Wisconsin Public Television University Place Presents  Reina Maruyama Living in Antarctica  June 26, 2012 UP738   cc >> Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland. You may have heard of IceCube, the observatory that takes up a cubic kilometer of ice in Antarctica. Well, we're curious about not only what IceCube is for and what it does, but also what it's like to work and live in Antarctica for a long period of time. After all, it is the world's largest and coldest desert. With us, two people who have worked there considerably on both IceCube and other projects and spent a lot of time in Antarctica. They can give us some insights into the psychology and the day to day life of person who spends much of their career in that remote place. They are Reina Maruyama and Mark Krasberg, and welcome to University Place Presents. >> Thanks. Thanks, Norman. 

>> Thanks for having us. >> Well, we'll have a lot of pictures. That's one thing I think you have to say about Antarctica, it's a very photogenic place. Even if you're just looking at a seemingly endless horizon, there's something very striking about it. And you have also worked at the South Pole, which has to have even more special qualities than the fringes of Antarctica that are available even to tourists. So this, I think, we have an overview of the South Pole station. How long have you spent there, and what is so special about the South Pole that you have to go there? >> So, let's see, I'll start. So I've been there for two seasons. You can only get to the South Pole during the austral summer, so during November and February. And so I've spent a total of three weeks, or sorry, five weeks or so. 

The first time I went for two weeks, and the next time I went for three weeks. And it's a really great place to work there. Everybody who goes there has a reason to be there working hard and making whatever experiments that they're working on happen. >> How many people would be at the South Pole at any given time? I mean, what would be the most number of people working there? >> So during the summertime there are some 250 people working there. And during the winter when the transportation to the South Pole is closed, there are between 30 and 50 people staying there between February through October. >> So once they're there, if you're there in February, you are there until October. You're not going anywhere. >> That's right. >> And it's dark the whole time. >> Mm-hmm. 

>> Except I suppose you must get some moonlight occasionally? How does that work? >> Yeah, Antarctica is a South Pole, the way the Earth spins, the South Pole, it's not 365 days, 365 nights. It's one day that lasts about four months, a two-month sunset, then a four-month night, and a two-month sunrise. >> And when you're actually at the South Pole then, you're seeing the sun just kind of circle around above the horizon? >> Right. >> In the summer. >> Yep. >> And in the winter you're not seeing much of anything. Although, I would guess, stars. Are the skies clear there? >> Yes. They see beautiful night sky, and they actually get auroras frequently. Beautiful auroras. 

That's one of the reasons the people like to spend winters there. >> And we call it the aurora borealis up here. Down there is the aurora australis, the southern equivalent. Even more brilliant, though, than what you see in the northern hemisphere you think? >> No, I haven't heard that it's more brilliant. I think people have said some of the nicest ones they've seen has been in the north, but the advantage of being at the South Pole is the auroral oval will sometimes come over the South Pole station daily. So they can see beautiful auroras sometimes every day for two weeks on end. >> Now, we mentioned IceCube, we don't want to gloss over that entirely, and I know that there are other projects affiliated with it too, but we should get into a little bit about what IceCube does before we get into what it's like to actually work there. And I've already mentioned this cubic kilometer of ice which is kind of mind boggling in itself. You have mentioned, I think, that it's an observatory. This facility is actually and observatory, but with a cubic kilometer of ice in the ground, is it looking down or is it looking up? >> Yeah so the telescope, several years ago there was an article in Scientific American where they talked about the seven wonders of modern astronomy. 

