While we might be out tying to figure out massive mysteries about outer space, there are still parts of our own planet we know relatively litte about.
One of the many ways that we can learn more about our geological history is by looking into ice sheets that have been around for almost unbelievable lengths of time.
While some ice melts and reforms each year, there are near-permanent sheets that are hundreds of meters deep and haven't melted for centuries, holding plenty of frozen information.
A TikTok video from Austin Carter, a researcher who worked with the Center for Old Ice Exploration (COLDEX) to look into some Antarctic ice sheets in 2022 has given people a unique look at his work.
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Carter dropped an action camera down one of the deep bore holes that COLDEX uses to extract samples from the ice, and let it fall all 93 meters to the bottom, giving us a surprisingly trippy icy journey.
It's quite an amazing video, starting with Carter at ground level waving goodbye to the camera before it speeds down the small hole.
It doesn't take long for things to lose their sense of scale, with the vertical icy tunnel almost starting to look a bit otherworldly - almost like a hyperspace jump from Star Wars.
It looks a little like speeding through an incredibly narrow tunnel on a train, or even being on a bobsled, and people have been pretty amazed by it.
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One comment under Carter's TikTok upload didn't mince words: "Honestly this was really scary".
Another was more curious about why all this was necessary: "Much respect, and pls take no offence, but why? Why spend time and money for a study on old ice?"
Well, it turns out that by studying the ice down at these depths, COLDEX and similar research teams can learn a lot about our ancient history - particularly where the climate was concerned.
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Samples from different depths can help us to glean information about long historical patterns of warming or cooling.
This all might play into our being able to better predict the effect of the ongoing climate crisis on our planet, including what it might do to those very same ice sheets.
Just to drill home how old the depths that this camera traveled to are, some of the ice from that bore hole is some 2.7 million years old, according to Carter, so it's truly from a time that's almost impossible to to wrap your head around.
Interestingly, the hole itself was drilled some 20 years ago, but remains in active use to this day, becoming its own little permanent fixture in the ice sheet.
Featured Image Credit: IFLScience/YouTube