100-Year-Old Photo Negatives Discovered In Antarctica 114
An anonymous reader writes "A box of 22 photographic negatives from Robert Falcon Scott has been discovered after lying nearly a century in the famous explorer's hut. From the article: 'The photos were taken during Ernest Shackleton's 1914-1917 Ross Sea Party, another failed exploration whose members were forced to live in Scott's hut after their ship blew out to sea. The cellulose nitrate negatives were found clumped together in a small box in the darkroom of Herbert Ponting, Scott's expedition photographer, the trust said. The trust took the negatives to New Zealand, where they were separated to reveal 22 images.'"
Re:so (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it is an Antarctic [wikipedia.org] "fucking hut", so I imagine they'd prioritized that just a bit under "maintain climate observation equipment", "take new pictures", "inquire about those sparse supply shipments", and "avoid freezing ass off".
They've improved at all of 'em, but bad things still happen, so forgive them for not heading over to fetch some (historically important) photos hastily enough. There are reasons Scott ended up in that hut. :)
Re:so (Score:5, Funny)
Well it is an Antarctic "fucking hut"
So they found porn?
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Here's an even better 360 view of the inside of the hut [spitsbergen-svalbard.com], which is a protected historic site - which might explain why no one has pried open every box inside looking for treasure.
(stupid broken link...)
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Thanks, that is one amazing view. i can only dream of visiting it one day.
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You might like this too then: https://www.google.com/maps/views/streetview/antarctica [google.com]
Plenty of other places to explore too on streetview.
Could also check out http://www.airpano.com/ [airpano.com] - not as extensive but aerial.
Interior design for cold weather.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I LOVE the way they have the stove at one end, the chimney at the other, and run the flue diagonally across the hut to act as a radiator...
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That contradicts my idea of "hut". It's bigger than my apartment.
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That contradicts my idea of "hut". It's bigger than my apartment.
Hell, it's bigger than my Mom's basement!
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CNN link warning!!! (Score:1)
In light of a certain Der Spiegel revelation in the last few days, you you at least warn people that the lionk goes to CNN.
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Does your status bar prints: "Warning, In light of a certain Der Spiegel revelation in the last few days, consider following this link." ?
I, for one, didn't know anything about any problems in following a CNN link.
Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
they must have felt like kids finding it.
Space suits? (Score:2)
Re:Space suits? (Score:4, Informative)
I think the biggest problem would be that those suits weigh something like 200-300 pounds.
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Your on the last freakin' frontier, deal with it.
In suits designed to operate in zero gravity, or perhaps more to the point, weighted enough to operate in an environment with 1/6th the gravity of the Earth?
Sure, why not trek across the Antarctic with a couple of scuba tanks on your back too.
Use your damn head.
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Enormously expensive ($12M), uncomfortable. Besides the space isn't really as cold as the Antarctic. You only lose heat from radiating infrared whereas in the Antarctic you have the wind to deal with.
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In space there is one thing that makes space suits usable at all. That thing is lack of gravity.
Re:Space suits? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh man you'e just asking for a flock of pedants to jump on you about a "lack of gravity." Right after they explain to me that pedants do not come in flocks. (I believe the proper group name is an Annoyance.)
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Until I know just what the robotic {blank} AC wants on the 'giant magical box' is, I'm going to imagine things much more interesting than a sno-cat. AC, you are one sick puppy!
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Here's a sketch [bpb-art.com] of the AC's suggestion.
Re:Space suits? (Score:5, Insightful)
The antarctic is alot colder than space... Not in absolute terms. But in real world terms as it applys to humans and their stuff.
In space you have very little heat loss because it doesn't transfer very well to a vacuum. Why spacesuits do double duty as cooling units to keep you from overheating. The whole no air thing is a great insulator and your only losses are radiation.
On the pole however. It's cold. AND filled with air... Cold air. Moving cold air. Lots of it. You have much greater heat loss than just radiation.
You'd freeze in a space suit on the pole. Likely pretty quick too.
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Jesus Christ. What retard marked this insightful?
For an answer to this question, visit some place where the air is 50F and the lakes are 40F. Take a short walk in the 50F air, keep all your clothes on and go jump in the 40F lake.
Re: Space suits? (Score:2)
That's also why summer in Antarctica can feel warmer than winter in Chicago, even if the dry-bulb temperature is lower. Inland from the coasts, Antarctica is basically a desert, while Chicago is relatively humid. When it's cold + humid, the moisture in contact with your body can absorb more heat than dry air can radiate away. Being in liquid water is just a more extreme case, with even faster negative consequences.
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I'm sure there's all kinds of environmental protection provided by spacesuits that's not needed and just adds weight and bulk, like radiation shielding and even cooling systems.
