Why are any of us here?

It's a pertinent question and one that comes up often. The meaning of life is not one that escapes us here either, but more directly I'm talking about "Why are we at the South Pole?" The easy answer is science. The other answer deals with politics, governments, and world domination, which bring on heated debate and that would just ruin an otherwise perfectly interseting post.

Obviously someone has to hold up the world!

Pushing the boundaries of what we think we know and what we think we could know. Looking back in time, studying dark matter and dark energy in the cosmos, looking for new systems of stars, particles, planets, trying to determine what happened at .00000000001 seconds after the big bang, current weather phenomena, water systems under the largest ice sheet in the world, world-wide seismic research, air sampling, space particulate weather, and surely a large variety of other projects I am neglecting. All of these projects are here for one or a variety of reasons that make pole an ideal research station. The dry, cold air, the altitude, the two miles of ice, the affects Earth's rotation has on the polar regions, etc...

So somehow I've left out a lot of science from this blog. I've been enjoying it all along, so here's a quick bit of 3 projects I have witnessed...

SPT - South Pole Telescope

I haven't managed to get a tour of this place yet, but I think I'll be finding one soon. They are currently getting up and running for the winter season of observation. They are looking at the Cosmic Microwave Background or CMB, which is left over radiation from the big bang. This isn't being observed directly, but rather is used as a baseline to find other objects in the cosmos. The CMB is extremely consistent, so where there is a hole or a modification of the microwaves, galaxies, stars, and other masses of particles are present. This is helping to bring information from the far reaches of the cosmos to "light". The CMB does not speak to distance, but mass and exsistence, so other forms of observing are used in concert, optical, or cosmic rays...

This giant 10 meter dish is used to focus the information. It is a perfect parabola to within microns. LOTS of adjustments keep it this way. To capture the information a series of cones further focus the radiation onto tiny little spider-web looking sensors that are maintained at a ridiculously cold temperature of .15 Kelvin (or near there) by the evaporative cooling of helium. As these webs are bombarded with radiation they heat up slightly, and the energy used to maintain the cold temperature of the web is measured. This differnce in energy is the reading. Pretty wild eh?

Pieces of BICEP - decommissioned this year in waiting for BICEP 2!

BICEP 1 which is housed in the same structure also uses the CMB, but for a different purpose. They are looking back in time to the "event horizon" or back into the beginnings of the universe. Got it? This is kind of difficult to explain, and I'm not sure I'm the one to do it. But, they use very similar equipment to detect the CMB, and it is possible to look back in time because of the sheer size of the universe. If you think of it in the way that the light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach the earth, then we only ever see the sun where it was 8 minutes previously. So consider the universe. Much bigger, and expanding at a speed greater than the speed of light now. (It's been speeding up). So as things get further away, it takes longer and longer for their light, or in this case particles to reach us here on earth. So, we can see further back in time at any moment than the moment preceding. At some point in the universe the light, or particles will never catch up with earth. This is the event horizon, that we cannot see beyond. Wow... a purely me post next!

Lastly for today, the largest project going here right now called ICE CUBE. Heard of neutrinos? These are very high energy, very small particles that are everywhere and pass through nearly everything. They are passing through you right now, and the entire earth, and for the most part anything else in their way. Every now and then they hit a water molecule, which is key, that then produces something called a muon, which when passing through the antarctic ice makes a visual wake not unlike the wake created by an airplane traveling beyond the speed of sound. ICE CUBE is a project that is convinced they can use these muons to map the cosmos according to neutrinos. Their detector takes up 1 square K in the ice, about a kilometer and a half down. As they are still under construction, they have yet to make too many observations just yet, but they can tell us there is a moon! It is quite the experimental project down here. They directly employ nearly 1/5 of the personnel on base.

