Martin O’Leary, a glaciologist from Swansea University in the UK, recreated the continent of Antarctica in Minecraft.
Yes, the whole thing.
O’Leary’s version is at 1:1000 scale, but considering how large Antarctica is, that’s still impressive. It recreates the continent and the outlying islands using data from the Bedmap2 mapping project.
O’Leary told Wired UK that he was inspired by Minecraft recreations of the UK, 19th-Century Manhattan and Denmark.
“I wanted to transpose [that idea] to somewhere a bit less accessible — somewhere that’s outside most people’s experience,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary tried to make his Minecraft Antarctica as representative of the real place as possible, right down to the materials.
“Ice represents ice, water represents water, stone represents stone,” said O’Leary. “There’s one block of lava, at the top of Mount Erebus, which represents the lava lake there.”
You can start exploring O’Leary’s Antarctica by heading to his website for the download and following the instructions there to get it to run.
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