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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