The construction phase is fairly exciting right now. These are some pics from Drill Camp. (They are drilling two mile deep holes with hot water drills, and then deploying DOMs - Data Optical Modules which detect muons - 60 per hole, 5000 thousand total) They then take this data and send it through...

a couple of wires... (the ones on the left are about the size of my arm, on the right numbering in the thousands)

which feed...

one or two (dozen racks of) computers!

That's the science tour for the day! Hope I've caught you all up, and as a disclaimer, I'm going purely off of memory, no notes or reference, so NSF is likely the best place to find more information for the science-hungry reader!

A series of long trips

Just under 100 years ago, explorers first attempted land traverses of this continent: Today it is still quite difficult: And this guy only went one way! (albeit by himself!)

So the fella in this picture is Todd Carmichael. He arrived at pole last week walking. Going for the world record in speed of cross country ski traverse, he achieved it by about an hour, and nearly completely on foot, without skis. He went through two sets of bindings, fell into three crevasses, broke a pole, lost one of his GPS machines, and that was just the first two of 10 degrees of latitude.

In a talk and conversation he presented to us, he told of his mental regimen and physical regimen to deal with the harsh and essentially boring, featureless landscape, and now with no skis, on foot (too determined to turn around). Two days out of pole, one satellite phone broke, his fuel spilled into his remaining food, and then his other phone and GPS broke. Luckily it was a clear day when he finally saw the station. Had it been poor visibility due to wind and snow drift, he would have been unlikely to find us. It's a pretty crazy story in it's entirety, which I won't rehash here now.

There are of course others traversing to the pole, but few solo on foot and make it here. We have had two large vehicle traverses come in. One is a cooperative Norwegian/US science-based traverse, the other a heavy traverse to transport fuel to pole at a better rate than the herc's can. (1 gallon burned to 2 delivered instead of 2 burned to 1 delivered).

Some of the science traverse' vehicles. All named for famous sled dogs from the continent's history. Lasse on the right was one of Amundsen's dogs and Chinook on the left was Shackeltons. Four vehicles in all, with the one out front running a radar looking for crevasse.

The science traverse was very interesting. In European style they had small, practical vehicles, and everything tidy and well designed for the purpose. Radar mapping the deep ice of East Antarctica, coring samples for density and odd-snow-isotope frequency, and an exploration of some sub-glacial lakes are the main objectives of the traverse. Their web addy is: http://traverse.npolar.no

What great use of our dry weather! Of cousre, every now and then you have to beat the clothes on the ground to break up the ice! These are their living quarters.

They had an open house and came to our FEMC holiday party. One of the Norwegians was a farmer in a past occupation, and they all seemed to now live in one arctic area or another most of the time. We talked for quite some time, and the suggestion that i go work on an arctic island north of Norway was proposed... Then they invited me over to have the best cup of coffee I've had since I arrived. It reminded me of home in that incredibly strong percolated coffee kind of way... mmm

And speaking of our Christmas BBQ - Here for your enjoyment are some only semi-terrifying pics!

Hmm... (Moose in orange hood) the left looks quite successful, but doesn't it look like the couch on the right needs some steering?...


Hmm...


Yes, yes! that's better!

This is a piece of ice that was made from melted ice many many thousands of years old, and roughly two miles below the surface here. Pumped out of the ICE CUBE science construction camp, it was estimated between 10-100,000 years since deposition. Melted and refrozen in a special way to produce a nearly totally clear (air bubble free) cylinder. ...some hoodlums... took a drill to it and made an "ice luge" to be used with potent liquors.

Of cousre, all partook (when was the last time you got to take a drink through ice frozen for a hundred thousand years?) and no one quite got frostbite on their noses! And in general it was an evening we all escaped from unscathed!

Merry Christmas!

(Our undercover team - hence the gear - found that santa drives a big red truck down here instead of a sleigh - though if you note the flags - he probably could have para-sleighed today!)

Another day in paradise!