And they talked about the different telescopes, and they gave each one a nickname. And so the Hubble telescope was given the nickname the sharpest. And our telescope, our observatory, was given the nickname the weirdest because what we did was we put a telescope at an observatory, 5,000 sensors a mile and a half down in the ice, in clear ice, in the dark. And the sensors look into the Earth because these cosmic particles that give off a little bit of light as they go through the Earth, and there's only one particle that will go through the entire Earth, and that's a particle called a neutrino. >> Subatomic particle, isn't it? >> Yes. And so when we see light, when we see a particle going through the ice where it's coming from, like, the North Pole or from the center of the Earth or from Wisconsin or Europe, from that direction because we're deep down in the ice of the South Pole, when we see a particle coming from below, we know that that's the particle we're interested in which is a neutrino. >> And how do you know when to expect them? How often do they come through? >> So, let's see, so we're getting some 3,000 events per second in the detector of IceCube, and then the trick is to look for neutrinos that are, so only one in a million is a neutrino. And so then the trick is to sift out all those background events that we don't want and look for that one in a million event. So the way you do that is, as Mark mentioned, you look for ones that are coming from below. So most of the events are cosmic rays that are coming from above the detector from the sky. 

And, yeah, so it it's coming from below, we know that it's a neutrino. Other signatures are you're looking for energy of these particular particles, and so if they're outside of what we expect from what we know should exist within a cosmic ray, then we know that these are neutrinos that we haven't expected before. >> I hear about the crab nebula, and we have an image of the crab nebula here. And this explosion from about a thousand years ago, how does that bear on your research at IceCube? >> So astronomers take pictures of the universe in different ways, and so I think that picture on the screen is a visible light picture of a star that exploded a thousand years ago. And that's, if you have a fancy visible light telescope, you can see that. Then what people have done over the decades since Galileo invented the first telescope 400 years ago is they've taken the pictures of the universe in different ways, including x-rays, infrared, I think there's a slide up showing that, just like you could take a picture of your hand with a camera and you could take a picture of your hand with infrared and see the heat, and you could take a picture of your hand with x-rays and see the bone or with magnetic resonance imaging and see the tendons, astronomers take pictures of the universe in different ways, and they learn more and more about the universe when they do that. >> Various properties, whether it's the heat or the energy source or something like that. >> What we're trying to do is take a picture of the universe using this subatomic particle called the neutrino, and no one knows what that picture looks like. And that's what we're trying to do. >> And how does dark matter play into this arena? You're working on that in particular. 

>> So what we did was to install a specific detector that is to look for dark matter in the ice that's co-located with IceCube, a slightly different technology for looking for dark matter. So dark matter, we expect that, essentially, there's a halo of dark matter around the galaxy and our detector, or the Earth, is essentially streaming through this dark matter. And so we're looking for this dark matter to collide with the material in the detector itself and looking for a specific signature that we expect from such a particle. >> And we're interested in dark matter why? Because it's such a large part of the universe? >> Exactly. So of what we can see using a telescope, we know, actually, that only 5% of the universe consists of matter that we think as ordinary matter like protons and neutrons, hydrogen, helium, and neutrinos. So this is matter that we can see, but, gravitationally, we actually see more matter out there. So some 23% of the universe is what we call dark matter, and the rest is actually dark energy. So 70-some percent is dark energy. So we're not looking for those. We're looking for, a lot could be exerting gravity, so much gravity on the universe, and we really don't know what this dark matter particle, what it is, how or whether it interacts with normal matter at all. 

>> But Antarctica is the best place to study it? >> We think that, yeah. That's the one location to look for it. >> And I think here we have an image of what IceCube actually kind of looks like in the scheme of things. And what are we actually seeing here? >> So what we're seeing here is a picture of the IceCube detector. So on the top, you see where the hexagonal array is. So that's top of the IceCube strings, we call it. And then we drill holes into the Antarctic ice, and the bigger dots that you see between 1400-1500 meters and 2400 meters below the ice are optical sensors that we've instrumented in the Antarctic ice. And so when neutrinos or charged particles go through this ice, they emit some light. And by detecting where this light is detected using our sensors, we can reconstruct where these particles might have come from and also their energy as well. >> And this give us, I think here, some idea of what it actually looks like going through this cubic kilometer of ice. 

