As Mashable’s tech editor, I’ve been covering Prime Day and Black Friday events since 2019. So, instead of wading through hundreds of the best Prime Day tech deals to find the diamonds in the rough, let me do the deal hunting for you. I am a professional, after all.
For day two of Prime Day 2025, I’m rounding up the best savings on the coolest tech, hand-picked for your enjoyment.
This year’s top Prime Day deals on gadgets include big savings on flagship products from Apple, Amazon, Bose, Dyson, Samsung, and Sony. You’ll also find discounts on charging accessories, under-the-radar brands, and smart home tech of all kinds. I’ve selected the best of the best for this shopping guide, and I’ll be updating it daily as new deals go online.
Remember: Unlike Prime Days gone by, this year’s shop-a-thon takes place over four days, from July 8 to 11. Amazon will also be releasing new deals as the event unfolds, so keep checking back for the latest and best Prime Day deals of the moment.
The best Prime Day speaker deal: A Beats speaker
Why I love it
Hating on Kim Kardashian is so 2010-coded. The reality TV starlet has proven herself as an entrepreneur about 10 times over by now, and her collaboration with Beats has resulted in some fantastic products. Whether you keep up with the Kardashians or not, this is a killer water-resistant party speaker with a 24-hour battery life. For Prime Day, it’s under $100.
Pro tip: If you want the best possible price on this Beats speaker, you can get it for just $89.99 at the Mashable Shop, though you lose out on Prime shipping and returns.
The best Prime Day TV deal: Samsung The Frame
Why I love it
As a tech editor, friends and family sometimes ask me what the best TV is, and my answer is always the same: The Frame. Now, I have some caveats. If you’re a movie lover, sports fan, avid binge watcher, and especially if you’re all of the above, then I’d recommend a premium OLED TV (it’s a toss-up between the 65-inch version of the Samsung S95F or the LG C5 OLED TVs). But for design nerds like myself, The Frame truly is something special.
It’s not just the unique matte, anti-glare display. It’s not just the Samsung art gallery, with thousands of classic and modern works of art to display on your TV. And it’s not just the ultra-thin design. The combination of all these innovations makes The Frame more than the sum of its parts. When it’s not in use, this cult-favorite art TV actually enhances your home decor, instead of becoming a design dead zone.
On day one of the Amazon sale, I recommended the 2025 model of The Frame. However, now that Amazon is price matching Best Buy and Samsung’s price on the 2024 edition, that’s my new top pick. I’ve been low-key obsessed with that version since attending the launch event, and you’re getting all the necessary features at a much better price.
The best Prime Day deal for creators: A 4K camera drone
Why I love it
DJI is quickly becoming my favorite brand for creator gadgets. I’ve loved the company’s gimbal pocket camera, and its pocket mics are the unsung heroes of your favorite TikTok videos. If you want to add aerial photography to your social media game, then order this 4K camera drone while it’s on sale. Not only is this one of the best drones for beginners, but it can take off from the palm of your hand.
Another great deal for creators: A gimbal and tripod combo
Why I love it
DJI’s multifunctional creator tool is compact, but acts as a fully-stocked creator toolbox. It has impeccable tracking and stabilization. Its all-in-one design houses an extension rod, a built-in tripod, a phone charging port, and a module for audio capture and lighting.
The best Amazon device deal: Our favorite Kindle
Why I love it
This is the exact Kindle I use, and I’m not just a casual book lover. I collect rare paperbacks and first-edition books, so when I say I’m a bibliophile, I’ve really earned that title. Now, technically, you can buy the Kindle Paperwhite for just $124.99 during Prime Day, but I actually recommend springing for the version without lockscreen ads, which is also on sale. Yes, you’ll have to pay a bit more, but it’s 100 percent worth it, trust me. Otherwise, your lockscreen will be filled with annoying advertisements for romance and fantasy books no one wants to read.
Read our full review of the Kindle Paperwhite.
The best Prime Day memory deal: My personal hard drive
Why I love it
Portable hard drives are far from the sexiest Prime Day deal, but they’re the savvy shopper’s best friend during this event. This is the time of year when I always stock up on extra MicroSD cards and portable hard drives, and this is actually the exact drive you’ll find in my backpack today.
I like SanDisk’s drives for their ease of use and compact size, and I find 1 or 2TB is generally enough space for temporarily storing photos and videos for work. Whether you need a MicroSD Express for your Switch 2 or a stack of new hard drives for work, Prime Day is the best time to stock up.
