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Science

Exploring Antarctica 195

Posted by michael from the don't-forget-your-mittens dept.
dargaud writes "There will soon be some firsts on the high Antarctic plateau: after getting 150km from it last year a Chinese expedition plans on reaching Dome A, the highest part of the Antarctic ice sheet (4200m), farthest to reach and coldest place on Earth, untrodden yet. Then in a few months the French-Italian station of Concordia at Dome C (3200m) will open year-round for its first winter-over, of which I will be part. The location of these ice domes make them great for atmospheric physics, glaciology, astronomy and more. Big projects are getting interested in Antarctica again, just in time for the International Polar Year of 2007, 50 years after the first one."
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Exploring Antarctica More

Exploring Antarctica

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  • The devil called... (Score:5, Funny)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:20AM (#10662749)
    Women have always been a rare and strange breed in Antarctica. Most often there aren't any. During my winter over, women were just some kind of remote and hazy memory. In 2000, a woman did winter over for the first time in Dumont d'Urville, although they have been doing so for a long time in American and Australian stations.

    A lot of people seemed to be in a contest for the most original New Year's 2000: from flying the Concorde around the globe to changing the time zone of some Pacific islands... I have to say that ours was quite original: a bunch of scientists, technicians, mechanics all stuck together, getting drunk and dancing with the three available women.

    Almost everybody is worthless the first two days: the high altitude combined with the cold and extreme dryness makes for some awful first nights. And hangovers are worse here too: 2 beers are enough to get you hungover in the morning.

    So let me get this straight... You are in the coldest area on earth at high altitude with nearly no women and you get hung over from two beers and you return to this place multiple times in your lifetime? This poor guy is one sick fuck but at least his beer stays cold.

    Personally, I'll let them see "the new sun" first and I'll stick to the sloppy seconds, at least it's warmed up by then.

    • Re:The devil called... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Andr0s ( 824479 )
      And it seems that guy is not completely alone. Try this site [theice.org]. Almost as bad as moisture farming on Tatooine.

    • Time to resupply the flying saucer base (Score:4, Funny)

      by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:39AM (#10662900) Journal
      Of course, they can't bring women with them, because that is what the space aliens are after. It's the porn industry's duty to produce enough to keep the space aliens happy and thereby prevent an invasion of Planet Earth.

      I bet you didn't know that internet porn was a federally funded government project developed just for this purpose?

    • Think of the possibilities (Score:5, Funny)

      by xThinkx ( 680615 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:41AM (#10662914) Homepage

      "coldest area on earth at high altitude with nearly no women"

      Now you've done it, hardocp will soon establish a city of overclocking enthusiasts there.

    • It must be the porn - friend of mine wintered over there and claimed that even with nearly non-stop viewing he didnt get through the video library they had - and good quality stuff apparently - purchased with tax-payer money. Boy - am I bummed about that!

      I guess he didnt get much time to "watch" - what with getting the 2400 baud link to work and cleaning out the loo every so often - yeah EVERYONE on base gets assigned to shit detail at some time - its a community thing. And they arent allowed to leave the

  • Remeber to take sunblock (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cheezemonkhai ( 638797 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:21AM (#10662756) Homepage
    Well it's about time we fully explored our own planet rather then jetting off into space.

    Space is cool and everything, but I think looking after our planet and exploring the seas etc would be a lot cooler :)
    • Exploring the seas and looking after them are often mutually exclusive...

    • The oceans (Score:5, Insightful)

      by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:34AM (#10662861) Homepage Journal
      In order to really explore our planet we would have to go down and loot at the oceans too. We know very little about what is really down there and happens down there.

    • Re:Remeber to take sunblock (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Enigma_Man ( 756516 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:40AM (#10662906) Homepage
      The earth is cool and all, but I think that looking after our own bodies and exploring them would be a lot cooler.

      Our bodies are cool and all, but I think that looking after our molecules and exploring them would be a lot cooler.

      Repeat unto infinity.

      Exploration can happen in parallel dude, without it, we'd still be stuck in the cave ages trying to figure out some mundane detail.

      -Jesse
      • The earth is cool and all, but I think that looking after our own bodies and exploring them would be a lot cooler.


        Our bodies are cool and all, but I think that looking after our molecules and exploring them would be a lot cooler.

        Repeat unto infinity.
        Don't worry. People will stop repeating this thought process right around the exploring their own bodies part.
    • OR....given our resources, man-power, different tastes for different things - we can do multiple things like: explore our oceans, our bodies, etc AND explore space.
      As shown in our society - we can do all these things. There is no rule that says "We can only explore three things at a time - pick."
      The only problems we do have is that our gov't gets suckered for these extremely expensive companies who price gouge us so badly that it actually stifles innovation.

