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With Mount Discovery in the background, Alex Chartier's ionosonde sits atop a scaffolding to better understand the giant clouds of charged gas in the ionosphere.

Plasma Patch Atlas
Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics
Wednesday September 04, 2019
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.

At the far end of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Jen Lamp performs some final checks before leaving her experiment out for the austral winter.

The Flight of X-Calibur
Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics
Tuesday July 23, 2019
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 12 2018	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics Neutrinos Point The Way To Cosmic Rays Using data gathered by the National Science Foundation- (NSF) funded IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, scientists have for the first time identified a super massive black hole as the source of some of the highest energy cosmic rays.
Dec 20 2017	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics The South Pole Telescope's New Eyes The telescope at the bottom of the planet spent winter calibrating and collecting data after its vision enhancement last summer. Researchers installed a new camera system in the South Pole Telescope, a major upgrade that allows researchers to collect more data than ever before.
Oct 05 2016	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics GRIPS' Moment Under the Sun As a giant helium balloon lifted the alabaster solar telescope GRIPS (Gamma-Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar Flares) aloft, the excitement on the ground was palpable. The team of researchers, who had spent seven years working on the project, jumped for joy and snapped photos of their experiment in the air for the first time.
Aug 01 2016	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics Searching for Inflation Scientists working at the South Pole are trying to detect the imprints of gravitational waves from when the universe was only a tiny fraction (about one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth) of a second old. But first, they have to finish clearing away the galactic dust obscuring their view.
Apr 04 2016	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics The Stuff Between the Stars Four years ago, scientists set up the High Elevation Antarctic Terahertz (HEAT) telescope in the middle of the high Antarctic plateau, more than 500 miles from the South Pole. The harsh environment and unique atmospheric conditions here make it one of the best places on Earth to study the cosmos.
Feb 09 2016	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics A New Home for an Old Experiment The longest running experiment at McMurdo is leaving the station, but it's not moving too far away, Antarctically speaking. The CosRay experiment, which has been recording changes in the stream of cosmic rays striking Earth since 1960, is relocating to the new South Korean station, Jang Bogo, about 230 miles away.
Apr 27 2015	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics A Sticky Problem A telescope launched 35 kilometers into the stratosphere above Antarctica had a singular mission: to detect the impossibly faint signal from when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light, a theory known as cosmological inflation.
Jun 26 2014	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics Joining Together The South Pole Telescope has been involved in investigating some of the greatest mysteries of the universe. Now the powerful instrument in Antarctica will be used to form an Earth-sized telescope to study a black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Jun 20 2014	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics Global Effort The South Pole and McMurdo SuperDARN radars are part of a global network tracking the sun's interaction with the Earth's upper atmosphere to better understand so-called space weather.
Mar 18 2014	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics Clear Signal Researchers with the BICEP2 collaboration recently announced that their telescope in Antarctica has allowed them to collect what they believe is the first direct evidence for cosmic inflation.
Dec 20 2013	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics Major Upgrade Austral summers are not as exciting now as they once were when the IceCube Neutrino Observatory was under construction at the South Pole Station. But quality data collection still depends on how much can be done during the brief summer. This one will be especially busy with a major upgrade under way.
Dec 11 2013	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics From a Galaxy Far, Far Away Researchers with the IceCube collaboration have announced that a National Science Foundation (NSF)-built detector at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station allowed them to observe 28 very high-energy neutrinos that constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic accelerators such as black holes.
Nov 07 2013	Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics A Bigger Mousetrap To catch the elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos is not just a matter of building a better mousetrap. You need a really, really BIG mousetrap. Scientists at the South Pole hope to construct a 100-square-kilometer neutrino detector to capture the highest energy neutrinos theorized to exist.

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