The best Prime Day laptop deal: Apple M4 MacBook Air
Why I love it
Here at Mashable, we’ve been covering this deal for weeks. Yes, that means this isn’t a Prime Day exclusive, but if you’re looking for the best possible deal on a MacBook, this one’s hard to pass up. Today, you can grab the newest MacBook Air, equipped with the M4 chip, in all four colorways for just $849. For students, professionals, and Apple lovers, that’s an incredibly attractive offer, especially considering this laptop was just released a few months ago. As we said in our review, it’s “a really good deal” — and that was before it went on sale.
Read our full review of the M4 Macbook Air.
The best Prime Day vacuum deal: Save 42% on a Roborock robovac
Top Roborock offers
Why I love it
I’ve tested a lot of robot vacuums. Too many, in fact. Roborock’s bots have consistently impressed me, and for Prime Day, you can score great deals on the brand’s entire lineup. If you really want to splurge, go for the slick Roborock Saros 10R Robot Vacuum and Mop. As my colleague Leah Stodart said in her review, its advanced cleaning abilities give it “an edge over many other premium vacs.” Of course, I know that a nearly $1,300 robot vacuum probably isn’t in your budget.
Don’t worry — I have a backup option. The Roborock Q7 M5+ Robot Vacuum and Mop is a best-selling hybrid vacuum at Amazon, and for Prime Day, it gets a 42% price drop. For under $300, you’ll get excellent pet hair pickup, strong suction, mopping, and self-emptying.
The best Prime Day tablet deal: An A+ tablet
Why I love it
We were excited when Samsung’s A9+ tablet went on sale for $199, and for Prime Day 2025, you can pick one up for just $139.99. Now, you can definitely find more souped-up tablets on sale during Prime Day, but personally, I don’t want a tablet that can double as a laptop. I want a tablet I can use for binge-watching TV in bed or playing The Sims on the couch. And this everyday Android tablet fits the bill perfectly. It’s got a crisp 11-inch display you can use for browsing, gaming, and streaming, but not so much power that you’ll be tempted to get some work done.
The best Prime Day earbuds deal: The must-have Apple buds
Why I love it
For Prime Day, we were hoping to see the AirPods Pro 2 drop back down to their record-low sale price of $159, but Amazon came through with a new record price of $149. We’re hoping to see AirPods Pro 3 later this year, but if you need new earbuds and you need them now, you won’t find these famous pods at a better price. And if they’re still a bit outside your price range, we’ve got plenty more Prime Day deals on headphones and earbuds to shop.
The best Prime Day smartphone deal: The flagship of the year
Why I love it
Spoiler alert: We fully expect to see new Samsung phones announced at the July 9 Samsung Unpacked event (update: they did). So, while you may find Prime Day deals on Samsung’s foldable phones, we highly recommend waiting a couple more days. However, we are not expecting a replacement for the flagship Samsung Galaxy S25 ultra flagship phone anytime soon, making Prime Day the perfect time to buy the undisputed queen of Android phones. The best Prime Day tech deals include a cool 27% discount on the Ultra, letting you pick up this AI smartphone for under $1,000.
Mashable Deals
Read our full review of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra AI Smartphone.
The best Prime Day home deal: A Dyson bladeless fan
Why I love it
We love bladeless fans here at Mashable, and it’s no surprise that Dyson makes the best ones. This tower fan combines Dyson’s slick design with its signature engineering quality, and the result is a fan that almost magically cools down your room. I’m an excessive sweater, and I really struggle in the summer. So, if you’re like me — too hot for your own good — then score this Prime Day Dyson deal while it’s still in stock.
The best gaming deal: A gorgeous Samsung monitor
Why I love it
Samsung’s Odyssey series gaming monitors are gorgeous — and priced securely out of reach for most us. Except, of course, during Prime Day. One of the best Prime Day tech deals so far drops the price on this curved, 32-inch gaming monitor to just $199.99, a much more reasonable investment for gamers. Powered by AMD and Samsung technology, it has a 165Hz refresh rate and an HDR 10 display.
The best travel deal: A pocket-sized Bluetooth dongle
Why I love it
Senior Reporter Haley Henschel traveled from Chicago to London with the Twelve South AirFly Pro, and said she’ll never fly without it again. Wireless headphones and earbuds are wildly more popular than wired ones, but in-flight entertainment often requires you to plug in if you want to enjoy audio. So, that’s where the AirFly Pro comes in. The dongle plugs into the plane’s audio jack and connects to your wireless headphones via Bluetooth, allowing you to watch in-flight movies with your favorite pair of headphones or earbuds.
