When I read today about the discovery of a giant asteroid impact crater in Antarctica my immediate amused thought was that they had discovered the Plateau of Leng.
Everybody in the world has read At The Mountain of Madness, right? (If not, what’s your excuse? The story is online. Besides, if you haven’t read it then how are you supposed to make sense of A Colder War?)
When I read further and discovered that the impact was 250 million years ago, and that it devastated most life on earth, making way for the rise of a new dominant species of giant lizards… Well, that fits in amusingly well.
The impact apparently might also have blown Australia right off of Gondwana. I think that size of blast can safely be referred to as “godlike”.
Now I see, in the article at Ohio State Research that:
He and Potts would like to go to Antarctica to confirm the finding. The best evidence would come from the rocks within the crater.
Man, doesn’t anyone read the classics anymore?
I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic – with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain.
Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet, if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible, there would be nothing left.
If they see anything that looks even remotely like this, they better just come home:
(This happens to me a lot when reading science articles, by the way. Reading in Popular Science about the rain of red aliens in India had me running around the house yelling “Chtorr! Chtorr!“. As usual, this degraded into repeated mutterings of “Damn you, Gerrold!” for several minutes.)