I live in Minnesota where it gets cold (current temp, -4F, projected high Monday, -14F) and in my experience conventional snowmobile suit combined with snow boots with the right clothing layers underneath does a pretty good job of keeping you warm.
I would think that a snowmobile suit with some kind of internal heating system would be
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The fact that when you lose power your heat goes away. Space suits have heaters and chillers in them to maintain temperatures.
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A couple of the photos show the explorers. My immediate thought was how ill equipped for the cold they look by today's standards. Then I started wondering about space suits. They obviously can withstand the cold and also have some durability for the elements given that on earth astronauts train wearing them under water. What are some practical limitations of space suits (perhaps modified to, e.g., not have to carry oxygen) that make them impracticable for working near the poles?
The major point against using space suits for arctic exploration imo might be that space suits actually are COOLING suits. They are designed to prevent the astronauts from overheating, because evaporative cooling (sweating) does not work in space. Also, the suits are pressurized and quite hard to move in, plus they are very heavy.
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There's the fact that you essentially can't move around in them whatsoever if you're on the surface of the earth. The only reason why they work in the NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, i.e. the giant pool) is because of the...wait for it...neutral buoyancy. When they're not underwater, the astronauts are essentially trapped in the suit as if it was a giant, person-shaped prison. The risk of drowning in the NBL is a very real one as well. I seem to recall hearing from an astronaut friend of ours that there w
Digital camera (Score:5, Interesting)
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You can't trust those remote servers. It's better to shoot them first and ask questions later.
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The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the title is, hmm, let's put a digital camera or an SD card full of digital pictures in Antartica for 100 years, and see if we can recover it :)
SD card will lose data after >~20years
First SD cards used SLC in big geometries, that could maybe last 60-80years.
Nowadays you get garbage quality 20nm TLC that loses data even WHEN YOU READ said data (card needs to periodically rewrite stored data or else it will forget it).
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Robert Falcon Scott, time traveller (Score:5, Informative)
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It is interesting to see how little snow is there. Even Scott remarked in his journals how little snow there was in 1912 compared to the first time he was there, only 5 years later. "I have never seen the ice of the Sound in such a condition or the land so free from snow. Taking these facts in conjunction with the exceptional warmth of the air, I came to the conclusion that it had been an exceptionally warm summer." (Scott, 1912)
These photos are from 1914. Yet we are to believe all the snow/ice melt has
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This won't happen in the future. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is amazing every time we see it. But alas I can see a different summary in the future:
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 02, 2114 @05:06PM
An anonymous reader writes
"A microSD card has been discovered after lying nearly a century on the moon in an ancient Chinese rover. From the article: 'It is presumed to contain photos which were taken during the PRC's 2013-2014 Moon mission. The microSD card was found in a rusted pile of what appeared to be the remains of the small rover. The card was taken to New Zealand, where even their ancient technology was unable to read it due to historic use of patent encumbered file systems and file formats where all documentation has been lost.'"
This is the future of discovering man kind's left overs. A piece of plastic with a small microchip containing unreadable gibberish.
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Who cares about a little piece of plastic gimmickery when the future is apparently that samzenpus outlives us all?
Samzenpus is just a slashdot bot. You don't think we have any actual editors here do you?
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rusted pile?!?
Re:This won't happen in the future. (Score:4, Funny)
Until they find an old interface to read it, and discover it has only a single copy of "Never gonna give you up" on it.
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>> This is the future of discovering man kind's left overs. A piece of plastic with a small microchip containing unreadable gibberish.
In other words, a small piece of plastic.
PDX (Score:3)
That's nothing. Going through my Dad's thumb drives over Christmas I found one that contains all his digital photos. Fully about half of them are in an unreadable PDX (Photoshop Deluxe Express) format. So they are already unreadable gibberish, and that is only a handful of years in the past. No amount of software would convert them to something useful. Just image what someone would find in 100 years.
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Also you mention music. Try video.
I have a hell of a time to get all the various video formats working on my computer that are modern and produced now, and have all sorts of codec packages, players, etc... and even then some will or will not play, or be missing subs or whatever. Try using any of those down the road!
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My first digital camera used floppy disks and you need to go out of your way these days to buy a reader assuming the magnetic media is still good 15 years later.
But the reality is you're talking quite a different time scale here. Lets talk about this again in another 80 years and see if you can still do everything. Then after we awake from cryo lets repeat this discussion in another 200 years and then talk about it again. How about 1000?