Honorable mention: A retro-tech calculator
Why I love it
I can’t quite explain why I like this little calculator so much. There are thousands more Prime Day tech deals you could shop instead. But as someone who needs a desktop calculator for his daily work, I just love the retro look and feel of this little gadget. Grab this fun piece of retro-tech while it’s on sale.
Honorable mention: Drool-worthy Dyson stick vacuums
Why I love it
The Dyson V15 Detect Plus is the Tony Stark of vacuums. It has Dyson’s famous laser-equipped vacuum head, which illuminates dust, as well as the brand’s signature design and quality. Dyson is the only brand that actually makes vacuuming kind of fun, and this is a true dream vacuum. Of course, with a sale price of $569, I have to delegate it to “Honorable Mention” status.
And if $300 is your limit when buying a vacuum, then opt for the Dyson V8 Cordless Stick vacuum instead. Prime Day deals on stick vacuums are always a good excuse to buy your first Dyson. If you’re a proud clean freak, this home appliance is more than a vacuum; it’s a status symbol. For Prime Day 2025, you can grab this cordless Dyson stick vacuum for a penny under $300, and you should.
Honorable mention: Our go-to sleep earbuds
Why I love it
Mashable Lead Reporter Bethany Allard dubbed the Soundcore Sleep A20s her favorite sleep earbuds after more than a month of testing buds from different brands. The earbuds stayed in her ears and felt comfortable while lying on her side. They come with a library of sleep sounds, have a battery that will last through the night, and even provide sleep data. While this isn’t a huge discount, we’re excited to see the Sleep A20s get a discount at all this Prime Day.
Check out more top Prime Day deals selected by our editors
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Latest Updates
1 hour ago | July 9, 2025
You can never have too many charging bricks. (Why do they always seem to disappear into thin air?) Grab this Anker three-port wall charger for 35% off. It has two USB-C ports and a USB-A port.
3 hours ago | July 9, 2025
Two cult-favorite alarm clocks are on sale for about the same price. If you’ve been thinking about trying the Loftie or Hatch, now is a great time.
Shop smart alarm clocks on Prime Day
6 hours ago | July 9, 2025
I love the retro-tech look of the Beats Studio Buds +, and for Prime Day, they just hit a new record-low price. We usually see these earbuds drop to about $100 during big sales, but for Prime Day, these noise-cancelling earbuds are marked down to just $89.95. While they don’t quite make the final cut in our guide to the top tech deals, they’re a smart buy this Prime Day.
6 hours ago | July 9, 2025
6 hours ago | July 9, 2025
As of this writing, the 50-inch The Frame, Samsung’s famous QLED art TV, is no longer in stock at Amazon, although you can still pick up the 55-inch version — for now. For the time being, you can get this work of art-slash-technology for $797.99 at Amazon. And if this TV does sell out at Amazon, you can buy it for a few dollars more ($799.99) at Samsung and Best Buy.
11 hours ago | July 9, 2025
AirPods 4 vs. Airpods Pro 2: Prime Day 2025 has delivered discounts on Apple AirPods 4 ($99) and Apple AirPods Pro 2 ($149). According to camelcamelcamel, that’s the lowest-ever price for the Apple AirPods 4. And the same goes for the Apple AirPods Pro 2. So how are you supposed to pick?
In our roundup of the best AirPods to buy, Mashable’s Apple expert Bethany Allard writes that the Apple Airpods Pro 2 offer “well-rounded sound, impressive active noise cancellation, plenty of portability, and a price that (if you catch it at the right time) doesn’t exceed $200.” Well that time has come, folks.
We asked Bethany Allard to compare these Prime Day deals: “The short version of this matchup: if you want active noise cancellation, grab the AirPods Pro. The longer version: the AirPods Pro drop down less frequently than the AirPods 4, making it a better deal to grab when you spot it. They’re also an all around better pair of earbuds, with ANC, four sizes of silicone ear tips for a more secure fit, and an additional hour of listening time per charge (even with ANC). If you’re between these two deals, I recommend going with the Pros.”
