That viral 'NASA found a hidden city in Antarctica' article is complete garbage

I saw this thing shared on Facebook by my aunt last week and decided to actually look into it. The article claims satellite images from 2019 show a massive underground complex under the ice near the Shackleton Range. But I pulled up the original source they cited, which was a blog post from 2016 about pareidolia in terrain patterns. The 'city' is just natural rock formations and ice crevasses. The article also says 'NASA scientists confirmed it' but there is no NASA press release or study anywhere. I checked NASA's own image archive for that region and it matches exactly what you'd expect: ice, rock, and shadows. Has anyone else seen this thing floating around and actually taken five minutes to debunk it?

3 comments

3 Comments

mark_chen621d ago

Man same here, I spent a whole Saturday tracking down the source of that "pyramid in Antarctica" thing a few years back and it was just a mountain peak shaped weird by ice. What worked for me was bookmarking the actual NASA image databases so next time something pops up I can pull the real pics in like 30 seconds and shut it down quick. Feels good to be the one in the group chat that actually checks instead of just resharing.

quinn1612d ago

You ever fall down a rabbit hole so pointless you have to laugh at yourself? I did the exact same thing, spent an hour cross-referencing the supposed "NASA coordinates" and ended up looking at nothing but pretty ice patterns. My proudest achievement that week was proving a Facebook conspiracy wrong while still in my pajamas. Feels like the algorithm knows I'll click on anything about secret cities, it's like I'mtraining it to feed me more nonsense. Anyway, nice work actually checking the sources, I felt like a detective on crime show for a solid ten minutes.

mason_reed472d ago

That whole thing about training the algorithm is real though @quinn161. I swear mine just feeds on my middle of the night Wikipedia dives and next thing I know my feed is all ancient aliens and lost civilizations. It's like the internet knows you're bored and just starts serving you pure junk food for the brain.