Featured Image Credit: YouTube/@physicsgirl
A tunnel that few are allowed to enter has awakened organisms that lay frozen for 15,000 years.
The tunnel was built by the US government over 60 years ago and now access is “tightly controlled”.
One YouTuber has documented her journey into the secret underground passage where she learnt that it held ancient life.
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Dianna Cowern, who is known online as @physicsgirl, filmed herself entering the tunnel in the Alaskan tundra.
Underground, the area is full of permafrost - which is ground that has been completely frozen for over two years - and says that she believes it’s “one of the most important areas of research on the planet because what happens to permafrost is going to affect all of us”.
The entrance is located in Fox, Alaska, and Cowern takes her viewers inside with her as she is given a tour of the exclusive tunnel.
In the video, it’s revealed that: “The permafrost tunnel was excavated in 1963 and it was actually a cold war project.
“The US army wanted to figure out if permafrost would be kind of an insulator for army equipment. About, a year later they decided it was in fact not very good. The more stuff you put in here, the more people, the more bodies, it tends to heat up and there was actually a little bit of a cave-in way back when when the army dug this tunnel that they didn't expect.
“The ground collapses when it gets to room temperature but they also probably didn't expect to have exposed pristine frozen ground untouched for 50,000 years.”
Inside the tunnel, which is an incredible graveyard of mammoth tusks, there is also a very strong smell.
Cowern explains: “What we're smelling is actually microbes that are awakening and they're actually starting to munch on carbon.”
For the most part, these microbes are non-toxic but there’s potentially some that could be a threaten to humans and animals.
Melting ice in the Arctic is causing the world to become exposed to ancient viruses that had been long frozen.
In fact, there was even an outbreak of a “zombie virus” in Siberia which killed over 2,000 reindeer and made 13 people sick.
This was after 75 year old spores were released from melting permafrost.
Cowern added: “Officials didn't know exactly how the outbreak started though because anthrax hadn't been seen in that area for decades.
“Anthrax is a pathogen and it can survive freezing temperatures so the leading hypothesis for what started the outbreak is bizarre rising temperatures thawed the permafrost and along with it a reindeer carcass that had been infected with anthrax decades ago.”
Luckily, so far none of these dangerous pathogens have been discovered in the permafrost tunnel.