11 hours ago | July 9, 2025
Apple AirTag: We weren’t sure what to expect from Prime Day, but when it comes to Apple deals, it has been amazing. We’ve been treated to record-low prices on AirPods, MacBooks, Apple Watches, and so much more. And to keep all of these discounted items safe and secure, you should consider an Apple AirTag.
As of July 9, the Apple AirTag is on sale for $19.99 on Prime Day. That’s 31% off the list price, and less than $1 off the record-low price. And if you want to pick up more than one AirTag at a heavily discounted rate, the four-pack of Apple AirTags is $64.99 for Prime Day. That works out at less than $17 per Airtag.
12 hours ago | July 9, 2025
Samsung Galaxy Watch 7: We didn’t think it could get any better, but then it did. On the first day of Prime Day, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 was listed for $199.99. That was the lowest price we had ever seen at Amazon, but not anymore. As of July 9, The Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 is on sale for a record-low price of $189.99 this Prime Day, down from $329.99.
Read more here.
12 hours ago | July 9, 2025
For Prime Day, day two, we have some new top tech deals:
14 hours ago | July 9, 2025
Meta Quest Bundle: Here’s a Prime Day deal that will send VR fans bananas: A king kong-sized discount on the 128GB Meta Quest 3S, which comes with Gorilla Tag plus a three-month trial of Meta Horizon+. It’s a whole lotta fun at the lowest-ever price for this particular bundle.
The 128GB Meta Quest 3S + Gorilla Tag combo is now just $249 — a 17% discount on the usual list price of $299.99. That’s an overall saving of $50.
14 hours ago | July 9, 2025
MacBook Air: Our favorite Prime Day MacBook Air deal is somehow still available.
We’re already a day into Prime Day madness, and thanks to this year’s extended event, we still have three days to save. You’ll find discounts on almost everything, but we really love this deal on the MacBook Air 13-inch. As of July 9, the latest in the MacBook Air range is on sale for $849 at Amazon. The discount applies to all colors, so you can choose from starlight, midnight, silver, and sky blue.
Read more here.
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![Scientists Found a Continent-Sized Geological Structure Hiding Beneath Antarctica
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is almost unfathomably huge. Covering about 75% of the entire frigid continent (nearly everything on its side of the Transantarctic Mountains), the sheet covers about 3.9 million square miles (10.2 million square kilometers) and extends down 1.4 miles (2.2 km), on average, before coming into contact with Earth’s surface. At its deepest, the ice plunges down over 3 miles (4.9 km). For decades, scientists assumed that this literally continent-sized block of ice rested on an expansive and stable chunk of Earth’s crust known as a craton. A team of researchers has now complicated that picture—mapping a vast, interconnected geological structure that fans out from a troubling “tectonic deformation.” Beneath this ice sheet, thinner and more geologically recent slices of crusty lithosphere fan out into hidden valleys called “pull-apart basins.” These basins—30 elongated wedge-shaped valleys in total—constitute an entirely new, continental-scale geological region underneath Antarctica, in fact, one which the researchers have named the East Antarctic Fan-Shaped Basin Province (EAFBP). But it’s how they likely formed that has now caught researchers’ attention.
To put it bluntly, it turns out that about 90% of the planet’s fresh water ice may not be on solid ground. Geologist John Goodge called the team’s findings “provocative” in an independent commentary on the new study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“East Antarctica is typically considered from seismic tomography and geodetics to be ancient and generally stable,” according to Goodge, who studies continental tectonics with the nonprofit Planetary Science Institute. “[But] something else is going on at depth.” Continental divides Goodge speculates that this seemingly “coherent pull-apart system,” as presented in the new study, might help explain a variety of mysterious heat and water flows beneath this ice sheet’s surface, like that enormous subglacial lake identified in 2016 or some of the hundreds more like it.
The study’s authors, led by geophysicist Egidio Armadillo at the University of Genoa in Italy, agreed: “Because these basins underlie about half of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, they are likely to heavily influence both ice-flow and landscape evolution,” the researchers wrote in their study, also published Thursday in Nature Geoscience. Armadillo’s team, coordinating across Europe and the U.K., developed their new understanding of Antarctica’s hidden bedrock via an exhaustive set of sensory data. Gravitational and magnetic anomalies were mapped via low-altitude airborne surveys. Ground surface features were mapped with seismic tools, using sound waves that vibrate through the ice and ping back information about subglacial landscapes in 3D. The grey, magenta, and cyan lines represent the apparent new fault lines discovered. Credit: Nature Geoscience All of this data—the fruits of “multi-national efforts to image within and below the ice sheet,” as Goodge put it—had already revealed that regions of the continent were “undergoing more rapid movement and ice-mass loss than previously recognized.” Armadillo’s team merely helped to explain why.
