One of the wildest conspiracy theories on the internet is that Hitler fled in a U-boat to a secret base in Antarctica. British and American forces searched for him, and eventually destroyed the base with nuclear weapons in the 1950s.

This fantastic story was investigated recently by two scientists. They found that Germans had visited the Antarctic before the war to prospect for whaling, but did not set up a base. The British mission to Antarctica was to secure territorial claims, the American operation was an exercise in polar warfare, and the nuclear weapons were atom bomb tests in the South Pacific.

After the German surrender in 1945, two U-boats arrived in Argentina, but they could not have reached Antarctica. During the winter the sea freezes around the Antarctic, and, at its maximum extent, the sea ice covers around 20 million sq km (8 million square miles), larger than the continent itself.

Last month the International Polar Year was launched to raise interest in scientific research in the Arctic and Antarctic, featuring vital work on weather and climate. The investigation on the German war story proves the value of proper science — but no doubt the conspiracy theories will continue.