  • Sorry, I can't resist (Score:5, Funny)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:23AM (#10662772)
    Explorer: You've got to start charging more than a dollar a bag. We lost two men on this expedition!

    Apu: If you can think of a better way to get ice, I'd like to hear it!
  • I heard that these parts of Antartica are very dry and suck the moist out of you...

  • need my eyes checked (Score:3, Funny)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:34AM (#10662852)
    anyone else read the headline as:
    "Exploding Antarctica"

    and here i thought something really cool was about to happen

  • 200 Degree Club (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DJDutcher ( 823189 )
    I heard that at the south pole they sit in a sauna that reaches 100 degrees farenheit then, when the temperature outside drops below 100 below zero they run outside in just their boots and then quickly back into the sauna. If you've done that you're in the 200 degree club. I'd like to winter over in Antartica. It sounds like fun.
    • I think that would also get you into the Darwin Award club.

    • It's a hot tub, not a sauna, that they have at the pole. 100 farenheit is warm for a hot tub, but cold for a sauna. A hot tub has more thermal conductivity, though, which means that your skin gets as hot as the water. (If your skin got to sauna temperatures, it would all die, because the water in the cells would boil)
      • 100 farenheit is warm for a hot tub, but cold for a sauna.

        um no it is not. a 100DegF hottub is considered barely warm. The threshold for hottubs is very small. from 100-108 deg F is the range from "it feels only warm" to "OMFG! This is HOT!" At 110degF some people can stand that temperature but it will give you a very mild burn on your body.. I.E. everyone getting out of 110deg water will have red skin like a light sunburn where the waterline was.

        I prefer 104, 106 if it's below 10degF outside. but eve

      • Re:200 Degree Club (Score:2, Informative)

        by henrym ( 414280 )
        Sorry, that's incorrect. I'm at the South Pole right now, and I promise you that we do indeed have two saunas. The club is actually the 300 degree club. The rules state that you crank the sauna up to 200 degrees F (you have to trick the sauna's thermostat by putting it into a glass of ice water), and then you run outside around the geographic pole when the temperature is at least -100 degrees.

        http://www.theglobalguy.com/antarctica-2004/the-30 0-club/ [theglobalguy.com] theglobalguy.com
        • I'd only heard of the hot tub from Vic (unless we're misremembering her story), so I'd assumed that was what people used, having done similar (but less extreme) things myself.

    • Re:200 Degree Club (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Deep Penguin ( 73203 )
      What we do at Pole is called the *300* Degree club - we crank the sauna up to +200F and run outside wearing only shoes at -100F.

      http://penguincentral.com/300Club.html [penguincentral.com]

      (the photo [penguincentral.com] is from my *second* 300 Club run this winter - no photographer out there the first time)

      Before some smart-ass tries to claim that it's impossible to sit in a +200F sauna, remember that a) we are at a nominal 11,000' and b) there's about 0.5% RH, meaning that heat transfer to your body is quite poor. I wouldn't want to think ab
  • Norway has long traditions of Antarctic exploration and research, and it was recently reported that we will be stepping up our activity considerably from 2005.
    We will once again maintain a year-round presence in Antarctica starting then.
  • How do they determine that it is the coldest place on Earth if no one has been there to measure it?

    Wasn't the coldest inhabited place Vostok(?) in Russia? I guess that having people living on these ice domes will mean that record will be rewritten.

  • Thing are looking up down there (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nels_tomlinson ( 106413 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:36AM (#10662880) Homepage
    Nearly 100 years ago (1913?), Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) placed a newpaper ad: "Men Wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success." Nowadays, we can tell them: ``safe return probable''. That's progress.

    I enjoy spending summers in the high arctic; I think I could go for a summer or two in the high antarctic. Anyone need a statistician on the ground there for a summer? Winters are right out, though: I've spent quite enough time in the dark.

  • If you want to learn a bit about Antartica... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by marktaw.com ( 816752 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:38AM (#10662891) Homepage

    I just finished a great book on what Antartica is really like called Ice Bound [amazon.com] by Jerri Nielsen.* After reading it, I felt like I would want to go live there for a while, except I hate the extreme cold. The sense of community is something beautiful, and completely lacking from our modern society, as well as work being your life and your life being your work (and that's a good thing).

    Good luck with your Winter-Over. If you started a blog, would yours be the first from Antartica? If you did, I would consider it a must-read.

    *Yes, I make $0.02 if you order through that link, so sue me.

  • Antarctica - the coldest place on Earth (Score:3, Informative)

    by helfen ( 791121 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:40AM (#10662901)
    Antarctica holds the world's record for coldest temperature: -129F ( recorded in 1983 at the Russian Base Vostok).