The mechanism Armadillo and his colleagues proposed for the formation of these fan-shaped basins is called “distributed rotational extension.” It involves points called Euler poles around which tectonic plates pivot or rotate rather than smash into each other or pull apart. The result is a bit like decks of cards being spread out on a table, thinning out the stack of Earth’s crust as it moves. An icy situation Goodge took pains to spell out the basins’ implications for melting Antarctic ice due to climate change and the risk of rising global sea levels.
The mere existence of these basins, he wrote, “could introduce widespread, systemic instability to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet” via thinner layers of Earth’s crust and more heat flow from below. On top of that, a series of fault-line “troughs” documented between the basins appear “tailor-made to promote outward flow of ice streams from the interior” into the world’s oceans, he said. That said, the team’s findings are unlikely to end this debate. As Goodge noted, Antarctica is “the last continental frontier of scientific exploration.” It’s still a very mysterious place, one that’s challenging to study given its inhospitable temperatures and extreme geography. Its “cryptic subglacial geology” might stay that way for a while. #Scientists #ContinentSized #Geological #Structure #Hiding #Beneath #AntarcticaAntarctica,Geology,mapping,Plate tectonics](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/06/East-Antarctic-Fan-shaped-Basin-Province.jpeg "Scientists Found a Continent-Sized Geological Structure Hiding Beneath Antarctica
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is almost unfathomably huge. Covering about 75% of the entire frigid continent (nearly everything on its side of the Transantarctic Mountains), the sheet covers about 3.9 million square miles (10.2 million square kilometers) and extends down 1.4 miles (2.2 km), on average, before coming into contact with Earth’s surface. At its deepest, the ice plunges down over 3 miles (4.9 km). For decades, scientists assumed that this literally continent-sized block of ice rested on an expansive and stable chunk of Earth’s crust known as a craton. A team of researchers has now complicated that picture—mapping a vast, interconnected geological structure that fans out from a troubling “tectonic deformation.” Beneath this ice sheet, thinner and more geologically recent slices of crusty lithosphere fan out into hidden valleys called “pull-apart basins.” These basins—30 elongated wedge-shaped valleys in total—constitute an entirely new, continental-scale geological region underneath Antarctica, in fact, one which the researchers have named the East Antarctic Fan-Shaped Basin Province (EAFBP). But it’s how they likely formed that has now caught researchers’ attention.
To put it bluntly, it turns out that about 90% of the planet’s fresh water ice may not be on solid ground. Geologist John Goodge called the team’s findings “provocative” in an independent commentary on the new study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“East Antarctica is typically considered from seismic tomography and geodetics to be ancient and generally stable,” according to Goodge, who studies continental tectonics with the nonprofit Planetary Science Institute. “[But] something else is going on at depth.” Continental divides Goodge speculates that this seemingly “coherent pull-apart system,” as presented in the new study, might help explain a variety of mysterious heat and water flows beneath this ice sheet’s surface, like that enormous subglacial lake identified in 2016 or some of the hundreds more like it.
The study’s authors, led by geophysicist Egidio Armadillo at the University of Genoa in Italy, agreed: “Because these basins underlie about half of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, they are likely to heavily influence both ice-flow and landscape evolution,” the researchers wrote in their study, also published Thursday in Nature Geoscience. Armadillo’s team, coordinating across Europe and the U.K., developed their new understanding of Antarctica’s hidden bedrock via an exhaustive set of sensory data. Gravitational and magnetic anomalies were mapped via low-altitude airborne surveys. Ground surface features were mapped with seismic tools, using sound waves that vibrate through the ice and ping back information about subglacial landscapes in 3D. The grey, magenta, and cyan lines represent the apparent new fault lines discovered. Credit: Nature Geoscience All of this data—the fruits of “multi-national efforts to image within and below the ice sheet,” as Goodge put it—had already revealed that regions of the continent were “undergoing more rapid movement and ice-mass loss than previously recognized.” Armadillo’s team merely helped to explain why.
The mechanism Armadillo and his colleagues proposed for the formation of these fan-shaped basins is called “distributed rotational extension.” It involves points called Euler poles around which tectonic plates pivot or rotate rather than smash into each other or pull apart. The result is a bit like decks of cards being spread out on a table, thinning out the stack of Earth’s crust as it moves. An icy situation Goodge took pains to spell out the basins’ implications for melting Antarctic ice due to climate change and the risk of rising global sea levels.