>> That's right. Yeah. >> Yeah, so this is a charged particle. This is what happens when a charged particle goes, this is our event display and this is an event where a charged particle is going through the ice from below towards the surface, and we use the colors of the rainbow to signify time. So red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. And so then that red line on the image is the actual computer reconstructed path of the particle. And the size of the dot represents the amount of energy. So at the end of the day, we figure out the direction and energy of the particles that go through the ice. And then we make a sky map of where they come from. >> Should I ask at this point what any kind of perceived, I know you hate this question but it's one you know you're going go hit with sooner or later, practical application question. 

>> Yeah, so this is a question that we get often. So, yeah, I'm not so sure about the practical applications, but we're really trying to understand how stars work, how our universe is put together, evolution of our universe. So if you want to think about how we came to be and how we evolve, I think those are the questions we're trying to answer. >> And it's also true that basic research is a fairly good fundamentally thing for, say, our government to do. And when you do that, every so often some group will discover something really amazing and neat and important that the country benefits from. And you never know where that lightning is going to strike. So this is a neat project and we're trying to learn about the universe. Practical applications? That's debatable, but a lot of fundamental science is debatable. >> Yes, well and I suppose if you're talking about the very fabric of the universe, there is some relevancy to that, to knowing what it's made out of and how it works. This will give you some sense of the size of Antarctica. 

That is a lot of desert there compared, of course, to the United States. It's bigger and a lot colder. Do you spend, when you're in Antarctica, do you spend most of your time, you pretty much go straight to the South Pole? But there are a number of other research stations on the continent, right? >> Yeah, so we fly to McMurdo Station which is the big US base on the coast. And that's a slide from the air showing McMurdo Station. It's kind of like a mining town on lava rock. >> That's kind of what the New York City of Antarctica. The biggest. >> Yeah. It's the biggest one there, and it will hold over a thousand people. In that picture you'll see that there's actually an icebreaker in the left edge of the picture that's cut a channel. 

So during the summer when it's warm, it's four miles from, typically four miles, from the coast where McMurdo Station is. It's right on the edge of the water or the ice. It's four miles to open water. And so every year they have to cut a channel so that a cargo ship and a tanker can come in with supplies. And so we all fly there first, and then several countries will use McMurdo as a jumping off point. We go through New Zealand, fly to McMurdo Station, and then the different groups go to the different bases within Antarctica to do research. >> So from Wisconsin it would be, what, about 72 hours of flying to get to the South Pole. >> It's a lot. It takes several days but you get some training and orientation and gear and clothing. It takes several days to get there, basically. 

>> What about the politics, for want of a better word, of Antarctica? We hear that, of course, it's a multi-national venture there, research venture. Are there any parts of it that are actually claimed by any given country? Is there still a Russian part and an English part and a Norwegian part, as well as an American part, or how does that work? >> So the way we work is at the US Scientific Station, but of course we have people from other countries staying there. There are many stations across Antarctica that belong to particular countries. So different countries set up their own scientific bases. But the continent itself isn't supposed to belong to anybody. And so the idea is that it's a place for everyone, all the countries. >> So if it's off limits to mining and obviously nuclear testing and that kind of thing? >> Right. >> The only commercialization that I know of, I think is probably tourism, and there is a little bit of tourism. But, yeah, any project anyone does, they have to get permission from some world body that approves it. >> We'll talk a little bit about tourism later because it's somewhat different from what you do there in terms of the places people get to see, the parts of Antarctica that they get to see. 

I gather that's a little bit more of a fringe experience for the tourists. Although, still certainly a place that's very different from home, wherever they come from. Now, a little bit about, I'll call it fashion. In Antarctica even in the summertime, tell us about some of the layers required. If you were just to go out to, I wouldn't say walk the dog, but if you were just to go out for 10 or 15 minutes. >> Well, so growing up in Wisconsin, for those of you who are in Wisconsin, I think you know what it takes to go out in weather of minus 20 or minus 40. So layers is important. What you see on the screen is the American fashion where we get red parkas issued to us before we get to Antarctica. So the layers are what you normally think of. So long underwear, fleece undershirt, and then perhaps another layer, and then a big parka that goes on top of it. 

