THE VIDEOS show the blackened noses of frostbite victims and instructions for recognising the life-threatening symptoms of hypothermia 鈥� every visitor must see them. Then comes the eight-hour flight from Christchurch in New Zealand to McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast followed by a three-hour hop to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
As you step off the plane, station personnel whisk you through the painfully cold wind to the base鈥檚 main entrance. Above it is a sign: 鈥淭he US welcomes you to the South Pole.鈥� Within moments, you stand in a warm galley with the station manager urging you to drink: a vital protection against the dehydrating effects of the dry air and the altitude.
Despite temperatures that hover around 鈭�30 掳C even in summer, the South Pole is becoming increasingly popular. 杏吧原创s now realise that it offers unparalleled conditions for observing stars, the Sun and even the Earth. In January this year, the station was filled with dozens of construction workers building laboratories, temporary living quarters and the housing for a new telescope which was shipped to the base in October. This is just the start. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to want bigger telescopes and more ambitious projects,鈥� says Al Harper, an astronomer from the Yerkes Observatory near Chicago, who visits the pole each year.
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But one thing stands in the way of this expansion. The windowless aluminium dome that houses the station is slowly crumbling under the weight of snow that continually builds up around it. Last year, a crack 20 centimetres long appeared in the supporting ring that girdles its 50-metre base 鈥� a harbinger, say engineers, of deterioration to come. John Rand, the station鈥檚 engineering manager, reckons that within ten years the damage will become too expensive to repair. Eventually, it will collapse. The National Science Foundation (NSF), which funds research at the pole, already spends $5 million each year to maintain it. This figure is set to soar.
The solution is to build a new station, says Eric Chiang, the NSF鈥檚 polar operations manager, who has been visiting the South Pole for fifteen years. He and his colleagues at the polar programmes section of the NSF are keen on a design by the Hawaii-based architects, Ferraro, Choie & Associates. The design avoids the crushing pile-up of snow by perching on stilts like a beach house, letting snow flow harmlessly underneath it.
It would also harness solar energy to keep heating costs and the drain on fuel supplies to a minimum, and would be built using fire-resistant materials. The design is much more open than the claustrophobic windowless dome, says Chiang. 鈥淭he current station reflects a fear of the environment.鈥� In contrast, the new structure would let in the sunlight in summer and the aurora in winter. The snag is the price tag. The new station will cost $200 million, a price the NSF is reluctant to agree to (see Diagram).
Cornelius Sullivan is head of the polar programmes office at the NSF鈥檚 headquarters in Arlington. In December, he expected to get the go ahead for the new station from the NSF鈥檚 governing body, the National Science Board. Instead, he got orders to review the cheaper alternatives. Sullivan says scientists have already spent the last eight years mulling over the options: 鈥淲e鈥檙e sure this design is the right one.鈥�
The pole offers unique opportunities. The attraction for astronomers, for example, starts with something as humble as water vapour. In most places around the world, water vapour in the atmosphere makes some types of observation impossible because it absorbs certain frequencies of light. At the South pole, however, the extreme cold freezes any vapour out of the atmosphere. 鈥淔or a lot of wavelengths, this is the best observing site on the planet,鈥� says Anthony Stark, an astronomer from AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey. Astronomers also like the fact that the Sun and stars stay at roughly the same angle in the sky for days on end allowing continuous observation. The pole is also 3000 metres above sea level providing a suitably rarefied atmosphere.
The conditions that make this place good for astronomy also make it inhospitable for humans. Six months of constant sunlight followed by six of darkness destroy sleeping patterns and keep people awake for weeks 鈥� sometimes resulting in depression. The cold is an ever-present hazard. People keep a constant lookout for the white spots that signal the onset of frostbite. And the altitude leaves them gasping for breath and shivering at the same time.
Only a few decades ago, the frozen interior of Antarctica was inaccessible. The ice-covered continent is vast 鈥� about the size of the US and Mexico combined. It is much colder than the Arctic, with temperatures dropping below 鈭�45 掳C in winter. The pole was first visited in 1911 by a team led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. On the return journey, their food ran out and they had to survive by eating some of their sled dogs. The second team led by the English explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1912 was not so lucky. 鈥淕reat God, this is an awful place.鈥� he wrote of the Antarctic before cold and starvation killed him and every member of his team.
