Apr
27
2020
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Stringing Together More Neutrino Detectors
The biggest experiment at the South Pole is getting a significant upgrade. Over the next three years, IceCube, the neutrino detector located at the South Pole, will be getting numerous new detectors added to its core. It's the biggest upgrade to the IceCube detector since its completion in 2010.
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Apr
14
2020
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Masses of Mosses
As the continent warms, Antarctica is getting greener. Plants are taking hold where glaciers once covered the landscape. Moss in particular is sprouting up in new spots where it had been previously inhospitable. While moss isn't a new arrival to the continent, its spread could mean big changes for the ecosystems of Antarctica.
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Apr
01
2020
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A Seal Grows In Antarctica
Weddell seals thrive in some of the coldest conditions on the planet, but scientists aren't quite sure why they don't freeze when they're first starting out. Weddell seals thrive in some of the coldest conditions on the planet, but scientists aren't quite sure why they don't freeze when they're first starting out.
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Jan
26
2020
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Hunting For the Oldest Ice
For scientists, ice cores are an indispensable window into the past. A research team using ancient ice recovered from Antarctica, announced recently that they'd identified some of the oldest air samples ever discovered, as far back as 2 million years ago, and that they're going back for more.
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Jan
06
2020
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Larvae La Vida Loca
As oceans warm around the world, the creatures that live in them are feeling the effects. In regions like the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, which has been unchanged for millennia, researchers worry that even small fluctuations in water temperatures can have major effects on the marine ecosystem.
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Nov
05
2019
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SALSA Part I: Scratching the Surface
A team of researchers and drilling engineers recently spent six weeks in West Antarctica carefully drilling through nearly a mile of ice to study Mercer Subglacial Lake. This body of water is buried under an ice stream, and likely hasn't seen the light of day for at least thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands, of years.
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Sep
04
2019
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Plasma Patch Atlas
High above the surface of the Earth, flow giant, invisible clouds of charged gas that can degrade radio transmissions, disrupt GPS Signals and play havoc with other communications and navigation systems. But they're not always showing up when scientists predicted. This year geophysicist Alex Chartier traveled across Antarctica to figure out what's going on in Earth's upper atmosphere.
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Jul
23
2019
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The Flight of X-Calibur
Antarctica can be a double-edged sword for astronomers: conditions there are some of the best in the world for observing the heavens, but the harshness of the place can be hard on equipment. In December 2018, astronomers who launched the x-ray telescope "X-Calibur" to study neutron stars and black holes got a taste of that contrast.
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Jul
08
2019
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Listening to Rock Music
Rocks are cracking up all over Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. Though it may take hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years, the slow but inevitable processes of weathering eventually reduce all rocks into sand or even clay.
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Jun
17
2019
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Digging For Fishies
The mountains of Antarctica may seem an unlikely place to find fish, but they were exactly what a team of paleontologists working along the edge of the Polar Plateau last winter were looking for. In a region now defined by dry rocky terrain poking up through vast sheets of thick ice, the five-member team spent much of December and January scouring the exposed landscape for the remains of ancient fish.
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May
07
2019
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Icefin Tests the Waters
Navigating a robot through the frozen ocean's frigid waters was all in a day's work for the RISE UP science team. From their makeshift mission control in a small fish hut, the researchers maneuvered their underwater vehicle through the seawater below.
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Apr
22
2019
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The Dry Valleys' Briny Deep
Hunting for groundwater has come a long way from divining rods in the days of yore. This past austral summer, scientists in Antarctica used a sophisticated and highly sensitive instrument to look for water in one of the continent's driest regions.
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Mar
18
2019
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The First Wave of the "Thwaites Invasion"
The U.S. and U.K.-funded International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) officially kicked off its science field research in January, when four researchers and their support teams set foot on a remote, fast-melting glacier in West Antarctica, establishing a beachhead for an unprecedented international project to determine the glacier's fate.
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Pumping Iron
Facing the Ultimate Acid Test