On warm days it's actually quite possible to go with fleece layer and a windbreaker or something like that. >> And a warm day means what? >> Minus 20. >> Minus 20 and no wind. The important thing is no wind. >> No wind. And then the boots is something else. So, yes, since you're walking on cold ice, what you want is a thick soled boot to keep that cold away from your feet. >> Possibility of outdoor sports? >> Yes. Actually, that's not a very good golf shot, but that's me hitting a drive at the actually South Pole marker. So, actually, it turns out golf is a really fun sport to do there. 

We used to play to some of the holes that we had drilled in the ice. >> I was going to say, you don't, well first of all, the ball is orange but that helps, but you don't just lose the ball in snow? >> Well, it's kind of, a lot of the area around South Pole Station it's packed snow. And so as long as you don't hit the ball very high up in the air it doesn't bury. >> You must get a pretty good, as they say a very fast green though? >> No. The holes we would play would be about a thousand yards. >> The altitude helps a little. >> A lot of people don't realize the South Pole Station is on top of two miles of ice. So we're at high altitude, very dry. One of the things that I think in that picture before which showed the gear the people were wearing is the goggles and the sunglasses are very important. It's very bright there during the summer. 

You literally cannot walk more than a couple hundred yards without goggles and sunglasses before you have to shut your eyes. >> You become kind of snow blind. >> Yes, I can see how people go snow blind. >> And now we have, is this just kind of a particularly typical landscape or what's going on in this one? >> This is a picture of a particularly nice landscape on the flight between McMurdo Station on the coast and South Pole Station right in the middle. And these were some very nice clouds I saw over the Trans-antarctic Mountains as you fly between them. Because we're basically going up in the air. We're going up a mountain range as we go to South Pole Station. >> We don't hear a lot about the mountain ranges, but are there actually active volcanoes in Antarctica? >> Yeah, yeah. Near McMurdo there's one. >> Mount Erebus? >> Mount Erebus, yeah. 

It's very impressive. You get off the plane and you see a volcanic plume coming off the top of this 14,000-foot mountain right in front of you. >> So if you want to warm up a little bit... [LAUGHTER] I have heard, however, that there is, what do they call it? The 300 club? Because you can actually have, if you're in a sauna in Antarctica... >> Yes, we can talk about it two slides from now. >> Okay. In the meantime, you must get some interesting light effects down there. >> That's when I don't feel like I'm on Earth. So most people, even if they haven't realized it, they've seen sun dogs. So if you look up during the summer, you see the sun and maybe 30 degrees to the right or left you see a bright spot in the sky. 

And those are sun dogs. And they're caused by ice crystals in the sky, in the air. The poles have lots of ice crystals, and not only do you get sun dogs, but if you see in this picture, you get sun dogs, you get halos around the sun, circles around the sun, you get secondary circles, secondary halos, you get inverted rainbows, and you get something called a parhelic arc around, horizontally around you. And that particular photo, that's a good one, but you see these halos every couple weeks. And you don't normally see them when you're not at the poles. >> And this is with or without the sunglasses? [LAUGHTER] >> So this is, you were asking about the 300 club. >> Yeah. >> So in the wintertime, neither Reina or I have experienced super cold weather. The coldest I've experienced is, like, minus 70-ish. >> I don't even come close. 

>> Okay. But during the winter it will occasionally get down below minus 100 Fahrenheit. And the people who are there, what they like to do is turn the sauna, there's a sauna in the station, they turn it to plus 200, and it's dark, it's winter, it's dark, it's night, it's plus 200, and then they get out of the sauna and they run around the South Pole mark naked. >> Yes, I was going to say, with or without clothes? >> Except for shoes. >> Yeah, shoes. Good idea. >> And then they're a member of the 300 club. >> And how fast a run would this be? Even if you've been soaking in a 200-degree sauna, if it's a hundred below zero outside, I think you couldn't be out there too long in any occasion. >> Not too long. >> That's certainly impressive. 

