Someone dropped a camera into a hole beneath Antarctica to make an incredible discovery

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be stuck in a washing machine in sub-zero temperatures, this video is probably the closest thing you will ever get to it.

PhD student Austin Carter didn't actually intend to make people feel like they have been struck down by vertigo, but simply wanted to show off the dizzying footage he shot in the South Pole as he made an incredible discovery. Take a look at this:

Carter joined a team of researchers who headed to Allan Hills, East Antarctica, in December 2022 with the Center for Old Ice Exploration (COLDEX) to conduct a range of studies aimed at improving our understanding of Earth's climate.

The five-year mission intends to help scientists understand the evolution - and therefore, what could come in the future - of our planet's weather systems.

The experts drill into various ice cores - which are cylinder-shaped ice samples that can be removed for research - within the East Antarctic Ice Sheet which contains the oldest recorded glaciers.

They obviously have plenty of ground to cover in the southernmost continent, so teams use radar and GPS surveys to identify potential sites for them to take a closer look at.

Austin Carter wowed social media users with the short video. (Storyful)

Scientists said that despite being aided by technology, it is still like looking for a needle in a haystack during the first phase of the project, which focused on an area around half the size of Germany.

They headed out to East Antarctica with the aim of finding out how the place is coping with global warming, such as how sensitive ice sheets are to higher levels of greenhouse gases and how its ice sheets might respond to warmer climates.

Boffins can analyse the air bubbles trapped in the glacial ice to gain a better understanding of Earth's climate, as they only have record of what was going on 800,000 years ago thanks to another ice core that was drilled there 20 years ago.

Climate researcher and COLDEX director Edward Brook discussed his hopes for the expedition with The Antarctic Sun in 2022, saying: "The goal is to extend the ice core record of climate change back as far as we can.

The clip showed viewers what journeying 93 metres below the surface looks like. (Storyful)

"It would even be remarkably important if we could push it back to three or four million years or even older," he added.

Although Brook's might have set his sights a little high, COLDEX and the research team did come up trumps.

That's because they discovered what might be some of Earth's oldest ice after dropping a camera 93 metres underground and letting it hurtle down a small hole.

Carter, who recorded the incredible clip, said that the camera 'traveled down the borehole of the completed ice core' and explained that he wanted the footage to teach viewers about the research as it progresses.

Sharing the video to TikTok, the Michigan-born student explained: "You are now entering the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The team eventually arrived at the bottom of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to find the world's oldest ice. (Storyful)

"We drilled an ice core at the Allan Hills where we have previously found the oldest ice ever discovered - 2.7million years old! With this core, we hoped to find even older ice to learn more about the fundamental properties of our climate system."

The extraordinary footage takes viewers on a journey beneath Antarctica - and through history - as it pummels deeper and deeper towards the bottom of the ice core.

As well as leaving you in a bit of a spin, it shows the varying colour and textures of the ice which dates back thousands of years, so the researchers struck gold here really.

Dropping cameras into things seems to lead to some pretty cool results - so why not see what this person found when they threw one into the deepest cave in the US, or from the world's most dangerous pier?