The mere existence of these basins, he wrote, “could introduce widespread, systemic instability to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet” via thinner layers of Earth’s crust and more heat flow from below. On top of that, a series of fault-line “troughs” documented between the basins appear “tailor-made to promote outward flow of ice streams from the interior” into the world’s oceans, he said. That said, the team’s findings are unlikely to end this debate. As Goodge noted, Antarctica is “the last continental frontier of scientific exploration.” It’s still a very mysterious place, one that’s challenging to study given its inhospitable temperatures and extreme geography. Its “cryptic subglacial geology” might stay that way for a while. #Scientists #ContinentSized #Geological #Structure #Hiding #Beneath #AntarcticaAntarctica,Geology,mapping,Plate tectonics")
![Scientists Found a Continent-Sized Geological Structure Hiding Beneath Antarctica
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is almost unfathomably huge. Covering about 75% of the entire frigid continent (nearly everything on its side of the Transantarctic Mountains), the sheet covers about 3.9 million square miles (10.2 million square kilometers) and extends down 1.4 miles (2.2 km), on average, before coming into contact with Earth’s surface. At its deepest, the ice plunges down over 3 miles (4.9 km). For decades, scientists assumed that this literally continent-sized block of ice rested on an expansive and stable chunk of Earth’s crust known as a craton. A team of researchers has now complicated that picture—mapping a vast, interconnected geological structure that fans out from a troubling “tectonic deformation.” Beneath this ice sheet, thinner and more geologically recent slices of crusty lithosphere fan out into hidden valleys called “pull-apart basins.” These basins—30 elongated wedge-shaped valleys in total—constitute an entirely new, continental-scale geological region underneath Antarctica, in fact, one which the researchers have named the East Antarctic Fan-Shaped Basin Province (EAFBP). But it’s how they likely formed that has now caught researchers’ attention.
To put it bluntly, it turns out that about 90% of the planet’s fresh water ice may not be on solid ground. Geologist John Goodge called the team’s findings “provocative” in an independent commentary on the new study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“East Antarctica is typically considered from seismic tomography and geodetics to be ancient and generally stable,” according to Goodge, who studies continental tectonics with the nonprofit Planetary Science Institute. “[But] something else is going on at depth.” Continental divides Goodge speculates that this seemingly “coherent pull-apart system,” as presented in the new study, might help explain a variety of mysterious heat and water flows beneath this ice sheet’s surface, like that enormous subglacial lake identified in 2016 or some of the hundreds more like it.
The study’s authors, led by geophysicist Egidio Armadillo at the University of Genoa in Italy, agreed: “Because these basins underlie about half of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, they are likely to heavily influence both ice-flow and landscape evolution,” the researchers wrote in their study, also published Thursday in Nature Geoscience. Armadillo’s team, coordinating across Europe and the U.K., developed their new understanding of Antarctica’s hidden bedrock via an exhaustive set of sensory data. Gravitational and magnetic anomalies were mapped via low-altitude airborne surveys. Ground surface features were mapped with seismic tools, using sound waves that vibrate through the ice and ping back information about subglacial landscapes in 3D. The grey, magenta, and cyan lines represent the apparent new fault lines discovered. Credit: Nature Geoscience All of this data—the fruits of “multi-national efforts to image within and below the ice sheet,” as Goodge put it—had already revealed that regions of the continent were “undergoing more rapid movement and ice-mass loss than previously recognized.” Armadillo’s team merely helped to explain why.
The mechanism Armadillo and his colleagues proposed for the formation of these fan-shaped basins is called “distributed rotational extension.” It involves points called Euler poles around which tectonic plates pivot or rotate rather than smash into each other or pull apart. The result is a bit like decks of cards being spread out on a table, thinning out the stack of Earth’s crust as it moves. An icy situation Goodge took pains to spell out the basins’ implications for melting Antarctic ice due to climate change and the risk of rising global sea levels.