And we mentioned also some of the aurora australis, and this is another example of that, I guess. >> This is an example of the aurora, and in the foreground you also see the IceCube counting house. This is where all our data is brought up from the ice and then processed so that they can be transmitted over satellite up to Madison. >> And this is summer? >> No, this is winter. >> This is winter. This is a fairly recent photograph taken by one of our winter-overs. There's two people working for the university there right now, and they're trapped until, as you said, until October. There's no way out. >> And they have to, as you did I assume, go through fairly rigorous physical exam to even go down there because obviously you don't want somebody who's going to suddenly need heart surgery or something if it's March in Antarctica. >> That's right. 

Yeah. So everyone who goes there goes through a fairly extensive physical check. So we do that and then I think winter-overs, in addition, go through additional layer of physical and mental and psychological. >> Well, let's talk about that psychological. What would be the psychological afflictions? The first thing I think of, which wouldn't be right, would be the submariner would be subject to claustrophobia after a while. But this is a little different from that. What are the psychological things you have to watch for? >> I think they get a questionnaire with 800 questions on it, and then I think they've told me one of the themes that comes up during the questionnaire is whether or not they like to play with fire. [LAUGHTER] >> It wouldn't even have occurred to me there was anything flammable down there, but I suppose there must be something. >> It's zero percent humidity so it's the driest place on Earth. >> Right. 

>> And so they're very worried about fire. >> Yeah, so even one little errant spark. I gather that things, this wouldn't necessarily be the case at the South Pole, but I gather things just last forever down there. You hear about these Antarctic bases from a hundred years ago where the canned goods are still on the shelves because there's virtually no bacteria down there to contaminate things. >> So it's cold and it's dry, and so things tend to last a long time. So the picture you see here actually is a picture of camp of IceCube. So we used all of these, what you see, the boxes you see in this is individual containers, shipping containers that are full of water heaters and tanks and so on. So this IceCube construction is now done, and so this camp has now been packed up brought into a closer packed unit awaiting to be shipped out from the South Pole when the need for them is deemed to finished. >> The idea is that everything that goes in comes out. >> Exactly. 

>> So watch your step. [LAUGHTER] Is this one of the holes in IceCube? >> That's right. So this is one of the holes that was drilled for IceCube, and it's 2500 meters deep. So that's, what, a mile and a half deep into the ice. About 50 meters down, so 30 feet down, there's actually water. So the hole is filled with water. >> There's natural water you're saying or you fill it with water? >> No we use a hot water drill. >> Oh, I see. >> We use fuel to melt the ice, and we use a hot water drill and inject it into the hole and have some big weights on it. In 24 hours we've sunk down a mile and a half and we've made a column of water this big around. 

And then we pull the equipment out, and then we've still got a column of water this big around for about a day. And then we drop our sensors down. And that's a sensor going down. >> So that hole would be how big across? >> Our sensors about the size of a basketball. >> Oh, that big? >> Yeah. >> And you have how many of these in this cubic kilometer? >> Roughly 5200. >> Okay, so I can see this would take a little while to set up. >> So each hole contains 60 of these, and then there are 86 holes. >> That's a lot of neutrinos. >> We hope so. 

>> Is this an IceCube crew here that we're looking at? >> Mm-hmm. So this is a picture taken after when of these strings, we call them, so after 60 optical sensors were instrumented and dropped into the ice, and after each of these 86 strings we take a picture of the crew who assemble these sensors. >> So I gather there have been people who have been going down there for a number of years and study a long period of time? >> So Mark has been there quite a few years. >> Seven times. >> Seven times. >> So total, about six months maybe. >> He would be considered an old-timer. >> I guess, yeah. But I wouldn't winter. I wouldn't spend the year there. 

