may lie hidden below 5,000 feet of ice.

And if so, could it be the source

of a mega-impact event

that transformed the planet?

COLLINS: If we look back into geological history,

we find out that around the same time

that the Wilkes Land anomaly was created,

there was a severe shift in the fossil record

that unquestionably involved a massive cataclysm

that must have changed the history of Earth itself.

RICKSECKER: There are people that believe

the timing of the Wilkes Land impact,

at about 250 million years ago,

could be the cause

of the Permian-Triassic extinction event,

which would've wiped out

about 90% of all life on Earth.

So this potential impact could absolutely be indicative

of a mass extinction event in our Earth's history.

SHATNER: Could the anomaly buried below Antarctica

have been responsible

for killing nearly all life on the planet?

Perhaps.

But what's even more incredible is that some experts suggest

an asteroid strike of this magnitude

may have been powerful enough to reshape the Earth itself.

MacFERRIN: Antarctica has not always been covered in ice.

It used to be a very different place than it is today.

It didn't even used to be at the South Pole.

It broke off from the Pangean supercontinent

millions of years ago and drifted southward.

LANCE: This crater that is still preserved

under the ice in Antarctica

might have to do with the breakup

of the supercontinent.

This massive meteor strike could have hit so hard

that it literally caused volcanoes to erupt

on the other side of the Earth.

It might be the event

that helped to break Antarctica off from Africa

and break Australia off from Antarctica.

SHATNER: The massive anomaly buried deep below Antarctica

may one day reshape

our entire understanding of planet Earth.

But for now, the evidence remains beyond our reach.

Unfortunately, whilst this idea is plausible,

because it's under miles of ice,

nobody can physically collect a rock specimen

to find out if what they think may have happened

is what has happened.

So it's very difficult to know

if there's anything else potentially going on there

because we haven't got enough data yet.

But it does give an example of one of the many,

many things about Antarctica

that we are currently unable to answer

because Antarctica is dominated by this huge amount of ice.

Is there a giant asteroid buried deep below Eastern Antarctica

or could it be something even more shocking?

Based on the depth of this object,

the answer, for now, is too hard to come by.

But even deeper below the surface,

a recent discovery may have uncovered an entire lost world

of strange and unusual creatures.

SHATNER: After 20 years of drilling,

scientists make a remarkable discovery.

Locked deep beneath the ice

for what some estimate to be 20 million years,

scientists reach an extraordinary body of water

known as Lake Vostok.

Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica

and sits about 13,000 feet

below the surface of the ice sheet above.

A subglacial lake is one that's formed underneath ice.

Subglacial lakes are a real mystery.

We've only explored a handful of them

and it's very difficult to explore

these hidden environments.

They represent a natural laboratory.

What happens to life if you cut it off

from the rest of the world for millions of years?

MacFERRIN: When they pulled up water from Lake Vostok,

they found microbes in there

that had evolved completely independently

from nearly all other life on Earth.

Lake Vostok is so remote,

so isolated from the rest of the planet.

If life could evolve here,

it could evolve nearly anywhere.

It was the closest thing we've ever found

to life on another planet.

SHATNER: While Lake Vostock is a tremendous discovery,

it is just one of many pristine places in Antarctica

where scientists have found, not just microbial life-forms

but creatures of all sizes

that have never been seen before.

GRIFFITHS: One of the amazing things about working

in Antarctica as a marine biologist is

we get to discover new species.

If we go to unexplored areas

or places that are much deeper,

80% or 90% of the species we pull up from the sea

are new to science.

And that includes some really strange-looking organisms.

We have the strawberry feather star.

Its central part of its body resembles a strawberry.

I even have two species of sea cucumber named after me

because they were starting to run out of things

to name the new species we'd found.

And so it's not a question of will we find new species.

It's a question of how many new species

will we find every time we go.

MacFERRIN: Every time we look at a new pocket of seawater

underneath the ice in Antarctica,

we find something we'd never seen before.

Just a few years ago,

they found sea spider crabs that have legs up to 20 feet.

They found two-foot-wide sea stars.

They found jellyfish with 12-foot-long tentacles.

Many of these reach sizes

that are incomparable to anywhere else on Earth.

