Antarctica’s Subtle Gravity Dip Unveils a 70-Million-Year Deep-Earth Tale
A new study using seismic data and mantle-flow modeling shows Antarctica hides a large, persistent gravity low called the Antarctic Geoid Low. Reconstructing roughly 70 million years of mantle motion, researchers find this gravity feature is not a transient anomaly but a long-lived imprint of deep-Earth dynamics that intensified around 34 million years ago as Antarctica became permanently ice-covered. While it’s not a literal hole, the gravity dip reveals how mass is distributed deep inside Earth and could subtly influence regional sea levels, underscoring how slow, deep-earth processes reshape the planet’s gravity field over geological time.