>> Well, I was going to get into that kind of thing. This looks very cozy and friendly here, but then if you extend living indoors like that for how long? Eight months or something, it might get a little thin. >> I think the ideal time to go there is two weeks. [LAUGHTER] For me it's high altitude, cold, dry, I personally don't do well physically in that environment. >> Well, that's true. And we don't think of the high altitudes so much because you're so, as it were, blinded by the cold when you think about Antarctica as a lay person that you don't realize that we're talking 7500 feet, maybe, on the average here, and then it takes awhile for people to get used to that in Colorado. So if you add that, what, 70-degree below zero cold and then maybe a little wind chill on top of that. >> As soon as the wind starts blowing, it's nasty. >> So that's like a triple whammy there that you have to get used to. >> So it's a fairly harsh environment. 

The South Pole Station, the scientific station certainly makes it a lot more comfortable to work there. >> But is it true that people after they've been there a while they don't get colds because, again, there are no bacteria to pass around, none of the bugs? >> Maybe you know more about this. >> I think that's probably true. There's a limited number of people, and so what the people who winter there, as soon as the new people arrive in October or November, they all immediately get sick. >> That's what I was wondering about. So in effect they're getting a fresh injection of a contagion each time. >> Right. >> Because you're going to be in such closed quarters anyway. >> So on top of the fact they're not happy, they've had this private home for a year almost and all these people, 150 new people show up and they're not happy about that, and on top of that they all get sick. >> Well, that's the special challenges. 

This is a spectacular outdoor view. >> Yes. By far the best thing that happened to me in my trips was I managed to get on that icebreaker I mentioned for a day and a half. And this is actually the channel that it's cut. And this is a part of the channel where there's no more ice. And so it's basically 200 or 300 yards wide and it was a nice summer's day and I was on the ship going up and down this channel, and when they cut the channel, a lot of wildlife will follow the icebreaker down because they can swim under the ice, they can breathe and then they can swim under the ice and catch fish and whatever. And so we saw a lot of whales, and these are killer whales. And I kind of like this one because there's a penguin up near the top. >> Right. >> Those particular whales don't attack penguins, but it looks good. 

>> So there is a point, though, somewhere beyond the coast where you just don't see any life of any kind? Is there? You get beyond, obviously, the sea life. I assume you also get beyond the bird life fairly quickly too. >> So at South Pole Station there's no life except humans, except twice, in the six months that I've been there, twice I've seen a skua fly overhead, which is a large seagull. >> Really? That far in? >> But they say when a skua has reached the South Pole Station it's probably not going to make it back to the coast. >> You wonder how it could. >> It's lost or something. >> The South Pole itself is roughly how far in from the nearest coast? >> Six hundred miles? >> That sounds right. >> It's amazing to think that a skua or anything else would fly that far in with no great prospect of anything to support it. >> Right. >> How far in for the penguins? I think of them as being pretty much coastal too. 

>> Right. They only go in, what, I think in the movies I've seen they only go in 50 or 70 miles or something. >> But once you were in their neck of the woods they seem to be all over the place. >> Yes. And so this picture here is Adelie penguins. So when you watch these movies on TV like Happy Feet and March of the Penguins, the penguins all have different personalities, and in the movies they actually do a fairly good job, I think, of depicting the different personalities of the different penguins. So these are Adelies. And I literally fell asleep on the rocks watching them because they were little kids running around for hours picking up stones, and they were just incredibly fun. >> Right. >> So let's talk about the tourist part of Antarctica. 

Where would a tourist actually have access? >> So from what I've seen, there are boats that come in to near McMurdo, and what I saw was that they get flown onto near the station with helicopters. So that's what I've seen. So they get a tour of the station. >> So they come out by boat but there's helicopter transportation from the boat. >> Yeah, I believe that's what I have seen. So near McMurdo Station there is the Scott's Hut. So that's one of the bases, I guess, for the Scott party. >> Oh, sure, for Robert Falcon Scott. >> That's right, yeah. >> He actually perished during an expedition of the South Pole. 

