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.