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Scientists begin melting Earth's oldest ice to unlock 1,500,000-year-old secrets
Scientists begin melting Earth's oldest ice to unlock 1,500,000-year-old secrets

Metro

time2 days ago

  • Science
  • Metro

Scientists begin melting Earth's oldest ice to unlock 1,500,000-year-old secrets

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Unassuming, icicle-like tubes could help answer mysteries about Earth's climate. They are the world's oldest ice cores, which have just landed in the UK after being drilled from the depths of Antarctica. While most of Britain is reeling from weeks of back-to-back heatwaves, scientists in Cambridge find out what the rare blocks of ice can reveal about climate change and our home planet. But to get hold of the ice, they first had to drill for 1.7 miles down the ice sheet at the South Pole. The giant stick of ice was then cut into more manageable chunks and transported to Europe. Scientists hope the pieces will reveal why the planet's climate cycle shifted more than a million years ago, helping to predict Earth's future response to rising greenhouse gas. Dr Liz Thomas, from the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, told Reuters: 'We really are exploring a completely unknown time in our history. 'We are hoping to unlock all these amazing secrets.' The new core ice, which was drilled near the Concordia research station in the 'White Continent,' beats the previous 800,000-year-old ice, which was drilled in the early 2000s. Until now, scientists have relied on marine sediments to study the climate cycles. over millions of years. But ice has a special feature invisible to the naked eye – entrapped bubbles showing the atmospheric conditions, amount of greenhouse gas in the air and chemical evidence of temperatures at the time when they were released. And to not make the job too easy for the scientists, Antarctica is the only place on Earth where such a long record of the atmosphere is found. Summer temperatures at the French-Italian Concordia station range from -30°C to -50°C, and can reach a brain-numbing -80°C in winter. Dr Thomas continued: 'Our data will yield the first continuous reconstructions of key environmental indicators—including atmospheric temperatures, wind patterns, sea ice extent, and marine productivity—spanning the past 1.5 million years. 'This unprecedented ice core dataset will provide vital insights into the link between atmospheric CO₂ levels and climate during a previously uncharted period in Earth's history, offering valuable context for predicting future climate change.' The world's largest ice sheet remains shrouded in mystery and intrigue as relatively little is still known about Antarctica. More Trending Geologists believe the continent was once covered in rivers and forests. Satellite data and radars revealed ridges and valleys, suggesting the icy no man's land looked very different 34 million years ago. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists have their eyes set on Antarctica after Google Map sleuths believe they have found a secret door buried in the mountainside. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Scorching 40°C temperatures 'will soon become the new normal for the UK' MORE: I love living in London — but it's absolutely vile in the summer MORE: Blame, thoughts and prayers – the uncomfortable truth about politicians and natural disasters

Scientists recover ice dating back over a million years
Scientists recover ice dating back over a million years

ABC News

time3 days ago

  • Science
  • ABC News

Scientists recover ice dating back over a million years

Some of the world's oldest ice ever recovered from Antarctica has arrived in the United Kingdom for climate analysis. The ice core — drilled from a depth of 2,800 metres in the East Antarctic Peninsula — is expected to hold a climate record stretching back over 1.5 million years. The recovery nearly doubles the current 800,000-year ice core record. "So this is a really exciting project to work on because we really are exploring a completely unknown time in our history, and what we're hoping is we're going to unlock all these amazing secrets," Liz Thomas, head of the Ice Cores team at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge, said. The ice core will undergo analysis over the coming years at BAS and other European laboratories. Scientists aim to unlock insights into Earth's climate evolution, focusing on greenhouse gas concentrations, atmospheric temperatures, wind patterns, and sea ice extent. A key objective is to understand why Earth's glacial-interglacial cycles shifted from 41,000 to 100,000 years about 1 million years ago. This gives scientists context for predicting future climate responses to rising greenhouse gas levels. Ice cores capture direct evidence of past atmospheric conditions through trapped air bubbles, which will be analysed as they are released from the ice as it is slowly melted in a process called Continuous Flow Analysis. The findings will shed light on the link between atmospheric CO2 and climate during a previously uncharted period. Funded by the European Commission, Beyond EPICA involves 12 institutions across 10 European countries. Reuters

Unique 1.5m year-old ice to be melted to unlock mystery
Unique 1.5m year-old ice to be melted to unlock mystery

