Our Local 7 KM antenna!

3 KM from base, past an area called the "dark sector", where lots of cosmological research takes place, a group of scientists are making a quite a racket. A very low racket that lasts one minute for every fourteen that they are peaceably charging batteries with which to make such a large racket. You thought that those car's amplifiers were too big? How about a 7 km antenna producing a low, droning bass, that would surely drive you nuts if only you could here it! Bouncing between the ionosphere and earth's surface, the 15 km waves produced traverse the continent with ease. Aided by the two miles of ice the antenna is suspended upon (the ice appears transparent to these waves), these scientists are able to keep an eye on the weather in space.

One of the most beautiful and cherished events down this way and across the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere is Aurora Australis.

These "Southern Lights", actually high energy particles colliding with the ionosphere are the most raw visual evidence of some of the events these scientists are measuring. They are really beautiful I'm sure. If the sun were to ever go down I might be able to enjoy them!

As their waves are routed with the curvature of the earth, disturbances along that path, mostly in the ionosphere, speak to our constantly changing upper atmosphere. As these high energy particles, normally suspended around the earth in microwave radiation belts, come crashing into the atmosphere, they disrupt the ionosphere. This in turn disrupts the waves, which are then measured by receivers all around the coast. These measurements are used to study the weather of space (electrical and particle "storms" mostly I believe), just outside the earth's atmosphere. This fancy antenna and it's many receivers also detect particle barrages inflicted on our atmosphere from the sun. Now, If you followed all that, then I must have learned something in the past hour! I still have questions about space weather, but surely that is a topic for an entirely different lecture! I love this stuff. Maybe I should be a science teacher...

For you science buffs, here is a link:

http://www-star.stanford.edu/~vlf/south_pole/south%20pole.htm