Is a commonly vocalized saying around these parts. It might be surpassed by only "It's a Harsh Continent" used only at ironic times or as a reminder that our problems are not so bad - (here, have a cookie, a sauna and a hot shower!).

Today feels quite like paradise in many ways. Surrounded by good folks all day long, it began waking to an alarm at 6:30 AM, a jaunt to the internet while still in bed from my wireless-equipped tent, followed by the warm bathroom (often something I live without) and then off to a breakfast of home-made granola that I helped with. Stretching begins at 7:30, a practice that is really not-so-craftily disguised Yoga. One of our materials hunters, who is a masseuss and pilaties instructor in her real life; leads the class, puts up with the groans of the older crowd (the occupy "crumudgeon corner" as posted on the wall!), and smiles when everyone starts joking around halfway through... It's a requirement and the best way to warm up in the morning before heading out in the cold and the wind. (The joking and the yoga)

(the next guy to the left is actually on the floor :), and our shop is of course organized just as well as we organize all of our things at home, though perhaps labeled better!)

Reporting to the "Naked Lady Shack" so named by a female carpenter for the puzzle attached to the cieling, My crew hangs out to talk about the day, tell jokes, fill out safety papers and get dressed to a sound track of good ol' american hip-hop, or classic country. Our poor Kiwi co-worker has not yet learned to appreciate a good country song unfortunatelly, but we keep singing along as best we can hoping he'll come around. (He has a wonderful sense of humor!) After applying 30-50 lbs of gear, we head back out into the great outdoors!

OK, so here is where the irony of "Another day in paradise comes in." Maybe my blood is getting thick, but lately it has often been quite nice outside. -11 this week, the warmest we've seen since getting here, and at times we find ourselves stripping layers to avoid the sweat! Of course, this is only without wind. -20 with 20 knot winds, amplified probobly 2 fold since we are under the station, and out of the sun, equates to the coldest any of us have ever been since being here. (this also happened this week!) Int the end though, I've spent the past two days working myself down to a hoodie, long sleeve shirt, thermal bottoms and insulated carharrtt overalls... and 10 pounds of head gear of course! A couple folks think i'm a little bonkers, but others on my crew wear less! It must be that Scandi blood coming out of us.

So work. What have I been doing with 60 hours of every week since I got here eh? I'm a carp on the siding crew is the answer that suffices around here. That means we work in the coldest place on station (underneath), outside for most of the day; climbing up and down scaffoding, cutting, screwing, stapling, banging; on the ground, the roof, and if you work night shift right outside your bedroom window every second of the day apparently! We have a lot of fun and work as a pretty tight-knit constantly sarcastic, and at times somewhat crude construction crew... really it's not that different from a crew in the states, except for the goggles!

Shoveling is a prerequisite to all work all the time.

My specific duties are often as the cut-man, and so far I've cut every piece of siding we've attached to the side of the building! By the end that will be about half of the sides of the entire station! So I cut for about a day, then help on the roof for a half a day or so, install or cut some trim on the scaffold, and then...

Every two days or so we have to move our scaffold. This entails all 14 of us running around bolting, unbolting, checking, spotting, maning the tag lines, tightening, measuring, but mostly praying nothing goes wrong as we lift the scaffold with a crane and move it! Ok, so apparently this might not be THAT uncommon at home, but I don't usually work on big corporate construction projects! It's pretty wild!

Every now and then we manage to stir up some tr0uble too of course! (This plane broke and hung around for a couple of weeks. We considered listing it on Ebay, but figured the shipping would kill the deal!)

So work runs in two hour increments with at least a half hour break in between. This means we start at 7:30 and go till 5:30 when we all go plop our gear in the shack and the evening begins.

It's hard to believe how many activities there are to do down here, and how little time it seems we either have to do them, or if we choose... sleep! Lots of sports and lots of dance classes mostly fill up my evenings, that and my favorite pastime of sitting in the galley and talking to new different, or familiar and wonderful people. Tonight, and every friday, I did Circuit Training. We set up 15 stations and rotate every minute for 45 minutes. weights, pushups, sprints, jumping rope, etc... it's pretty much completelly exhausting, but I figure when I drop 10,000 feet I'll be a pro. I am definetally acclimating pretty well to the altitude.

Afterword, dinner awaits in the galley and conversation with friends or folks passing through, and tonight a quick departure to the sauna downstairs. An hour in and out and a run out into the snow complete a physically altering day. Somehow my exhausted body manages to plan for a future pub trivia I hope to host with a friend and then finally retires back to my room for writing and reading myself to sleep... With that friends good night, and in case I don't call you this week, Happy Holidays!

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

Where Was I?

Oh yes, here i am. So, contrary to how you may be keeping track of me on this blog, I have been here at the geographic south pole of Earth for one month now. I won't mention too many times how cold it is down here. It just is. It matters, but the finer points of the difference between -70 windchill and -50 windchill I will spare you here. Maybe. I should remind you that it is the summer, and our palm trees prove that the spirit is in the air!

Yes, palm trees can't grow here yet, and our only ever-green is made of dead pine, but the latitude is changing in our favor every second. The ice is always moving, accumulating here and elsewhere on the plateau and drifting off to the coast where eventually it falls off creating massive icebergs. The ice i live on here will be ripe for the ice-burg stage of it's life in about 10,000 years. And of course by then this will not be the south pole, but just water, ice, and archeological pollution. For that matter, every January, someone gets out a shovel and surely a pile of surveying equipment to move the pole 33 feet directly south.

So, how about a tour? I'll do a bit now, and surely a pile more will come as it does.

(Note - the new station is actually elevated 14ft or so from the current snow level beneath. This ~14 Foot berm of snow appeared over one, count them, one winter season. It has been left in place with the thought that it might partially shield us carps working below. I am dubious)

Life here is dramatically different than it was 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago. The new elevated South Pole station now casts a shadow on the old geodesic dome that has served for the past 30 years or so as the main station's shell. Now it is used for storage. Of course since everything ends up buried in a few years, nearly everything casts not only it's proverbial shadow, but its literal shadow on what has come before.

There was talk the other day about this dome, and it is pretty well agreed that it should be an ice-skating rink. We figure the only things standing in our way are thousands of pounds of canned, dehydrated, frozen (all of it), and otherwise fossilized food, insurance issues and the military's possible whim of turning it into a museum in Florida. Clearly they serve this food, lots of things work better when asking forgiveness for lack of permission, and this would make quite the expensive museum. The shipping costs alone would make it quite the tax drain.

On the other hand, we just need some water to freeze the snow hard and some skates, a fairly affordable option, though nothing down here is cheap, even liquid water. there is a skylight already built-in and we could surely take one of the many disco balls from around station, hook up some popular jams, and it would be just like rinks at home, except cooler because it's in a geodesic dome at the south pole with a disco ball. We are plotting our non-proposal to NSF.

So the new station is very clean and big. It sports checkerboard walls of different colors and photos of all the various folks who decided it would be a good idea to winter over for the past 50 or so years. The top floor is rich with offices, labs, the game room where I play all of my foosball, club med (my friend had a root canal the other day! - ouch...), and the galley - an open kitchen, seating for 100 or so, and containing within its walls - frosty boy, our ice cream machine who is often on strike. All science lectures and large events tend to happen here as well as our constant battle against weight-loss, pub trivia night, and movies.

Downstairs we have the gym, craftroom, the library, tons of life-support and back-up generators, etc. Oh, and I almost forgot the sauna! We're working on re-enginerring the thermostat with a shelf and a tub of cool water, so far we've hit 190 but no higher. In the winter-time one has the chance to enter the 300 club. The sauna is cranked up to 200 on a -100 day and brave souls make a mad-ice covered dash (naked) to the pole and back. You would be amazed at how truly sane, if a little quirky, most of the folks are down here.