The mere existence of these basins, he wrote, “could introduce widespread, systemic instability to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet” via thinner layers of Earth’s crust and more heat flow from below. On top of that, a series of fault-line “troughs” documented between the basins appear “tailor-made to promote outward flow of ice streams from the interior” into the world’s oceans, he said. That said, the team’s findings are unlikely to end this debate. As Goodge noted, Antarctica is “the last continental frontier of scientific exploration.” It’s still a very mysterious place, one that’s challenging to study given its inhospitable temperatures and extreme geography. Its “cryptic subglacial geology” might stay that way for a while. #Scientists #ContinentSized #Geological #Structure #Hiding #Beneath #AntarcticaAntarctica,Geology,mapping,Plate tectonics](https://i0.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/06/East-Antarctic-Fan-shaped-Basin-Province.jpeg?ssl=1 "Scientists Found a Continent-Sized Geological Structure Hiding Beneath Antarctica
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is almost unfathomably huge. Covering about 75% of the entire frigid continent (nearly everything on its side of the Transantarctic Mountains), the sheet covers about 3.9 million square miles (10.2 million square kilometers) and extends down 1.4 miles (2.2 km), on average, before coming into contact with Earth’s surface. At its deepest, the ice plunges down over 3 miles (4.9 km). For decades, scientists assumed that this literally continent-sized block of ice rested on an expansive and stable chunk of Earth’s crust known as a craton. A team of researchers has now complicated that picture—mapping a vast, interconnected geological structure that fans out from a troubling “tectonic deformation.” Beneath this ice sheet, thinner and more geologically recent slices of crusty lithosphere fan out into hidden valleys called “pull-apart basins.” These basins—30 elongated wedge-shaped valleys in total—constitute an entirely new, continental-scale geological region underneath Antarctica, in fact, one which the researchers have named the East Antarctic Fan-Shaped Basin Province (EAFBP). But it’s how they likely formed that has now caught researchers’ attention.
To put it bluntly, it turns out that about 90% of the planet’s fresh water ice may not be on solid ground. Geologist John Goodge called the team’s findings “provocative” in an independent commentary on the new study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“East Antarctica is typically considered from seismic tomography and geodetics to be ancient and generally stable,” according to Goodge, who studies continental tectonics with the nonprofit Planetary Science Institute. “[But] something else is going on at depth.” Continental divides Goodge speculates that this seemingly “coherent pull-apart system,” as presented in the new study, might help explain a variety of mysterious heat and water flows beneath this ice sheet’s surface, like that enormous subglacial lake identified in 2016 or some of the hundreds more like it.
The study’s authors, led by geophysicist Egidio Armadillo at the University of Genoa in Italy, agreed: “Because these basins underlie about half of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, they are likely to heavily influence both ice-flow and landscape evolution,” the researchers wrote in their study, also published Thursday in Nature Geoscience. Armadillo’s team, coordinating across Europe and the U.K., developed their new understanding of Antarctica’s hidden bedrock via an exhaustive set of sensory data. Gravitational and magnetic anomalies were mapped via low-altitude airborne surveys. Ground surface features were mapped with seismic tools, using sound waves that vibrate through the ice and ping back information about subglacial landscapes in 3D. The grey, magenta, and cyan lines represent the apparent new fault lines discovered. Credit: Nature Geoscience All of this data—the fruits of “multi-national efforts to image within and below the ice sheet,” as Goodge put it—had already revealed that regions of the continent were “undergoing more rapid movement and ice-mass loss than previously recognized.” Armadillo’s team merely helped to explain why.
The mechanism Armadillo and his colleagues proposed for the formation of these fan-shaped basins is called “distributed rotational extension.” It involves points called Euler poles around which tectonic plates pivot or rotate rather than smash into each other or pull apart. The result is a bit like decks of cards being spread out on a table, thinning out the stack of Earth’s crust as it moves. An icy situation Goodge took pains to spell out the basins’ implications for melting Antarctic ice due to climate change and the risk of rising global sea levels.
The mere existence of these basins, he wrote, “could introduce widespread, systemic instability to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet” via thinner layers of Earth’s crust and more heat flow from below. On top of that, a series of fault-line “troughs” documented between the basins appear “tailor-made to promote outward flow of ice streams from the interior” into the world’s oceans, he said. That said, the team’s findings are unlikely to end this debate. As Goodge noted, Antarctica is “the last continental frontier of scientific exploration.” It’s still a very mysterious place, one that’s challenging to study given its inhospitable temperatures and extreme geography. Its “cryptic subglacial geology” might stay that way for a while. #Scientists #ContinentSized #Geological #Structure #Hiding #Beneath #AntarcticaAntarctica,Geology,mapping,Plate tectonics")
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