It was not until the late 1920s that anyone returned. By then, aircraft were reliable enough to cover the hundreds of barren miles between the nearest civilisation and the South Pole. After that, it was international rivalry more than scientific curiosity that created interest in the continent. In the 1940s, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Argentina, France, Norway and Great Britain claimed a slice of territory, in the hope that precious mineral deposits lay under the ice. During the Second World War, Germany staked a claim by flying over Antarctica, dropping flags bearing the swastika. After the war, the US started to map the continent.
The prospect of actually living at the pole was more daunting. In 1956, the USSR announced a plan to build a permanent station at the South pole. Although the station never materialised, it goaded the Americans into action. Two years later, an American team led by polar researcher Paul Siple, arrived with hammers, nails, and prefabricated plywood huts.
The crew spent the first summer assembling a heated shed, devising a scheme to melt snow for a water supply, and setting up various scientific experiments. With this equipment they survived the winter. Siple invented the concept of wind-chill as a way of gauging the chances of surviving the coldest days.
Among his 18-strong team were a seismologist, a glaciologist, two atmospheric scientists and several meteorologists. There was much to discover. In subsequent years, other scientists turned up to study the atmosphere, the seismology, the aurora, the formation of ice crystals, the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field, and flares and spots on the Sun. Atmospheric scientists, interested in early signs of global warming, measured the fraction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Others studied the part of the atmosphere known as the ionosphere which reflects radio waves, allowing radio hams to bounce signals round the globe.
During those first years, scientists learnt much about conditions at the pole and how to survive them. They learnt about the climate, wind patterns and precipitation. They invented a system that allowed them to navigate in a place where the only direction is north. And since the Sun rises and sets only once a year, they chose to synchronise their clocks with the New Zealand time zone, where expeditions begin and end.
The old station is now buried up to its rooftop in the snow. It had few luxuries: the toilets were holes in the ice and the seats froze to temperatures of 鈭�40 掳C. The lifestyle that developed was rough, says seismologist William Smythe, who has been visiting the station nearly every year since the 1970s. No women were allowed, he says. It was a culture of men with unkempt beards and hair who drank, swore, and plastered the common areas with pictures clipped from pornographic magazines.
By the early 1970s, the structures were starting to collapse. The plywood buildings had become so warped that the floors curved upward and the doors were difficult to shut. The NSF replaced the station with the current dome in 1976. With real showers and toilets, it seemed luxurious to Smythe.
The 鈥渘ew鈥� station is encased in a geodesic dome, 16 metres high. The dome is unheated, but inside, bright red plywood boxes the size of portakabins serve as galley, gym, lounges, work and sleeping quarters. In summer, when the population rises to nearly 150, most people sleep in a 鈥渟ummer camp鈥� 鈥� a number of insulated tents dating from the Korean War known as jamesways, heated with diesel-burning furnaces. Inside each is enough room for nine residents to have a small, curtained off space to themselves containing a bed and a metal locker.
Lap of luxury
Among the jamesways are blue, box-shaped structures the toilets and shower rooms. Anyone emerging for a midnight trip to the toilet faces a 50-metre walk in blinding sunlight at temperatures of 鈭�30 掳C. It is like a cross between a campsite and a crowded college dormitory. There is no TV so entertainment arises spontaneously. Rock-and-roll bands play the night away at parties. This year, just for fun, the residents disguised the galley as a 1950s American diner serving burgers and milk shakes. For New Year鈥檚 Eve, they wore togas and gorged themselves on roast pig.
Winter, they say, is a different experience altogether. When the Sun sinks in March, just 29 people remain. All flights in and out cease, except for a single supply drop in June. There is no escape. By March, the temperature drops below 鈭�45 掳C, cold enough for eyelashes to freeze together. Each year, the winter crew arrive in October, at the beginning of the summer season. That gives them time to size one another up. People say that every year one person becomes an outcast and the rest of the group splits into two cliques. The first time that a woman stayed the winter, she became the outcast. Love develops, as do liaisons of convenience. One of the men in the group committed to staying this winter says that nearly all the seven women have already paired up with men. He doesn鈥檛 envy the couples. Imagine splitting someone else in the group.
Every member of the winter team must take a psychological test beforehand. So far, no one has committed suicide at the station, though Siple reports an attempted suicide in 1958 when he was leading the station. There are reports of one murder in the Antarctic, allegedly over a chess dispute between two Russians at the remote Vostok station, several hundred kilometres toward the centre of the vast Antarctic plateau.
Feel the fear
Many people survive the cramped winter conditions by confronting their fear of the outside environment. A number of the winter residents join the semi-secret society called the 鈥�300 Club鈥�. The initiation rite occurs when the temperature drops below 鈭�70 掳C. It involves roasting in a sauna and then dashing into the snow wearing nothing but shoes. The only rule is that the temperature drop must be greater than 300 掳F.