The reality is finding a permanent way of recording something is not ea
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Have you tried any of them? Because I have. Some say they support it, but don't. Even when they do there are apparently two types of PDX files, one produced by Photoshop, and one produced by Photoshop Deluxe Express, and it seems most can only do those produced by actual Photoshop. The Deluxe Express which came with digital cameras as free software isn't quite the same it seems. Of those that even say they support that, I found two, however when I tried either one of them neither of them actually worked and
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It is likely you might be able to buy a retail copy of Photoshop to convent them, and that probably would work, but then you are spending thousands of dollars.
I don't know if this is helpful, but you don't need to spend thousands of dollars for an old copy of Photoshop. Adobe has effectively released CS2 as freeware [techspot.com]. Officially, I believe you are only supposed to download and use this if you already have a CS2 license [forbes.com], but lots of people appear to have interpreted Adobe's actions as effectively releasing free software.
So, you might try this as a solution... CS2 was released in 2005, so if your photos are 10 years old, I imagine this could work.
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Or I could just pirate their software. However that goes a bit beyond just ethically vague.
Were it just me, I would likely do the later, using it to figure out how to batch convert the files, convert them, then delete the software. I would assuage my guilt by the fact that I am using for a specific purpose to solve a problem cause by Adobe itself, then ceasing my use of the software.
However this is my Dad, and I feel more inclined for a legitimate fix. Of course I could just steal the thumb drive with the b
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However I will look into CS2... That may be just want my Dad needs. That is hoping that he can figure out how to get it, or if it is even compatible with Windows 8...
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Fifteen years ago, I used to do my file backups using burnable CD's (and some software like Nero). About five years later, the external CD burner stopped working, and it was hit and miss as to whether any other PC drive would read those "unclosed" disks.
I've got old image files in AtariPaint format (the cartridge for the Atari 400/800) - they seem to be unreadable, and that's just 30 years ago.
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I'd think the amazing thing about such a find would be the "rusted pile of what appeared to be the remains..." since lack of O2 on Luna pretty much makes rust impossible.
Never mind that the rover is made of materials that don't rust even with O2 present.
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Glacier [amazon.com] would seem to be the appropriate technology.. ;)
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This is the future of discovering man kind's left overs. A piece of plastic with a small microchip containing unreadable gibberish.
Unlikely. Actually what will doom data retention is constant race of storage providers to give us more for less at a cost of quality. Smaller silicon processes, TLC NAND, SMR ( http://www.hgst.com/science-of-storage/emerging-technologies/shingled-magnetic-recording [hgst.com] ) all lead to terrible data persistence.
Filter (Score:3)
That's a cool Instagram filter they used. Anyone know which it is?
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It's called Silver Nitrate on a glass plate. No electronic timers, electric circuits, auto-flash, matrix-weighting, zoom, auto-stabilization, JPEG compression, white-balance, macro-mode, red-eye mode, auto-timer, auto-upload available. Just place the plate in the wooden-box, remove the lens cap, wait 15 seconds, then cover the cap again. Then take the plates to the dark room and develop them.
Epic expedition stories! (Score:5, Interesting)
For anyone not knowing the expedition stories, even just by reading Wikipedia you can get the sense of how much those people went through. It is well worth your time: (warning: it is worse than tvtropes;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_Age_of_Antarctic_Exploration [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod_Expedition/ [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen's_South_Pole_expedition [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Expedition [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Sea_party [wikipedia.org]
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Seconded. Coincidentally, just a few weeks ago I was pseudo-randomly websurfing and came upon the wikipedia articles about the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. I easily spent two evenings reading about those journeys and the men - and animals - that undertook them. Fascinating stuff.
One of the participants in one of the expeditions was Apsley Cherry-Garrard. He subsequently wrote a book, "The Worst Journey In The World", which is on Project Gutenberg's site http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1436 [gutenberg.org]
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Yeah, I'm was planning to read this book too. I've read Shackleton's South, it is a bit dry, but epic nonetheless.
I'm working on a expedition ship and went couple of times to the Elephant Island/ Point Wild/Valentine, and when you see it in person, I found it absolutely incredible that those guys survived there for many months. Simply unbelievable!
And when you see the ice on the continent itself, it is breathtaking, looks like white desert with with steep mountains.
Atlantic Heritage Trust Image Collection (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nzaht.org/AHT/antarctic-photos/ [nzaht.org]
for a complete collection of the images.
In other news... 100 year old story posted to .\ (Score:2)
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That doesn't appear much to be part of their job, either.
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Too bad they were all work and no play. (Score:1)
Now find the Antarctic Snow Cruiser! (Score:1)
I have somehow ended up with F. Alton Wade's letters that he sent from Antarctica to his girlfriend back in the States. The snow cruiser is apparently an awesome base station, although completely useless as a vehicle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctic_snow_cruiser_cutaway.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Why do they need these? (Score:2)
Can't they just take new pictures?
(C)opyright (Score:2)