>> Yeah. And into the South Pole you can take a commercial flight to the South Pole itself. >> Oh, you can? >> You can pay a company about $40,000. >> Oh, okay. The line forms here. >> They'll fly you there. >> So they come and they take pictures at the South Pole and they fly back out again. >> How do you actually dress for the South Pole? You've given us some idea of Antarctic apparel in general, but I talked to somebody one time who said the only place she had ever been where she couldn't, and this was again an Antarctic researcher, only place she had been where she could not get warm was the South Pole, regardless of what she was wearing. >> Yeah, that might be true. So at the South Pole it's very, very dry, and so as long as you have warm clothing, you can always go into the station. 

So that's actually fairly warm. You can be dressed like this and keep warm. >> Really? In the station you mean. >> Yeah, in the station. I would imagine that if you're working on the coast near penguins and doing geological work you might be out in a camp somewhere, and that's where I imagine you can get fairly cold. And you're out in a camp as opposed to at a station, so you have much less access to buildings and heat and a shower and that sort of thing. >> What's the energy source for heat at these stations? I assume the heater is running constantly. >> So there's an ice runway that the planes that fly to the South Pole are, they're called C130 Hercules planes. >> Are these transports? >> They're military. They're operated by the New York Air National Guard, and they land on skis on an ice runway at South Pole Station. 

The South Pole Station needs approximately 300,000 gallons of fuel to run for one year, and every time one of those planes lands it has external fuel tanks on the wings and they siphon off about 3,000 gallons of fuel each time it lands. And so during the course of the summer, this three and a half months when planes can fly there when it's warmer than minus 60 which means it's warm enough so that the hydraulics on the planes don't freeze, then every time one of those planes lands they siphon off about 3,000 gallons of fuel. And they need approximately 100 flights just to get the fuel so they can operate for one year. >> So essentially they're stocking up for the winter. >> Yes. >> So that's the main source of energy at the South Pole. >> That's just standard... >> Jet fuel. >> Jet fuel. I think we have some of, are these emperors? >> These are emperors. 

So emperors tend not to be as exciting as Adelies because they'll often just stand and molt for about four months. [LAUGHTER] But they're beautiful. They're prettier. So these are Adelies near McMurdo. I mean, sorry, these are emperors near McMurdo. >> They're about four feet tall. >> They're bigger. >> Are these the biggest of the penguins? >> I believe so, yes. They're very impressive. >> And can you pretty much just walk right up to them? Are they more or less tame? >> We're not allowed to approach any wildlife. 

>> Are you not? >> They can approach us, but we're not allowed to approach them. >> If they approach you, do you have to, like, run away? >> No, no we don't have to. >> So have you observed, other than the playful Adelies, have you observed any kind of interesting wildlife behavior down there? >> I think last summer... >> See, the key wildlife to see is, if you're lucky you see penguins, seals, and then if you're lucky you see whales, as far as at McMurdo Station. And this is actually a picture of an emperor jumping out of a hole. Actually, it's a facility where they study emperors. And so they cut a hole in the ice so they can go diving any time they want and catch their own food, but because the ice is several feet thick there's only one way back and that's in a fenced in area. >> How does the hole get there? >> Well, the researchers have made the hole. >> Oh, the researchers. So the penguins will be attracted to it and it will give them a chance. 

