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Everything about Antarctica is extreme. South Pole winter
temperatures average around minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit,
and coastal winds can reach 200 miles an hour, powering
violent blizzards that last a week at a time. Still
scientists come, because the last frontier offers data
they can’t get anywhere else.
Geologists mine Antarctica’s ice, created from
layers of snow over millennia, for ancient clues to
Earth’s evolution. Meteorologists correlate global
weather patterns with the annual freezing of Antarctica’s
oceans. Monitoring the effects of global warming on
the six-million-square-mile yearly ice sheet, they look
for signs of long-term climate change.
Astronomers and particle physicists search the six-month
darkness of Antarctica’s winter skies for celestial
missives from deep space. Biologists explore how living
things adapt to conditions thought wildly inhospitable
to life. Discoveries of algae, bacteria, and fungi in
Antarctica’s Dry Valleys—cold, dark, barren
expanses—challenged the conventional wisdom that
life could not survive such extreme environments. These
findings have bolstered searches for life on Mars.
From oceanographers to microbiologists, the world’s
largest natural laboratory offers something for just
about any researcher—including the physiologists
and psychiatrists examining how this extreme place affects
the men and women who study it.
Some
ideas being studied in Antarctica:
Fish:
Fresh, Not Frozen
- The way that Antarctic fish
have adapted to cold waters tells us how life has evolved
on Earth.
The
Earth Moving Under Your Feet
- At Antarctica's Mt.
Erebus Observatory, scientists study how the Earth has
shifted, and fossil evidence shows that the continent
was once alive with plants and animals in a temperate
zone.
Some
ideas our crew has been exploring:
Flying
geologists
- Paul hops a helicopter with geologists
investigating rifts in the Earth's crust.
Balloon
Over Antarctica
- Measuring energy, looking for
the origin of cosmic rays.
Shooting
the Ground
- Gauging the changing size of the Antarctic
ice cap.
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