    Current [weatherwatchers.org] temp of Vostok is -64 F / -53 C.
  • http://www.nsf.gov/od/opp/antarct/start.htm
  • I have long wanted to get to do a rotation in the Antarctic, but alas there isn't a big demand for ITSEC folks there (despite the recent incidents where their systems have been compromised). Anyway, enjoy your stay and know that you have at least one adoring fan!
  • The Lost Outpost of the Ancients?

  • I have... (Score:3, Funny)

    by CrackedButter ( 646746 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:54AM (#10663031) Homepage Journal
    the ancient gene if they need me to power the outpost.
  • I'd love to take a holiday in Antartica over the antartic winter. I'd have loads of time to work on projects, no noisy distractions and I'd finally have an excuse to stay indoors for six months!

    I'd need some kind of net connection though. The slashdottings would keep me warm during the cold winter nights.
  • Here's hoping they don't, like, find any pyramidal temples [imdb.com] or anything under the ice there, cause that would suck bad.
    • "Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100 mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had." - Linux Torvalds

      (I apologize if it's misquoted, I pulled it off of another site. I remember reading it several years ago, so who knows if it's accurate.)
    • I thought the preferred WMD [thinkgeek.com] for linux users was caffine...
      Oh wait penguins not linux users... doh..

  • Earth to Eggheads. (Score:3, Informative)

    by mcmonkey ( 96054 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:58AM (#10663065) Homepage
    I'd really like to know what a "Polar Year" is. I click on the International Polar Year link. On that page I click on the What is IPY link.
    What is IPY

    The Polar Regions are remote areas of the Earth that have profound significance for the Earth's climate and ultimately environments, ecosystems and human society. However we still remain remarkably ignorant of many aspects of how polar climate operates and its interaction with polar environments, ecosystems and societies. To have any hope of understanding the current global climate and what might happen in future the science community needs a better picture of conditions at the poles and how they interact with and influence the oceans, atmosphere and land masses. Existing climate models do not work well in the polar regions and have for example failed to predict the dramatic break-up of Antarctic ice shelves observed in recent years. The three fastest warming regions on the planet in the last two decades have been Alaska, Siberia and parts of the Antarctic Peninsula, Thus the Polar Regions are highly sensitive to climate change and this raises real concern for the future of polar ecosystems and Arctic society.

    There have been a number of major international science initiatives in Polar Regions since the first International Polar Year in 1882-83 and all have had a major influence in overhauling our understanding of global processes in these important areas. These initiatives have involved an intense period of interdisciplinary research, collecting a broad range of measurements that provide a snapshot in time of the state of the polar regions. The last such initiative was the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, involving 80,000 scientists from 67 countries.

    It produced unprecedented exploration and discoveries in many fields of research and fundamentally changed how science was conducted in the polar regions. Fifty years on, technological developments such as earth observation satellites, autonomous vehicles and molecular biology techniques offer enormous opportunities for a further quantum step upwards in our understanding of polar systems. An IPY in 2007-2008 also affords an opportunity to engage the upcoming generation of young Earth System scientists and to get the public to realize just how much the cold ends of the sphere we all live on really do influence us.

    So WTF is a "Polar Year"?? I know a little bit about polar climate. I know the three fastest warming regions in the last two decades. I know when the first and last "Polar Years" were. I still don't know what a "Polar Year" is or how we know when the next one is.

    Is this a political thing like Black History Month? Is it one of those made up holidays to sell more greeting cards like Secretaries Day? Is there some super-seasonal cycle of weather that affects the polls?

    I love the environment and all. I'd really like to give two shits. But first I'd have to have some clue as to wtf you are talking about.

    • Re:Earth to Eggheads. (Score:2, Informative)

      by phiala ( 680649 )
      So WTF is a "Polar Year"?? I know a little bit about polar climate. I know the three fastest warming regions in the last two decades. I know when the first and last "Polar Years" were. I still don't know what a "Polar Year" is or how we know when the next one is.

      It's a research push. They've been doing International Something Years for a long time. (International Geophysical Year, etc.) A bunch of scientists get together and push really really hard for research funding for something big. The kind of stuf

    • Whoa, we got up on the wrong side of the bed today didn't we?

  • Big Dead Place (Score:3, Informative)

    by Aggrajag ( 716041 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:59AM (#10663072)
    One of the funniest and most interesting sites I know. Site has stories about the people working over there (Antarctica) and other stuff as well.

    http://www.bigdeadplace.com/ [bigdeadplace.com]

  • Warming Up (Score:3, Funny)

    by DigitalRaptor ( 815681 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @10:04AM (#10663110)
    Don't worry, things are warming up down there.

    Soon it will be a great summer resort with swimming and water skiing. The winter vacations will be spent in Cancun.

  • Website run by people on Antarctica (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LanMan04 ( 790429 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @10:07AM (#10663131)
    Check out Big Dead Place [bigdeadplace.com], a great website run by some very funny and bitter people that work at McMurdo (largest of the 3 American stations).

