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Contrary to what conspiracy theorists believe, the four symmetrical faces of the mountain are a sequence of natural processes.
A Antarctica “pyramid”a mountain hidden in a sea of snow much like an ancient Egyptian pyramid, is about 1,265 meters highabout one-fifth the height of Denali, the tallest mountain in North America.
According to , it has four steep sides and is located in the southern Ellsworth Mountains, a chain of jagged peaks first seen during a flight by American aviator Lincoln Ellsworth in 1935.
The region is known for harbor trilobite fossils and other creatures 500 million years old, dating from the Cambrian period (541 million to 485.4 million years ago).
It is very likely that the slopes of the mountain were carved and smoothed into a pyramid shape following chundreds of millions of years of erosion.
Scientists believe the rocks may have been subject to erosion by freezing and thawingthat is, when water and snow fill small cracks during the day and freeze at night. As it freezes, the water expands in the cracks causing the gaps to grow under the resulting pressure and eventually some pieces of rock break away.
Still, several conspiracy theories emerged to explain the shape of Antarctica’s pyramidal mountain when it went viral in 2016, with some theorists suggesting the involvement of a forgotten civilization or aliens.
Despite the theories, Eric Rignot, professor at the University of California and scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, emphasizes that it is “just a mountain that looks like a pyramid“.
“Pyramid shapes are not impossible — there are several peaks that look like pyramids, but only one or two such faces. We rarely observe all four”, concluded the researcher.
