#antarctica

#antarctica

An Ice Core that Goes Back Five Million YearsIce cores give us an extremely useful timeline of the earth. Scientists drill down through a thick layer of ice and pull up a column that may contain plants, animals, pollen, ash, and other markers that tell us about the earth thousands or even millions of years ago. Air bubbles in their ancient pristine state can be studied, and chemicals like carbon dioxide reveal the earth's conditions from their time.A 31-foot ice core was retrieved from the ice covering Antarctica's Ong Valley in 2017 and '18. Scientists have determined that the ice core is made up of two glaciation events (because glaciers drift), one from three million years ago, and the one underneath is between 4.3 and 5.1 million years! The oldest ice core dated before that was a mere 2.7 million years old. There will be years of analysis of this ancient ice that will tell us more than we ever knew about what happened on earth five million years ago. Read more about this record-breaking ice core at New Atlas. -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: Jaakko Putkonen) #icecore #glacier #Antarctica

A Solar Eclipse in Antarctica, as Seen from SpaceThere was a total solar eclipse over Antarctica on December 4, 2021. The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCVR) satellite observed from 1.5 million kilometers up, and took this image with its Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC). You would probably agree that this photograph is epic. While the earth itself is beautiful, you can clearly see the shadow of the moon thrown over the southernmost continent. While relatively few people were there to see the eclipse, Antarctica has its highest population in midsummer, so those who were there were treated to a couple minutes of darkness during the months of constant sunlight. Check out what they saw, and find out more about eclipse imaging at Petapixel. -via Digg#eclipse #Antarctica #astrophotography #space

60 Million Active Nests of Icefish: Largest Colony of Breeding Fish Found in Antarctica's Weddell SeaExperts uncovered the largest colony of breeding fish in the world. Five hundred meters below the Weddell Sea in Antarctica lies approximately 60 million active nests of a type of icefish. This is the first time scientists have encountered such a huge number, as they usually only discover a handful of icefish nests at a time, or perhaps just several dozen.The discovery was made by deep-sea biologist Autun Purser of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, and his colleagues. This team of experts was on a research cruise in the area, studying chemical connections between surface waters and the seafloor.Image credit: Alfred Wegener Institute, PS124 OFOBS team#discovery #science #marinebiology #icefish #Antarctica

This Sculpture is Made From Antarctic Air Trapped in an Ice Core Since 1765The year 1765 is considered by some as the beginning of the industrial revolution. Artist Wayne Binitie’s “1765” aims to show the artistic side on how much has changed since then. Binitie said that it was the beginning of the significant damage done by humans to the atmosphere.In a collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), he presented that year in a small artwork called “1765” Antarctic Air at the heart of the Polar Zero Exhibition in Glasgow. The man who mined the ice is glaciologist, Dr. Robert Mulvaney. He has been visiting the Antarctic for 25 years and stayed for 80 weeks in a tent to drill out ice before returning. Scientists do this to record what has happened to the ice sheet over a period of many years, so that we can know what happened to the climate and to the atmosphere. Some records go back to 120,000 years and 800,000 years.

This Antarctic Moss Depends on Penguin Poop to SurviveIndian biologist Felix Bast of the Central University of Punjab was on a mission to Antarctica where he stumbled upon a new species of moss.When he analyzed the moss sample back at his lab, Bast discovered that the moss only grew where it could find a source of nitrogen ... and in Antarctica, there was only one source: penguin poop!The new moss species was named Bryum Bharatiensis. Bharati is the Hindu goddess of learning and the name of one of India's Antarctic research stations.#moss #penguin #nitrogen #Antarctica #newspecies #poop #Bharati #HinduGod #goddess

Huge Antarctic Lake Disappeared in Just 3 Days, Dumped 26 Billion Cubic Feet of Water Into the OceanIt took only 3 days for a huge lake in the Antarctic to disappear! In June 2019, the ice shelf beneath the lake collapsed, sending an estimated 21 to 26 billion cubic feet (736 million cubic meter) of water into the ocean.Glaciologist Roland Warner of the University of Tasmania was monitoring the wildfires in Australia when he decided to take a look at satellite imagery to the south. "Looking down to Antarctica, for a break from watching the destruction, I noticed a spell of several clear days on Amery Ice Shelf and decided to see how the summer surface melt season was progressing," he tells Vice. "The collapsed surface feature caught my eye."Just to give you an idea of the scale, 21 to 26 billion cubic feet of water is twice the volume of the San Diego Bay, or is about 295,000 Olympic size swimming pool!#Antarctica #iceshelf #satelliteimagery #ocean #lake #ClimateChangeImage: Geophysical Research Letters