    Charity drives like "fuck a winter-over" and the ever-popular column "Ask a Fucked Up Winter-Over" make it worth the visit. See how these people really live.

    Oh, and they love John Carpenter's "The Thing".

  • Already started in 15th century! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 29, 2004 @10:07AM (#10663138)
    Any one care to explain how a 15th century map details the coastline of Antartica (WITHOUT glaciers) when it wasn't mapped out until the 1960?!s

    Piri Re Maps [google.com]

    --
    There are a million miracles happening everday.
    But the skeptic is the only fool who won't even believe just one.
    Miracles don't have to be grandiose,
    for even a smile to help someone else feel better is one.
    • You sure that's not a rough map of Nevada?
    • Any one care to explain how a 15th century map details the coastline of Antartica (WITHOUT glaciers) when it wasn't mapped out until the 1960?!s

      Yep. Sixth result down on that Google search you linked looks pretty thorough to me. Damn good map for the time, but Antarctica is just Terra Australis Incognita, with no real detail at all. And it's connected to South America, and overlaps most of Argentina... which rather buggers its claim to map Antarctica accurately, don't you think?

    • Any one care to explain how a 15th century map details the coastline of Antartica...

      The modern interest in the Piri Reis map comes from its description in Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age by, Charles H. Hapgood, which was published in 1979. Hapgood was a professor with good academic credentials and his book describes a number of 16th century maps, all assembled from earlier maps, that showed a knowledge of the globe beyond what one would have expected at the

    • Here's a pretty good explanation [uwgb.edu].

      The author credits Piri Re for making a very good map of South America using the cartographic techniques of the time, but concludes that it is not Antarctica. Instead what is often interpreted as Antarctica is the coast of South America, perhaps bent around to fit the map onto the irregular parchment (or whatever) it is drawn on.

      Perhaps most damning to the Antarctica interpretation are the marginal notes which (according to the site author) say the coastline in question wa

  • Imitation Dog (Score:3, Funny)

    by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @10:29AM (#10663325)

    Sounds cool and stuff until some Norwegian finds something [imdb.com]buried in the ice...

  • IceCube starting up (Score:4, Informative)

    by EigenHombre ( 684799 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @10:29AM (#10663330) Homepage Journal
    There is always a tremendous amount of science [nsf.gov] going on in Antarctica, but this year will mark the first deployment of sensors in the IceCube [wisc.edu] neutrino [wikipedia.org] detector at the South Pole, one of the largest Antarctic science projects to date.

    If all goes well this Austral Summer, IceCube will deploy four "strings," each with 60 light sensors attached, at a depth of about 2 km. Subsequent years will deploy more sensors until a total of 4800 is reached, making the cubic-kilometer sized detector one of the largest on Earth.

    IceCube's quarry is primarily neutrinos of extraterrestrial origin. For the uninitiated, neutrinos are extremely elusive subatomic particles produced by high energy interactions. Candidate sources include the supermassive black holes at the heart of so-called "Active Galactic Nuclei", dark matter, and the mysterious Gamma Ray Bursts.

    A recent article [symmetrymag.org] has more information.
    See also a previous Slashdot post [slashdot.org] about IceCube's predecessor, AMANDA.
    Wikipedia has this introduction [wikipedia.org] to neutrinos.

  • To seek the sacred river Alph
    To walk the caves of ice
    To break my fast on honeydew
    And drink the milk of Paradise...

    I had heard the whispered tales of immortality
    The deepest mystery
    From an ancient book I took a clue
    I scaled the frozen mountain tops of eastern lands unknown
    Time and Man alone
    Searching for the lost Xanadu

    To stand within the Pleasure Dome
    Decreed by Kubla Khan
    To taste anew the fruits of life
    The last immortal man
    To find the sacred river Alph
    To walk the caves of ice
    Oh, I will dine on honeydew
    And

  • I wait with baited breath for incomprehensible reports from those noble explorers concerning the ancient plateau city of Leng just east of the Mountains of Madness, built eons ago by the Great Old Ones on the very spot where they first infected our planet.

    -m

  • Antarctic lakes may resemble Europa (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sfjoe ( 470510 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @11:47AM (#10664236)
    11,000 feet under Antarctica is a lake. This really fascinates me as it is one of the most alien environments on Earth. It is so low in nutrients that life would have to find alternative sources of energy.

    http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~mstuding/vostok.ht ml

  • Yesterday I [wa5znu.org] talked to Paul Budanov [qrz.com] at Akademik Vernadsky Station [qsl.net] on Galindez Island [google.com] in Antarctica. Paul is there for the year, and is an amateur radio operator in addition to his scientific duties. I was using 25 Watts from my house, but I heard a friend [qrz.com] talk to to Paul from his bicycle in Redding, California.

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