Yahoo

time3 days ago

  • Science
  • Yahoo

Unique 1.5m year-old ice to be melted to unlock mystery

An ice core that may be older than 1.5 million years has arrived in the UK where scientists will melt it to unlock vital information about Earth's climate. The glassy cylinder is the planet's oldest ice and was drilled from deep inside the Antarctic ice sheet. Frozen inside is thousands of years of new information that scientists say could "revolutionise" what we know about climate change. BBC News went inside the -23C freezer room at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge to see the precious boxes of ice. "This is a completely unknown period of our Earth's history," says Dr Liz Thomas, head of ice core research at the British Antarctic Survey. Red warning lights flash above the door, and inside there is an emergency escape hatch into a tunnel in case something went wrong. The rules say we could only go inside for 15 minutes at a time, wearing padded overalls, boots, hats and gloves. Our camera's electronic shutter froze shut and our hair started to crackle as it turned icy. On a worktop next to stacked boxes of ice, Dr Thomas points out the oldest cores that could be 1.5 million years old. They shine and are so clear we can see our hands through them. For seven weeks, the team will slowly melt the hard-won ice, releasing ancient dust, volcanic ash, and even tiny marine algae called diatoms that were locked inside when water turned to ice. These materials can tell scientists about wind patterns, temperature, and sea levels more than a million years ago. Tubes will feed the liquid into machines in a lab next door that is one of the only places in the world that can do this science. It was a huge multinational effort to extract the ice cores in Antarctica, at a cost of millions. The ice was chopped into 1m blocks and transported by boat and then in a cold van to Cambridge. Engineer James Veal helped to extract the ice close to the Concordia base in eastern Antarctica. "To hold that in my carefully gloved hands and be very careful not to drop the sections - it was an amazing feeling," he says. Two institutions in Germany and Switzerland also have received cross-sections of the 2.8km core. The teams could find evidence of a period of time more than 800,000 years ago when carbon dioxide concentrations may have been naturally as high or even higher than they are now, according to Dr Thomas. This could help them understand what will happen in our future as our planet responds to warming gases trapped in our atmosphere. "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," she says. The difference between today and previous eras with high greenhouse gases is that now humans have caused the rapid rise in warming gases in the last 150 years. That is taking us into unchartered territory, but the scientists hope that the record of our planet's environmental history locked in the ice could give us some guidance. The team will identify chemical isotopes in the liquid that could tell us the wind patterns, temperatures, and rainfall for a period of time between 800,000 and up to 1.5 million years ago or possibly more. They will use an instrument called an inductively couple plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS) to measure over 20 elements and trace metals. That includes rare earth elements, sea salts and marine elements, as well as indicators of past volcanic eruptions. The work will help scientists understand a mysterious change called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition 800,000 to 1.2 million years ago when the planet's glacial cycles suddenly changed. The transition from warmer eras to cold glacial eras, when ice covered a lot more of Earth, had been every 41,000 years but it suddenly switched to 100,000 years. The cause of this shift is one of the "most exciting unsolved questions" in climate science, according to Dr Thomas. The cores may have evidence of a time when sea levels were much higher than they are now and when the vast Antarctic ice sheets were smaller. The presence of dust in the ice will help them understand how the ice sheets shrunk and contributed to sea level rise - something that is a major concern this century. Million year-old bubbles could solve ice age mystery Solve the daily Crossword

Scientists Will Melt Some of Earth's Oldest Ice to Solve Climate Mystery
Scientists Will Melt Some of Earth's Oldest Ice to Solve Climate Mystery

Gizmodo

time3 days ago

  • Science
  • Gizmodo

Scientists Will Melt Some of Earth's Oldest Ice to Solve Climate Mystery

A team of U.K. researchers are planning to melt some of the oldest ice on Earth in an ambitious bid to reconstruct up to 1.5 million years of our planet's climate history. In doing so, they could also help solve a mystery that has puzzled scientists for over two decades. Over the course of seven weeks, scientists at the British Antarctic Survey plan to gradually melt 1.5-million-year-old Antarctic ice cores at their lab in Cambridge, England, unlocking whatever dust, volcanic ash, and even single-celled algae that might be preserved inside. These materials hold clues about Earth's ancient climate and atmospheric composition, and could provide new insights into how greenhouse gases influenced global temperatures more than a million years ago. They could also help scientists understand how human-generated emissions will shape Earth's future. '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,' Liz Thomas, head of ice core research at the BAS, told the BBC. One crucial mystery the scientists hope to solve is why Earth's glacial cycles appeared to suddenly switch at a point between 800,000 and 1.2 million years ago, a shift known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Antarctic ice core analysis done in 2004 found a close link between Earth's climate and atmospheric gases over the past 800,000 years, suggesting that the planet experienced ice ages interspersed with warmer periods on a 100,000-year cycle. But marine sediment records dating back at least 1 million years have indicated that, before then, glacial periods occurred more frequently, about once every 41,000 years. Thomas and her colleagues hope the new cores will reveal the composition of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere during this mysterious transition, and that could explain why it happened at all. '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?' Thomas said in a statement. '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.' Her team will use a technique called continuous flow analysis, which involves slowly melting ice core sections and simultaneously measuring any chemical elements, particles, and isotopic data to extrapolate Earth's past climate conditions. Air bubbles trapped inside the cores can reveal our planet's ancient atmospheric conditions, changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, and Earth's temperature at the time. 'This unprecedented ice core dataset will provide vital insights into the link between atmospheric [carbon dioxide] levels and climate during a previously uncharted period in Earth's history, offering valuable context for predicting future climate change,' Thomas said.

Why 1.5-million-yr old ice is set to be melted in the UK
Why 1.5-million-yr old ice is set to be melted in the UK

First Post

time3 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

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