SHATNER: The cold, undisturbed waters around Antarctica

make an excellent breeding ground for massive creatures.

Blue whales--

the largest animals to ever live on our planet--

roam these waters.

And even the mysterious and elusive colossal squid

can be found here.

GRIFFITHS: Colossal squid are

enormous creatures that are at least 33 feet long.

And they have the largest eyeballs

of any creature on the planet.

We've only seen a few of these organisms in real life,

but it opens so many questions

about how large animals can be found

in some of the most inhospitable parts of Antarctica.

SHATNER: The Argentina Antarctic Institute completes

their excavation of one of the most extraordinary

and massive fossils ever discovered.

It is the skeleton of a sea creature

that swam in Antarctic waters 66 million years ago,

called Elasmosaurus.

Elasmosaurus was a real sea monster

swimming around the Antarctic.

It's the heaviest marine reptile fossil

that's been found around Antarctica.

It was up to 40 feet long

and possibly 15 tons worth of animal.

It was thought to have lived

right up to the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs,

but it was the largest swimming reptile

in the oceans around Antarctica.

COLLINS: When the story hit the news,

people started saying,

"Doesn't this resemble the Loch Ness Monster?

"Doesn't this resemble other sea monsters

and lake monsters around the world?"

Begging the question of whether creatures like the Elasmosaurus

still exist out there

in the sea caves of Antarctica to this day.

LANCE: We know this massive critter lived there, right?

So things that you might call a monster,

could they live under those ice shelves?

Of course they could.

98% of the ocean bottom underneath these huge ice sheets

off of Antarctica are completely unexplored.

There's absolutely going to be stuff

that we've never seen before that surprises us,

and that tells us more about life on our planet.

SHATNER: This American research station is

the largest scientific facility on the continent

and serves as a key hub

to resupplying scientists working all over the region.

McMurdo is just one of about 70 research stations

that support scientific expeditions

from 29 countries around the world.

MacFERRIN: Part of the reason

we fund so much research in Antarctica is

because what happens in Antarctica

does not stay in Antarctica.

Antarctica by itself holds enough ice

to raise sea levels around the world

by hundreds of feet if it all melted.

We've had glaciers that are thinning

and losing literally billions of tons of ice to the ocean.

And how fast

these glaciers can melt is an open question.

Antarctica affects the rest of the planet

right now and in the future.

SHATNER: While it's fascinating to think

that Antarctica may help us predict

what lies ahead for planet Earth,

surprisingly,

the White Continent may also offer clues

to what life might be like on other planets.

At NASA, they talk a lot about Antarctica.

It is the closest thing that we have to an approximation

to an alien environment that might resemble

places that we hope to visit in space.

GRIFFITHS: There are frozen moons,

even in our own solar system

where there's a huge ocean of water beneath

and then a frozen crust on the outside,

very similar to ice shelves

or the sea ice in Antarctica.

And the fact that life can live

under the ice in Antarctica might hold the secret

to life in other places in the universe.

SHATNER: Could the most remote,

hostile and mysterious place on Earth

really be that similar to an alien world?

It's an intriguing thought, but the truth is,

after 200 years

of groundbreaking exploration and research,

when it comes to understanding the mystery of Antarctica,

we've barely scratched the frozen surface.

We might learn about the universe from Antarctica.

We might learn about the origins of life from Antarctica.

We might find species

that we've never seen before from Antarctica.

We just don't know what's under all that ice.

BANCROFT: I think what's exciting is

that we don't have all the answers.

In fact, we have so very few.

Antarctica is already presenting mysteries

that we never thought we would get to.

Even today, things are emerging,

critters and objects and bodies of water.

And if you're a scientist,

it's very much like being an explorer.

You just want to keep

putting one foot in front of the other,

and keep asking the questions and keep looking.

It's exciting to think that there are great discoveries

yet to be uncovered

in one of the most inhospitable environments imaginable.

And perhaps the fact that Antarctica is

the world's highest, driest, coldest and windiest continent

on Earth is exactly what attracts

explorers of all kinds

who risk their lives in the pursuit of understanding

this otherworldly place.

But as often happens with every revelation,

more questions seem to rise to the icy surface.

And the mystery of Antarctica remains...

unexplained.

CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS