Well now I've returned from the South Pole, finished with my stint working with the IceCube team.
What I miss about the South Pole:
Really, the cold is not bad, in fact it's kind of nice - it's a fun ritual to put on all the layers. Not so much fun when you realize you missed one!
I will miss the people! Everyone I met had such an interesting back story, and everyone seemed so engaged in the science going on at the pole. The Sunday Science Lectures were well-attended with interesting questions from the audience. I think the type of person that would seek out a job in Antarctica is a breed apart.
And most of all, I will miss the sauna. Heating up your body until you can barely walk, then running outside to -30°C air to cool off... it's no 300 club but still quite a way to shock...
Two things I will miss about being in Antarctica: cool ice crystals, and amazing atmospheric light shows.
I was not in Antarctica during the winter - in which case I would have been fortunate enough to see the Aurora Australis - the Southern Lights. While I was there, the sun was in the sky the entire time. But this gave me the opportunity to witness other amazing effects we rarely (if ever) see in the U.S. Every day, if it was a little cloudy, I would keep my eyes on the sky to see if the clouds would give way to some amazing new effect I hadn't seen before!
First day out, the air was filled with ice crystals, which created this awesome halo around the sun! The flag in the foreground is a marker for the IceCube project
Haloes are similar to rainbows. They are caused by the same...
As I mentioned in the previous post - the IceTop sensors are now all in the tanks, the tanks are filled and freezing into solid crystal-clear ice around the DOMs embedded in them. We did some work today to open up the doors on the tanks and install sun shields, to allow the water to freeze faster without overloading the DOMs with light. A new, previously unseen problem reared its ugly head when one of the relief hoses sprung a leak, so we had to fix that and add more water to the tank so it would be at the proper level. But as with previous issues, once it was found, it was relatively short work to repair it and get things right back on track.
And now, since IceTop is essentially done, I was put onto a IceCube string deployment team, this time not merely as an observer but as an...
Today's my last day at the Pole. I'll hop on a C-130 at around noon and fly back to McMurdo. Last night, the South Pole Telescope hosted a "ladies night" event with music and dancing and tours of the telescope - that was a lot of fun, a nice celebration to bring my month-long visit to the South Pole to a close.
This morning, at about 4 am, a crane prepared to lift the top of the old Dome station as the first stages of demolition. This is the end of a long and storied era of the South Pole Station!
The first South Pole Station (the Dome was the second station) was built in 1956-1957, as part of the International Geophysical Year. It was used continuously, even in the winters housing around 20 people for the cold dark months and maybe twice that number of people during the...
Almost everything down here is known via acronyms - abbreviations that sometimes spell out something clever, or sometimes just random codes. This especially goes for research projects, with the exception of IceCube - which just means a cube of ice.
I already wrote a journal about the ARO, but today's topic is a pair of similar research projects, SPT and BICEP, that study the cosmic microwave background radiation.
This building houses both the South Pole Telescope and the BICEP telescope. SPT is the large dish (10 meters across) on the left hand side. The BICEP detector is much smaller, and will be mounted in the roof of the right hand side. Eventually, three more BICEP telescopes will be mounted in another building next door.
For the non-physicists out there, a quick rundown on...
Almost all the material that gets to the south pole is transported using LC-130 Hercules planes ("Hercs"). Every day, Hercs come in, drop off equipment, people, and fuel, and then take off again for McMurdo, carrying people and any waste stuff that needs to be hauled out.
But it turns out, there are a couple of other ways that the South Pole can receive supplies. And I was lucky enough to see both of these occur in the same week!
The most obvious way to get stuff to the Pole would be to transport it by land somehow. Every once in a while, a convoy of vehicles arrives overland from McMurdo station, hauling large sleds of fuel and equipment and food. It takes about a month for the convoy to reach the Pole, but they can haul a tremendous amount of stuff so it is reasonably...
After setting up and filling 14 IceTop stations, we are almost done with the season. Here are some numbers:
14 IceTop stations (there are 20 IceCube holes planned for this year, but not all of them get IceTop stations)
28 tanks, each with a freeze control unit and contactor to remove dissolved gases
600 gallons of water in each tank, for a total of 16,000 gallons
2 digital optical modules for each tank, for a grand total of 56 DOMs.
At this point, we are cleaning up a few loose ends, preparing the tanks for the next two months as the water freezes from the top down. Even thought it is -25 degrees Celsius, it takes about 53 days for the ice to freeze inside the tank, because once the top layer freezes, the ice layer insulates the water below and slows down the freezing process.
I...
The South Pole and the North Pole are unusual in that they never have 24-hour "day and night" cycles. During the southern summer, the South Pole is always tilted towards the sun, bathing it in light for 6 months. During the southern winter, the South Pole is always tilted away from the sun, leaving it in darkness for another six months. Same holds true for the North Pole but opposite seasons - southern summer is the same time as northern winter.
Sunlight 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 6 months of the year might sound cool. And it is! But it also messes with your sleep cycles. Under normal circumstances, your brain tunes itself to the cycle of light and dark you see each day and night. As light fades, your brain expects sleep; and when the sun comes back up, your brain becomes alert...
The nature of the work being done for IceCube down here at the South Pole is not really research - the research in general is done at the 30 or so partner institutions around the world, based on the data collected by IceCube. We are working hard to get the sensors deployed into the ice to allow us to gather that data. I have focused my journals on how those sensors get deployed, and how this array is supposed to detect neutrinos. But what do we do with that information?
First off, a brief note about the data already gathered. The first strings of the IceCube detector and first tanks of the IceTop array were placed in the ice in early 2005. Since then, each year more strings and tanks have been deployed. But even though the entire telescope will not be finished until 2011, we are...
Water is one of the most essential chemicals to life on Earth. Water is a precious resource, and we tend to take it for granted in the US. We enjoy clean drinking water straight from the faucet, take long hot showers, flush our toilets, water our lawns, wash our cars (and watch it flow down the street into our rivers and streams...). Not to mention all the water used for industrial and agricultural processes!
Here at the south pole, water is a precious resource to a much higher degree. But wait, aren't we sitting on top of 2 miles of frozen water? Yes! But, the key word there is "frozen". You can't drink ice, you can't shower in it, you can't cook with it. To use it, you must generate heat to melt it. Which uses another precious commodity here: fuel.
Fuel at the South...
We are continuing to keep up a great pace on the IceTop DOMs (light sensors) and tanks. At this point, all the DOMs are in place for this year's schedule of IceTop, and most of the electronic interfaces are in place as well. We are filling the tanks rapidly and should easily be finished by the time I leave next Friday.
An IceTop tank, filled up and ready to start freezing! Those are my feet…
And all this despite some more difficulties!
At some point, a whole series of DOMs was exposed to high voltage at a time when they were also exposed to direct sunlight. The photomultiplier tubes on these DOMs are so sensitive to light that they can detect a single photon, so trillions of uninvited photons could overload the circuitry and cause the DOM to malfunction. So after some panicking...
In our previous episode, we saw our valiant heroes attempt to make ice cream from a secret recipe, using only south pole snow (at -28°F) to freeze it into a delicious soft-serve consistency. It took approximately 12 minutes, considerably longer than it took in the classroom using regular ice and rock salt. What caused this unexpected (at least for me!) result? Watch and learn, little one - watch and learn...
In the classroom, the salt melted the ice into water at about +28°F, which was cold enough to transfer the heat out of the cream mix. Liquid is a far better conductor of heat than air, so when I tried it with snow, which is primarily air trapped in the ice...
Here at the south pole, many groups are doing scientific research on a wide variety of topics. IceCube is looking at neutrinos from space; there are several other research projects involving cosmic background radiation from space as well. But the other day I visited a site where the research is a little closer to home. The ARO (Atmospheric Research Observatory), run but NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), takes data on Earth's atmosphere and tracks various cycles and changes in the air we breathe.
The South Pole is unique in many ways, and the ARO facility takes advantage of the fact that the wind almost always blows in from one direction, and there's nothing in that direction for a thousand miles. No sources of pollution, no living things, just air blowing along...
The sun was hidden behind clouds most of the day today. I had been hoping to get outside and take some photos of the area around the South Pole Station. But when weather like this happens, the sunlight is very diffuse, and pictures of white snow with white light and white clouds generally look like a lot of plain boring white.
Finally in the early evening (remember, the sun stays at the same elevation above the horizon all day and night, just moves in a circle around the sky so "evening" just means when my watch says 7 pm...) the sun broke through the clouds a bit and gave me a chance to explore. I ventured out the "back" of the station, past Summer Camp where a lot of the staff live, and into the Cargo Berms...
The Berms are literally cold storage for anything...
"We are the morale committee at South Pole," says James Brown, South Pole Executive Chef and nine-year Pole veteran, about the mission of the South Pole Station galley. "Our goal is to provide good food at every meal, with a smile and great attitude toward the community and each other." Each and every day, James and his staff of 16 prepare four meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and MidRats - "midnight rations" for the night crews) for the 250 people in the South Pole Station during the summer season.
Executive Chef James Brown suits up and gets ready to meet the C-130 that is bringing in a load of food for his galley
I must admit I was concerned about the food before my trip. At the South Pole, fresh produce, canned goods, frozen goods, every bit of food...
Yesterday was a breeze in terms of filling the IceTop tanks. Today was another story entirely! Everything seemed to go wrong.
The first minor issue came when we found that one of the IceTop tanks had a layer of dirt and ice in the bottom. When we fill the tanks to be frozen, any dirt can cloud the water causing problems for the sensors. No problem, clean it out, right? but the dirt had frozen into a tough layer on the bottom, and we'd need to get in with some hot water and scrub it out fast. Before we could do this, however, we ran into another problem.
The second big hiccup came when we hooked up a set of the Freeze Control Units and found they did not communicate back to the main control computer. They are able to run on automatic mode for now, but for gathering data we still...
The season is ramping up for installation of the IceCube detector strings, and also for the deployment of the IceTop surface sensor tanks. Today was a big day in that we were able to fill our first two tanks, getting them started on the long road to becoming crystal clear ice. Unfortunately, the IceCube detector strings may be a little delayed due to a faulty generator. But these guys are pros, they are working out different options that will allow them to remain on schedule with minimal risk.
Sun dogs, like halos, are an atmospheric phenomenon caused by ice crystals in the air. Look for the bright spots directly on each side of the sun. I am blocking the sun out using my finger, otherwise it would be too bright and you wouldn't see the sun dogs.
One thing about the IceCube project...
I must give a shout out to Mrs. Ratliff's classes in South Carolina - they have been awesome at giving me ideas for experiments. They suggested the beard experiment (the south pole portion of which is 9 days in so far!) and also making ice cream, including the recipe and procedures! They also sent a school flag nicely decorated and signed, to get a photo at the Pole - I'll send that in e-mail when I get a good chance!
Here is a video I put together of the experience! enjoy, and try it out for yourself, it's surprisingly easy (and, unsurprisingly, a bit messy).
First off, as a science experiment, I must admit I didn't really follow the rules too closely. In a...
Things are different down here at the south pole. Temperatures well below freezing; sunlight 24 hours a day (this time of year at least); 10,000+ feet altitude; very dry air... hard work in these conditions compounds all that and the human body isn't used to all this kind of stress! So, what kinds of things happen? I don't know, I'm a physics teacher!
But, I can take some data and see if there are any noticeable changes in how my body works. So, I brought with me a few simple tools:
a thermometer (that uses infrared radiation to tell temperatures) so I can measure my body temperature
a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope, so I can measure my blood pressure
a watch, so I can calculate my heart rate
I don't know how the extreme conditions here will affect these, but I took some...
Going back in time a little bit... picture yourself in a place where the horizon is as flat as the sea, except brilliant white and frozen... and yet inside, it's toasty warm and the holidays are upon us. We celebrated Thanksgiving down here on Saturday instead of Thursday; this makes it easier for all the various shifts of workers to get together.
Because there are 250 people here, and we wouldn't all fit in the galley at once, we had to sign up for dinner shifts early in the week - I signed up for the earliest one (the only one still available) so dinner was at 4 pm. We were also encouraged to sign up to volunteer as kitchen help for meal preparation. I of course signed up for pie making duty!
Friday night, the night before Thanksgiving, about 30 of us met in the galley, and the...
Last journal I was looking forward to snowmobile training! ohh yeahh! Oh well, it was just a few of us standing around a snowmobile while the trainer basically told us how not to wreck the engine or get ourselves killed. No snowmobile riding at all! I personally believe in the power of hands-on teaching as much as possible... this is no way to give a snowmobile class!
But, that afternoon it turns out, we needed to transport some material around. So, now that I was "trained," I got to drive a snowmobile for the first time!
I'm on a snowmobile! Note: if you look closely, you will notice no motion blur, and no snow getting kicked up. I had already parked the snowmobile, but I was making motorboat noises to pretend like we were going fast for the picture.
A little aside...
Yesterday I woke up to experience my first official day on the job. Monday, I had enough time to recover a bit, get plenty of water, and get a decent night's sleep. OK, down time is OVER!
Tuesday morning, I woke up early to post a journal, grab a tasty breakfast at the galley, and then head off to the 8 am IceCube planning meeting. There I met a lot of the people responsible for making the IceCube project become a reality, most of whom you will meet in this and future posts.
My main work is on the IceTop portion of the IceCube project, in which we are installing tanks on the surface, next to each of the 2.5 km deep holes for the IceCube strings of light sensors. Each IceCube string will get 2 IceTop tanks, each tank gets 2 DOMs (light sensors). The IceTop sensors will study cosmic...
This morning, the sky was the clearest it had been while I'd been in McMurdo. The wind had died down, the snow had stopped falling, a perfect day to fly out! So, at 7:30 the IceCube group and I met at the "bag drag" building where we had taken our luggage the night before, hopped on a transport van to the runway, and boarded a C-130 out of McMurdo. This is a smaller cousin of the C-17 that brought us to McMurdo in the first place. Christchurch-McMurdo on a C-17 took about 5 hours; on a C-130 it would have taken 8 hours. Fortunately, the South Pole is closer so the trip, even on a C-130, only takes about 3 hours.
From the McMurdo airfield, looking back at Ross Island; Mt. Erebus is the large volcano far in the background.
As before, the flight was generally uneventful,...
The bright light of the Antarctic sun forced me to pull my goggles off my forehead and over my eyes. The main cabin of the C-17 had been fairly dim, and now the sun gleamed white off the stark Ross Ice Sheet upon which we had landed. The trip from Christchurch was relatively uneventful, though I did take a tour around the plane including a few minutes up in the cockpit as we crossed the boundary from ocean to ice-covered land. The military plane was exceptionally loud, so in addition to the ECW we had to wear, we also had earplugs for the entire flight.
All the passengers were greeted at McMurdo by large transport vehicles which took us up to the Swiss Chalet, in which we received our introduction briefing and got our housing assignments. Building 166, room 207, along with some of...
Alarm: 3:30 am. I, along with all the other researchers, drillers, painters, janitors, and other support staff, need to be to the US Antarctic Program building at 5 am this morning to get ready to board a C-17 to McMurdo Station. I am tired but adrenaline gets me going in no time...
The past couple of days I have been in Christchurch, New Zealand. It's an odd town, small, quiet, and overrun by ice people. It has the feel of a college town, without the college students. There is a small, slow river (Avon River) running through the center of town on which people can "punt" - take a guided canoe ride in water that would come up to your knees if you tried to wade across. Bagpipes are apparently popular. Also, ducks. A nice botanical garden and some very interesting...
