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Antarctica stands out from just about anywhere else on Earth. Sure, it's the windiest, coldest, driest, and least inhabited region. It is covered in thick layers of ice making it very inhospitable to most animals. Tourist visits are costly, demand physical fitness, can only take place in summer (from November to February), and are largely limited to the Peninsula, Islands and Ross Sea. A couple of thousand staff live here in summer in some four dozen bases mostly in those areas; a small number stay over winter. When the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959, all previous claims became null and void. Instead of divvying up the land between world powers, the treaty granted mutual sovereignty to the 12 nations that signed it. Since then, a few dozen more countries have signed on, and, by some miracle, a continent that makes up 10 percent of the earth's land is still being used as a shared scientific preserve today.Keep Listening to Podcast 24 Awaaz Sabki