Running in Place

We're now in day 4 at McMurdo and it feels like we are running in place.  Friday, we had some hope that we would get scheduled for the Saturday morning flight to pole.  Sadly, that flight never made it out and we ended up spending the weekend since there are no flights on Sundays.  Luckily for us, we know some of the other scientists working at McMurdo and got to see their experiments to pass the time.  

First we got to tour around with an old friend of Brad's from Berkeley.  Yuki is a summer science technician at McMurdo and is responsible for maintaining a variety of experiments.  First up was CosRay,  a physics experiment to measure cosmic ray showers.  Cosmic ray showers occur when energetic particles (like a proton or electron) collides with the atoms and molecules in the earth's atmosphere.  The collision creates new particles and then those particles collide with atoms and molecules and the process repeats. This creates a shower of particles in the atmosphere and can be detected on the ground.  By measuring the air showers, CosRay learns about the sun and anything else that produces cosmic rays (like supernova).  CosRay is the longest running experiment at McMurdo and is finally shutting down later this summer.  I didn't get any good pictures of CosRay, because it just looks like giant boxes of styrofoam (thermal insulation protecting the detectors).  But I did take a picture of their old bit bucket.   CosRay used to use punch cards for recording the airshowers measured.  The bucket below is filled with all of the old 'bits' that got punched out before they retired it.

The CosRay bit bucket.

 Up next was a quick look up observation hill for Yuki to check on a GPS unit.  While there, we stopped and saw the marker that shows the old site of the nuclear power plant for McMurdo. Yes, that's right, nuclear power plant.  It was fully removed in the 1970's after it went critical in 1962.  It's a sad reminder that we weren't always great conservationists and stewards of Antarctica.  In case you are wondering, these days McMurdo runs primarily off of diesel fuel and also some wind energy.

The nuclear power plant marker on the side of Obs Hill.  You can see most of McMurdo down below.

The inscription on the power plant marker.

There is also a beautiful view of Mount Erebus from Obs Hill.  That's an active volcano (see the tiny cloud at the top). 

Last stop on Yuki's rounds was arrival heights, to check on the variety of experiments up there (mostly atmospheric, some weather).   From the top, you can see Cape Evans where Robert Scott built a hut in 1910 during his Antarctic explorations, and the further out towards open/frozen ocean.  With all the ice in the bay right now, it is hard to imagine that in two months there will be a ship arriving to resupply McMurdo.

Cape Evans in the distance.

Saturday,  Jessica and I hopped on a shuttle to head out to the Long Duration Balloon (LDB) facility to visit her friends on the Anita experiment.  Anita is looking for cosmic neutrinos that  interact with the Antarctic ice and create radio emission.  Instead of looking up like the South Pole Telescope, Anita looks down at the ice as it flies over, listening for radio pulses.   Cosmic neutrinos are generated by some of the most energetic events in the universe (like supernovae). Neutrinos don't interact or get attenuated as they travel through the universe, so measuring them opens a whole new way of exploring these types of astrophysical events.

The top of the Anita gondola, suspended in one of the LDB high-bays for assembly.  Each of the horn-like boxes are a different receiver for Anita.

A view of Anita from the bottom.

Sunday afternoon, we went on down to the observation tube.  When conditions allow, there is a tube in the ice that has a tiny little room at the bottom with windows.  You climb down all the way through the ice and end up being able to see out into the water.   They put the lid back on the tube to help keep it dark and allow your eyes to adjust.  Everything down below is quiet (although you can still hear your friends talking on the surface). As you sit, and your eyes adjust, you can all of the ice crystal formations growing down into the water.  While I was down there, I was able to hear a seal pinging.  It sounded a bit like a very eerie low-pitched hooting with a little bit of wail to it.  And then the seal appeared, swam around some ice formations for a bit, and was gone again.   There was also an entire school of what I think were fish, but might have been some sort of strange Antarctic sea bug.   I could have spent the whole afternoon down there (it wasn't even cold).  The obs tube is probably one of the most memorable things I'll ever do in my travels.

The observation tube in the ice and its lid.

The view underneath the ice.  The picture doesn't come close to doing it justice.  You can see the land of Ross island on the left, and then the ice crystals growing down into the water.  The bright spot on the lower right is a fish!

Me, coming back out of the obs tube.

Today, we're in a bit of a holding pattern again as we wait for our flight to go through.  We were scheduled to be transported to the airfield at 0615 this morning, but the weather here was very cloudy with a bit snow flurries.  We almost got out later this morning, making a mad dash to transport when they moved it up on us, but that flight got cancelled as well. Now we're hoping to make it out this evening, but we heard from our winterovers that the visibility at pole is not good today.  But at least the view out the window here is beautiful to look at while sitting in the science lab.