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First Post
3 days ago
- Science
- First Post
Why 1.5-million-yr old ice is set to be melted in the UK
Ice, which is thought to be around 1.5 million years old, was retrieved from deep inside the Antarctic ice sheet. It has been brought to the United Kingdom where researchers hope that the it will shed some light on Earth's previous climate cycles read more The Beyond EPICA cores were collected from Dome C in East Antarctica over several years. Image courtesy: PNRA:IPEV Ice that is 1.5 million years old is set to be melted down in the UK. The ice, which is said to be the planet's oldest, was retrieved from deep inside the Antarctic ice sheet. It has been brought to the United Kingdom for scientists to observe and examine. But what do we know about it? Why it is being melted down in the UK? What we know The ice was retrieved from a depth of 2,800 metres underwater in East Antarctica. The region, known as Little Dome C, is located on the upper reaches of the Antarctic plateau. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The mission is part of the Beyond EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) Oldest Ice project. The team comprises researchers from 10 European nations and a dozen institutions. Those behind the mission, which was launched in 2019 and funded by the European Commission, want to decode Earth's climate history when it comes to ice core records. Thus far, when it comes to examining ice cores, we have records for around 800,000 years. They aim to extend this as far back as 1.5 million years. Millions of dollars were spent on extracting the ice cores from the Antarctic ice sheet. The cores were then divided into 1 metre blocks and shipped to the UK. They were then taken to Cambridge in a cold van. Some of it is currently being stored at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. 'To hold that in my carefully gloved hands and be very careful not to drop the sections - it was an amazing feeling,' engineer James Veale told BBC. Scientists will use an instrument called the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS) to examine the ice for nearly two dozen elements and trace metals. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Dr Liz Thomas holding the oldest ice core. Image courtesy: Image courtesy: PNRA:IPEV Two institutions in Germany and Switzerland also have received chunks of the ice core. The ice will be melted slowly over the next few weeks and examined in a state-of-the-art lab next door. The ice cores may contain carbon dioxide, methane or dust particles that can be examined as well as rare earth elements, sea salts and marine algae called diatoms. They will also reveal details about wind patterns, temperatures, and sea levels more than a million years ago. Why is it being melted down? Scientists hope the examination of the ice will reveal the secrets of Earth's previous climate cycles. The results may perhaps explain why sea levels rose and the ice sheets shrank between 800,000 and 1.5 million years ago. 'The project is driven by a central scientific question: why did the planet's climate cycle shift roughly one million years ago from a 41,000-year to a 100,000-year phasing of glacial-interglacial cycles?' Dr Liz Thomas, head of the ice cores team at the British Antarctic Survey told Sky News. Essentially, the Earth had been transitioning from warmer eras to cold ages roughly every 41,000 years. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD However, during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition era, around 800,000 to 1.2 million years ago, this transition suddenly shifted to every 100,000 years. We still don't understand why. 'This is a completely unknown period of our Earth's history', Thomas told BBC. Many researchers consider this to be one of the most puzzling and exciting secrets that science has yet to uncover. They also think examining Earth's past will help give human beings a further understanding of the future potential impact of climate change. 'Our climate system has been through so many different changes that we really need to be able to go back in time to understand these different processes and different tipping points,' Thomas told BBC. 'By extending the ice core record beyond this turning point, researchers hope to improve predictions of how Earth's climate may respond to future greenhouse gas increases', Thomas added. The rise of sea-levels is a major concern around the world in the 21st Century. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With inputs from agencies
Condé Nast Traveler
02-07-2025
- Science
- Condé Nast Traveler
How to Travel to the Most Remote Office on Earth
The plane is a Hercules C-130, super impressive. You arrive on this little bus, and you see this monstrous plane, and you enter through the back. Then you sit next to each other in these longitudinal seats. And then it's departure for a seven-hour trip without toilets, with a little snack, a lot of sound around you—just sitting until you see, for the first time, a bit of Antarctica. Concordia is more isolated than the International Space Station, 240 miles above Earth's surface. Photograph: ESA/IPEV/PNRA - A. Kumar You see these wonderful ice shelves from the little windows you have there. The first thing you see when you step out is just ice everywhere. You're really new to this environment, and sometimes it feels a little bit like being on another planet. There's an Italian station there, and we were supposed to stay for a day. But what we learned very fast is that, in French, we say, en Antarctique pas de pronostique, meaning, 'no forecast in Antarctica,' because the weather is super unpredictable. So, instead of staying one night, we stayed almost a week. This station is just a logistical one; it's not meant to host people, and everyone who stays there blocks others from coming in. It's a real logistical challenge for the people working there, so they want us to leave as fast as possible. But the weather is so unpredictable that you can't just take a plane and go inland. You need to wait until the weather is almost stable, and the pilot says, 'I'm ready to fly,' because he has the final word. I still had my data problem from before, and I was trying to connect to the internet. There, it was like the internet of the '90s—you know, beep beep beep. I tried to log in, and finally, after maybe two or three hours, on one computer, I got to the stage where it said, 'OK, I'm going to log in to your account so you can download your stuff. Please give me your phone number. I'm going to send you an SMS to log in.' That was the double verification, and it wasn't working because, obviously, there's no phone service. So I couldn't access my data because of this double verification. Finally, we took a plane. This one is smaller, a Basler BT-67 plane, which comes from Canada to fly within Antarctica and then goes back to Canada at the end of the season. This plane ride took four hours. It's a non-pressurized plane. You make sure to put all your clothes on, to be ready to go out in Concordia, because it's about minus 30 Celsius. We were super afraid. The first thing after landing in Concordia was this feeling of dizziness, vertigo. What I didn't know when I arrived there is that you're at 3,200 meters above sea level, so you feel the altitude a little bit. After four hours in this small plane, where you just see flatness of white, and nothing else, you come down to Concordia. From a distance, you see the station. That station seems so small because there's literally nothing around it—no mountains, nothing. And you have this little boulot dans l'estomac, as we say in French, like butterflies, because, you know, 'Wow, that's going to be my home for one year.' We came down to Concordia station, and the crew that had just spent a year and was now leaving the station, was awaiting us and welcomed us very warmly. They got us inside the station because we were sometimes afraid of high-altitude sickness. They want to make sure no one is carrying anything heavy, that we're not doing physical activity. They told us, 'Just stay calm for the next few days.' Concordia is accessible only by aircraft during the summer months, from November to February. In winter, temperatures plummet to minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Photograph: ESA/IPEV/PNRA - A. Kumar The station is made of two towers, with 18 faces for each tower. It's basically white, with a little bit of orange, and that's it. You enter through a tunnel between the two towers. You take off your boots and leave all your stuff there. It's quite small. Then you can go to the left, which is the 'calm tower.' Inside, you have the dormitories, the laboratories, and the hospital. It has three floors. The middle floor is dormitories, and the upper floor is laboratories. It's called the 'calm tower' to keep it calm. Then we go to the other tower, on the right side from the entrance. It has the technical stuff. On the second floor, there's the video room for movies and the sports room. On the top, you have the living room, the eating area, and the kitchen. In five minutes, you've done the tour of your new home. It's super impressive because you think, 'Someone had to build this in the middle of nowhere. Someone had to take the first steps.' And this is just incredible. So many people go to Antarctica with nothing. We arrive here, and we have the luxury of having this building to protect us from this environment. It's so out of this world to be there. We've seen a lot of pictures of Antarctica, and we've probably read a lot of books, but you've never been in the center of Antarctica, which is quite different. There's no life—no birds, no trees—there's literally nothing, nothing but ice and wind. A version of this story originally appeared on WIRED.