When the new station is built, some aspects of this way of life will change, as it did when the first station was replaced. And the signs of decay are showing. The dome appears to have sunk into the snow. In fact, the snow has drifted over it at the rate of about 30 centimetres each year. Not only is the dome鈥檚 support cracking but the insulation in the buildings is becoming saturated with ice, making it less effective. This increases demand on the power generator, which is already working at maximum capacity. Almost every day, power cuts interrupt work and play.
鈥淭his is what happens when you push a generator to its capacity,鈥� says NSF鈥檚 Chiang. Fire is also a constant worry, adds Rand. The air is bone dry and the wooden buildings are combustible. Chiang points out that a fire would destroy their shelter and their life-support system. 鈥淲e鈥檇 be stuck on the plateau with no way to live,鈥� he says.
The new station would revolutionise safety, energy efficiency and living conditions, according to Chiang. As a prototype, engineers recently built an elevated, solar-heated dormitory. It looks more inviting than the jamesways, but residents complain that the stilted structure vibrates with every passing tractor, that light seeps in when they want to sleep, and they have to share rooms. But for energy efficiency, the dorm is an unqualified success, says Rand. A couple of gallons of diesel heated the structure for five weeks during the summer. By contrast, each jamesway guzzles up to 50 gallons every day.
The prototype dorm shows how efficient the new station could be, says Chiang. But time is running out. Building another station will take years and the current station would have to be in good enough shape to house the workers needed to build it. The NSF could generate cash by sharing their facilities with researchers from other countries who want to carry out their own experiments at the South Pole and charging them for the accommodation, flights and support. But this may contravene US government policy, says Sullivan. This requires an American presence. He says it is not clear whether the government would allow them to rent US facilities to foreign researchers.
Another option would be to build the new station elsewhere on the vast Antarctic plateau leaving the old station to maintain the required presence at the Pole. There is one place that might have even better conditions for astronomy than the South Pole, says Robert Loewenstein, an astronomer who is evaluating the atmosphere in different parts of Antarctica. This site is even more remote, lying 700 kilometres toward the centre of the continent. It is colder than the pole, and about 1000 metres higher, so the researchers would need a pressurised living space. There is limited enthusiasm among astronomers. Al Harper, who heads NSF鈥檚 effort to coordinate Antarctic astronomy, says the benefits do not outweigh the disadvantages. 鈥淔or the moment,鈥� he says, 鈥淲e鈥檙e happy where we are.鈥�
In future, scientists may not even need to visit the pole. Harper says the station was recently linked to the Internet via a couple of abandoned communications satellites that had strayed above the horizon at the South Pole. Before this link, people communicated with the outside world mainly by radio. Now they can exchange e-mail and eventually they could do much more, says Loewenstein. Astronomers are rapidly improving the technology to automate their telescopes, says Loewenstein. Earlier this year, he was able to control a telescope in New Mexico from his office at the South Pole.
Automated telescopes will not replace people at the pole for some time, notes Harper. Developing complete automation would be more expensive and time-consuming than building a new station. 鈥淭here are some things it鈥檚 cheaper for humans to do,鈥� he says. When there鈥檚 a glitch 鈥渨e still need someone down there to kick the instruments鈥�.
Now, the future of scientific research at the pole rests with officials who control the money at the NSF. For now, the station cannot cope with the number of scientists, journalists, and others who want to be there during the summer. So guests stay just a few days at most. The people who鈥檝e been there longest are the happiest to leave. Despite the scientific potential, the cold, windy, desolate landscape wears people down. As astronomer Tim Miller notes, 鈥淭he two happiest days at the pole are the day you arrive and the day you leave.鈥�
The South Pole starspotters
THE FIRST person to propose an astrophysics project at the South Pole was Martin Pomerantz, a physicist who headed the Bartol Research Institute, then in Philadelphia. After he retired from his research, Pomerantz says he found he had a knack for car sales 鈥� he now runs a Nissan dealership in Alabama. But to astronomers, he is most famous for selling the advantages of the South Pole. He first visited the pole in 1959, and returned urging his colleagues to set up equipment to detect cosmic rays 鈥� charged particles that stream outward from the Sun and other sources in the sky. Most of the cosmic rays hitting the Earth bounce off the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field, but some glide along the magnetic field lines and plunge towards the ground at the North and South poles.