>> Well, no. They actually are studying, they study like 20 emperors and they put them in. It's kind of like a zoo but they're wild penguins and they can go diving. They catch their own food, but they have to come back the way they entered the water. And so you wait with a camera. >> What's the status of the ozone that we hear so much about, the ozone hole that we hear so much about in Antarctica? >> Do you know anything about that? >> So they have a very neat facility where they study global warming and issues like that. It's called the Clean Air Facility at the South Pole Station. It's one of the best places in the world to study global warming issues because there's almost no human activity at South Pole Station, and there's no plants and animals that give off carbon dioxide and stuff. So what they do with regard to the ozone hole, I know I got a tour of it, they give really good tours, and they did talk about it. Basically, I'm not an expert on this but what I know, I can try and tell you very briefly. 

It's the ozone hole, every year in the fall, like September-ish, when the sun is now starting to poke its head up and it can actually hit Antarctica when the sun is coming up, it actually interacts, there's ice crystals in the air and there's some kind of catalyst going on between the ice crystals and the sun and the high altitude air and you get ozone destruction. And at that time of year there's this circular wind pattern around Antarctica, and basically what that means is this column of air around Antarctica and it's kind of trapped there. And so what you end up doing is you kill, all the ozone is destroyed, and it's kind of trapped in this weird weather pattern. And then later on that weather pattern disappears, and then everything mixes again. So they study this whole ozone hole. It's a natural phenomenon caused by this weird effect and this weird weather pattern, and they study it and then the weather pattern dissipates or whatever and everything mixes and then disappears And so they study that every year, and they study whether it gets bigger or smaller and all kinds of things. >> Each of you, was there a point in which you felt at home in Antarctica? You felt, okay, now I have kind of mastered this situation, this work situation? >> Well, I'm not sure I've come to that point, but for me going there was just, first time, I think, for anybody is just a fantastic experience. It's so exciting. You're getting there, you're flying across this beautiful landscape, and you meet all sorts of people doing all sorts of different science. People studying penguins and whether the landscape there is similar to Mars, the geology people, and then all the people who are flying balloons for cosmic rays or there are other neutrino detectors. 

So these are balloons that can go way up into the sky 30,000 feet or something, and then they go around the Antarctic. So you meet people from NASA doing this sort of thing, and you meet IceCube people. So you meet all sorts of people doing just crazy, crazy things. And so for me meeting all these people was really, really fun talking to them all. And then you get to the South Pole, and for IceCube we were a fairly big presence there. This fantastic team gathers at the South Pole to make this project happen, and we're all there, we have very limited time to get our work down, and we're on schedule and trying to get this detector built. And so it was a really, really exciting experience for me. And I think all the team members are very capable technicians, scientists, and engineers. Just good times all around. >> Parties? >> Yeah. 

[LAUGHTER] >> Mark, what about you? At what point did you feel? >> I never felt at home there, but as far as, as Reina said, going there the first time, it was just incredible. And I think maybe the seventh time wasn't as great as the first time, but it's a neat place and I always felt very lucky that I got to do it. >> Either of you have a sense of if you could go there just one more time what you would want to do in particular that you haven't done yet or that you would like to do again for that matter? >> Well, for me, I'm trying to get this new project funded, so I'd like to get this built and I'd like to put it into the ice. And so if we can go there again to do another project that would be... >> This is for dark matter? >> Yeah, dark matter. A project called DM-Ice. >> For me, so I spent a day and a half on this icebreaker and I would do a cruise, and Antarctic cruise, because there is a lot of good stuff to see on that. >> So parts that you haven't seen that you'd like to see? >> Yes. There's, at the other side of Antarctica, a place called Rothera is supposed to be incredibly beautiful, and that would be, and I know some of the cruise ships coming down, I think they go over there. That would be a neat thing to do. 

>> Okay, so you're still up for another trip or two each, are you? >> Oh, yeah. >> Well, thanks for joining me today. My guests have been Mark Krasberg and Reina Maruyama. >> Thank you. >> Associated with IceCube and also doing other things there too. And good luck with next trips to Antarctica and the pole, the South Pole. >>Thanks. >> Thank you very much. >> I'm Norman Gilliland. Thanks for joining me, and I hope you can be with me next time for University Place Presents.