So the new station is nice, don't get me wrong, but I like summer camp better. It's got more grit to it, and hasn't changed a lot for years. i couldn't imagine being inside the big building much more than I am, but some folks barely ever leave! (not too many though). Speaking of grit, for all you who thought I might have left the outhouse behind me? Well, they only got nicer, and solar powered!

Our jamesway tents came here from the Korean war. Manufactured in 1951 I believe, they are insulated arch tents made of wood and canvas primarily. They are heated, but depending on where you are in your room or what time of day it is you can either freeze yesterday's socks to the ground or find you kicked all the blankets off in your sleep. Each of the 12 J-ways are split into 14 rooms. The rooms are individual and have been customized over time. Residents build walls or dressers or lofts. At times of questionable construction, these modifications make for a huge amount of charachter. With some thought, a screwdriver, sledge hammer and a few wood blocks, I have managed to transform my room into home. I'm in the decoration phase, which will surely be an ongoing adventure! Currently two national geographic maps occupy the space. One of Anrarctica, and another of the US. They seem like two great homes to me! (Allready considering next season!)

There is another J-way we use for a lounge / movie house. It comes complete with disco ball, stage lights, cardboard blockaded windows, and the "other" south pole. Summer camp also sports two large bathrooms that we clean in shifts, a small climbing wall, a weight room, smokers lounge and Skua!

Just another building dotting the plateau? Or treasure chest?

Named after the famed sea-gull like bird theif that lives in McMurdo, This wonderful institution is a kickback to the free box in many of the the houses I've lived in all over. If you have stuff you don't want it gets put here, and if you want things, you just say a prayer to the Skua gods and, {Poof!} - just like a skua stealing that sandwich out of your hand as you walk from the galley, the treasures are yours. Mostly it is filled with clothes, but I found an alarm clock, a bendy desk lamp, and even a full box of drinking chocolate to go with my new favorite hoodie and knit wool hat!

Before you get carried away with ideas of non-human life down here, it is said that only one skua ever made it to the south pole. It was actually the cargo of a pilot playing a mean and dirty trick on it involving a sandwich and an uncertain end. Animals can be so cruel to one another. Of course others have hitched a ride down as well. Stories of a spider, a lady bug, and a couple of exectutives have all found my ears.

The tour continued... So the constant problem of snow accumulation never seems to stop. The only real precipitation here seems to be ice-crystals, but the wind keeps a blowin and bringing in the snow. Every season the General Assistants, with a little help from most everyone, get to dig out "The Berms"

These are long rows where stuff is stored. What type of stuff? Who knows! It's always a bit of a surprise. One day last week the crew unearthed a long forgotten pallet of "freshies" - the precious fresh vegetables that we rush inside to keep from freezing. When did that get put there? Which year? And can we still make soup? Often you will find things such as... a pallet of battery drills! or... a pallet of gloves someone knew was out there somewhere - they saw it a couple of years ago!. It smacks every bit of government work, but on such a small scale in the scheme of things. Some folks are convinced that parts of the berms have been there for 50 years. I figure if they've been there that long they must be 12 feet deep by now.

Spoolhenge. What else is there to say? or see?

Somewhere out there is also deemed "the end of the world". In addition to being rumored as one of the hottest sledding hills around, this is where we found all of our long-lost fall protection harnesses, and where snow is eventually dropped off of base. Dropped. All around the area snow blows in and accumulates about 8 inches a year. This is unless there is something there to stop it... like, for example a piece of bamboo used to hold a flag... Now if there was a whole building in the way, you could expect drifts of say even 10-15 feet per year. apparently the entire station is raising it's own plateau on top of the one that already exists here. I expect the new station we are currently siding will be completely buried in my lifetime.

by the way... it's time to send me mail!!! if you would like it to show up by the holidays!!!

Travis Moose RPSC
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400
APO AP 96598