At first, Pomerantz failed to convince many other astronomers to fly south. 鈥淧eople thought that it was ridiculous,鈥� he recalls, going all the way to such a cold and remote spot to do astronomy.
In the 1960s, Pomerantz set up a cosmic ray detector at McMurdo Station, near the Antarctic coast, and later that decade started a similar one at the South Pole. By late 1970, he had started observing the Sun using equipment cannibalised from his research on cosmic rays. But other astronomers were more interested in flying astronomical instruments on jet aircraft and satelittes to get above the atmosphere and the water it contains.
Planes and satellites, however, limited the size of instruments scientists could use. And by the mid 1980s, many had grown keenly interested in the wave-lengths that the atmosphere blocks most effectively 鈥� microwaves. In particular, astrophysicists were drawn to the pervasive hum of microwaves known as the cosmic microwave background that was discovered in 1965. This hum, they believe, is a remnant of the radiation released in the big bang. In 1986, a group of astrophysicists from Caltech and MIT built the Cosmic Background Radiation Anisotropy (COBRA) telescope at the pole, which can measure the hum in much finer detail than satellite experiments.
By 1991, other astronomers realised that the South Pole鈥檚 high, dry, cold atmosphere might make it a good place to do other kinds of observations. That year, the National Science Foundation established the Center for Antarctic Research in Astronomy (CARA) in order to consolidate research. Based at Yerkes Observatory in Chicago, CARA receives $13.6 million from the NSF each year to run COBRA and two new South Pole projects to observe the sky in other wavelengths that are obscured at other latitudes.
The first equipment for these new projects arrived last year 鈥� the South Pole Infrared Explorer (SPIREX). During the winter, researchers took the first observation with the 60-centimetre telescope, designed to observe the sky in the longer part of the infrared range. Mark Herald, the astronomer in charge of the project, says that SPIREX took some of the world鈥檚 clearest shots of the collision between the comet Shoemaker-Levy and Jupiter last summer. While Jupiter would rise and set over other observatories as the Earth rotated, the planet remained above the South Pole throughout the period.
Last October, the other new telescope arrived, the AST/RO (Antarctic Submillimetre Telescope/Remote Observatory). This is has a 1.7-metre mirror to catch light in the sub-millimetre range, somewhere on the border between microwave and radio. Elsewhere, this radiation is hopelessly blocked by water vapour. 鈥淭his is about the only band that no one has ever had the technology to explore,鈥� says Anthony Stark, an astronomer at AT&T who heads the project. In this case, however, the technological hurdle was getting the telescope to work in the sub-zero cold of the South Pole.
AST/RO is sensitive to the light emitted by carbon atoms and carbon-containing molecules that lurk in the clouds in which stars form. Stark and his colleagues want to learn how this carbon moves through the galaxy, as it is ejected from dying stars, condenses into interstellar clouds, and collapses into stars again. As a bonus, AST/RO detects both atmospheric carbon dioxide and the thinning ozone layer. The current AST/RO and SPIREX serve as prototypes for much larger versions which might have mirrors as big as 10 metres across. But they could only be built if the new station is built.
Also active is the South Pole Air Shower Experiment (SPASE), a series of box-shaped cosmic ray detectors arranged over the ice that have been operating since the mid 1980s. With this project, researchers hope to discover something about the distant sources of these particles. SPASE doesn鈥檛 detect cosmic rays. Instead it picks up the aftermath, 鈥渁ir showers鈥� of electrons that come raining down each time an energetic proton strikes the atmosphere. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 understand where these energetic protons are coming from,鈥� says Thomas Gaisser of the Bartol Research Institute who is in charge of the project. He believes they come from a powerful type of supernova explosion, though it will take more work on cosmic ray showers to be sure.
A more speculative venture is the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA). The 鈥渄etector鈥� is actually a chunk of the ice cap, 200 metres thick and 30 metres across that physicists hope will help reveal evidence for fleeting and elusive particles called neutrinos. They believe that neutrinos stream out from black holes, quasars, and other exotic objects far out in the Universe. If a neutrino interacted with an atom in the ice, it would create a flash of light. To catch such flashes, the researchers are using detectors called phototubes, that pick up light flashes and register them as electrical pulses. Like ice fishermen, they are sinking strings of 20 phototubes into holes they鈥檝e drilled into the ice.
To screen out false signals from cosmic rays, AMANDA looks down towards the centre of the Earth. Neutrinos interact so rarely that most of them pass straight through the Earth. Only one in billions would interact inside the ice chunk and register in the detectors. After two years of work, the physicists have still to record the first bite from a neutrino.