There are still people who live in tents -- heated ones -- at the South Pole, but inside the brand new science station, cutting-edge research designed for the harsh Antarctic environment has found a home.
AMUNDSEN-SCOTT SOUTH POLE STATION, Antarctica -- The snow squealed and crunched as the U.S. Air Force ski-plane slid to a stop at the bottom of the world.
The spring sky was deep blue and the temperature was minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 degrees Celsius), cold enough to make frost form almost instantly around mouths and noses. At an altitude of about 9,500 feet, the air is rarefied enough to make most visitors gasp, and keep gasping.
There are still people who live in tents -- heated ones -- at the South Pole, but inside the brand new science station, cutting-edge research designed for the harsh Antarctic environment has found a home.
The new $153 million station, named like its predecessors for South Pole explorers Roald Amundsen of Norway and Robert Falcon Scott of Britain, looks nothing like the geodesic dome that housed U.S. science operations at the pole for 30 years beginning in 1975.
For a start, it's not covered by drifting snow, one factor that doomed the dome.
Only about 8 inches of snow fall each year, but it never melts and it always drifts, covering the average building in months.
Most winters, the 55 yard wide dome was completely engulfed in snow, so springtime meant bulldozers had to dig it out. To avoid piling up the removed snow in a bowl around the dome, it had to be moved nearly a mile away, using precious fuel that had to be flown in.
The new station is built on metal stilts that can be gradually extended as the snows drift around it. And parts of it are shaped like an airplane's wing to force wind around it, so snow is discouraged from drifting around the station's base.
The main building is shaped a bit like a capital E, but with an extra horizontal line, and the whole structure is oriented with its long side facing the prevailing wind.
HIGH AND DRY
Nearly complete and fully occupied, the new station has not been officially opened; that will take place sometime during the upcoming International Polar Year, which actually runs from March 2007 through March 2009, to give researchers a chance to work at both poles and during winter and summer if they wish.
But even at this stage, there are more people living and working at the pole than the station's design called for: 262 so far, in a space meant for 150 summer residents, the South Pole's area director, B.K. Grant, said Monday.
The mystique of the pole surely lures some, but for astronomers, this place has specific advantages, according to Stephen Padin, a senior scientist at the University of Chicago, who is working on a project that asks one of the most basic questions: what is the universe made of?
The project, headed by John Carlstrom, seeks to look at the microwave background left over from the Big Bang, the cosmic explosion that astronomers believe gave birth to the universe.
To detect these cosmic microwaves, Carlstrom's team sought the South Pole because of its altitude -- it is above most of the Earth's atmosphere -- and because it is so dry, since water absorbs the kind of waves they want to observe with the huge telescope now being built at the pole.
"There's excellent infrastructure here," Padin said in an interview. "The environment's aggressive, it's cold, so you need to design experiments for that."
WINTER ISOLATION
But whatever makes them come to the pole, the new station has to operate as a self-contained mini-city during the winter months, when the place is physically isolated. Air travel is difficult if not impossible when temperatures plunge to minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
So the new complex has a gym, a greenhouse, 11.5 hours a day of Internet connectivity, a game room, a gym, a workout room, a sauna and a cash-only store, among other amenities.
It is insulated about five times more than the average home in a temperate latitude, and can actually be a bit too warm in some rooms.
The new galley serves the hearty fare required for people who must eat some 5,000 calories a day to help make up for energy lost in keeping warm.
In the austral summer, several flights a day go from the more temperate McMurdo Station to the pole, but when winter closes in, the flights generally stop, the sun disappears for six months, and the population of the station drops to about 50.
The geographic pole itself is marked with a sign honoring Amundsen and Scott, poised in front of a metal post topped with a three-dimensional medallion for each new year. Because the station sits on top of a slow-moving glacier, the post must be moved about 33 feet each year to stay accurate.
More information and images are available online here.
Source: Reuters
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