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America, the nearest continent.
Its extension is about 13.2 millions Km, becoming 14.0 considering the average area covered by ice.
It can be divided into two main regions by two deep gulfs, the Ross Sea and the Weddel Sea: the Western Antarctica, directed towards South America with the Antarctic Peninsula and the Eastern Antarctica, much wider.
The highest mountain is Mt. Winson (4897 m), in the Ellsworth Mounts (Western Antarctica) but the main chain of this continent is the Trans-Antarctic Range, in the central region, running very close to the coast along the Ross Sea.

Another important mountain chain crosses the whole Antarctic Peninsula, as a natural prolongation of the Andes (the highest peak is Mt. Jackson, 4190 m).
In any case, the largest part of the Antarctic territory, under the ice, remains relatively flat, except for insulated mountain groups, hardly emerging from the ice cap.

Its climate, also when it doesn't reach the negative record mentioned above, nearly always keeps the termometer below 0C, like on Mars.
In January, in fact, in the middle of summer, there are about 0C along the coasts and -30 in the inland and, in winter, we have -20 along the coasts (in the average) and -65 in the inland.
Despite this, the atmosphere is extremely dry, just like in the Sahara and the rare snow falls (the frozen equivalent of rain falls in a wet climate) have been sufficient, in any case, to create a thick ice cap, after millions of years.
This extreme cold is worsened by very strong winds, blowing at more than 300 Km/h for many days and even weeks, that always enhance the cold feeling of additional -30, -40C and more.

So, it's easy to understand why this is the only continent where there are no towns, roads and industries, except for various scientific bases created by many Countries (U.S., Russia, New Zealand, Australia, Chili, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, France, Italy, Poland, South Africa, Germany, India, Japan, China and South Korea, as reported by National Geographic in the same article of 2002) that, in the largest part, are inhabited by scientists and technicians for only 6 months in the year and are closed in winter.
Scientists (men and women) study local biology, perform astronomic and physics researches and also study its climate and the evolution of that of the whole Earth just through the variations in the Antarctic one.

Just the studies about global climate have recorded an average warming of 2C in the Antarctica during the last 50 years, that is even

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