Ask a Polie Beaker!
If you've worked in the sciences mixed with regular people like in a remote field camp where there are a mixture of researchers and all the staff that support them (it takes more than just scientists to do science!), you might have heard the term "beaker" used to describe the scientists. Sometimes in a derogatory way, sometimes in an endearing way. You might hear it as a drunken compliment at the bar after a particularly good day in the field where everyone feels like they learned something new and felt involved, or you might hear it muttered under the breath of someone doing all the hard, back-breaking labor just so a seemingly uncaring and insensitive scientist can get their sample at the bottom of a 10 foot trench dug by hand. Anyway, it's a term that's been around for a while and while the NSF doesn't advocate the use of the word (in fact, it's Raytheon policy NOT to use the word- you could get in trouble!) I like the word and don't mind it being used- and yes, I try and be considerate to everyone who's doing the real work here!
But since I'm here for a while, maybe I can answer some Antarctic questions that have been stumping you all these years?
Just to start things off, here's a few that were submitted to me three months ago. Yes, I'm lagging pretty bad- but I'll try to keep up from now on!
1. Is it possible for spit to freeze before it hits the ground?
Not right now it is because believe or not we're in summer here and it's way too warm right now. Today it was a positively balmy -27C, too warm for that to happen. But, if we get into the winter, with temperatures in the range of -60C, you might see some interesting things. I'll have to do some experimentation and report back, but try and take a look at this video clip. It's in Real video format so you need to download the player on your machine and was done by the physicist Jon Berry (I believe he's out of Cal Tech) who wintered over fairly recently- it's called "throwing water"- something you just can't do anywhere else! But we can do this later on- probably around April when it starts getting really cold.
2. How long will it take for a glass of water to freeze solid outside? How about hot tea or coffee?
That's a good question- I don't know! I've been thinking about work and other things that I just haven't really thought about that. But now that you ask, I'll bring an extra cup of coffee to work and time the results and report them back here.
3. Is it true that your tongue will freeze to metal? Has anyone there ever tried it or had it happen to them there?
Ummmm, I don't know if I should answer that after all, isn't being in school all about experiencing the world and all of it's infinite variety and surprises? I've never done it, but I have seen it done before (on a dare of course!)- your tongue will stick if it's cold enough. What happens is your spit on your tongue freezes and your tongue feels like it's stuck to the metal, but really it's your frozen spit that creates a solid bridge between you and the metal. So how do you get unstuck? You can do it the painfully obvious way, or you can find something to heat the metal up a bit and melt your spit. This can be pretty challenging at -40C, but a hair drier or heat gun will probably do the trick, just don't catch your hair on fire!
4. What does "wind chill" mean and how serious a problem is it?
Wind chill is how cold you feel as opposed to what the true temperature is. Have you ever noticed that during summer when it's warm out and if there's a breeze, it feels cooler than if the air were still? The cooling effect is wind chill, the cooler temperature you experience even though it's really warmer. Wind chill is a serious problem when you want to stay warm. Here, it could be a warm -30C, but if the wind is blowing at say, 5 meters per second, it can feel a lot colder, about -50C or so and there's a big difference between -30C and -50C and what you'll be wearing that day if you're working outside. It's something to think about if you want to stay warm and comfortable around here.
5. Why can't the planes fly in during the winter?
Planes can fly in winter. If people get sick or need to be evacuated, they can bring a plane here in an emergency. Generally, pilots don't like to fly in winter, and for good reason. For one thing, it's dark. The sun goes away for six months and it's hard to land a plane when all's you have is a dimly lit ice runway to land on- there aren't very many lights out on the landing strip as compared to a regular airport. It's also cold- cold enough that some planes can't fly in. The LC-130s that bring passengers and cargo in during the summertime don't do too well in extreme cold (I think starting at -60C) because certain systems in the plane stop working. The engines are fine- they're hot. But other things like hydraulics that control the rudders and landing gear start to freeze up and you don't want to be flying like that! There are smaller planes such as Twin Otters that can handle cold better than the larger planes and they use those more in winter when they have to fly. Finally, the last thing that keeps planes away during the winter is the weather. I've been told that the weather in wintertime is pretty awful- not necessarily here at the Pole, but around the edges of the continent where the ocean is. Wherever you have ocean, you're going to have more active weather- so that means bigger storms. So while planes could fly (theoretically) around where I am fairly easily, you'd probably get smacked down by the time you're ready to escape this continent at some point. But I haven't seen the really BAD weather yet, so I can't say. We've had three weeks of blue sky days with maybe a couple of overcast days with a bit of blowing snow (at -40C, -60C windchill, it can feel pretty bad!), but they went away by the next day. But I'll let you know when the gnarly weather really starts!
6. What is the crud?
Most people when they arrive here for the first time seem to get sick. It could be a case of the sniffles to full blown I'm-staying-in-bed-for-a-week syndrome. The crud is the trashcan term for anything that makes you sick and is probably something to watch out for because if you haven't gotten it yet, you probably will due to the closed nature of our ecosystem here. Sometimes it's called the McMurdo Crud, mostly because almost everyone here gets here through McMurdo, and because there's a lot more traffic and a lot more people, there's a lot more germs floating around there than here and you'll probably be very receptive to whatever is going around over there.
I think that if you throw enough money at it, you could live anywhere you want. Bill Gates probably could have his own little compound here if he really wanted to, right? Private houses in Antarctic wouldn't be much harder to maintain than the housing that is in place now. It's all about the total cost: cost of materials, transportation, and maintenance and all the labor that goes into it. It also will depend on where in Antarctica you want to live. For example, if you lived on the coast, your issues would be completely different than if you were living on the glacial ice of the South Pole.
I bet though that if you researched into Antarctica a bit, you would find that not one single private individual lives on this continent besides the national and international bases that already exist. Why not? You have rich people living in the hills and other out of the way places, behind high walls with armed guards, why not here? Well, here, you can't just drive out to the grocery store whenever you want. If your power goes out, you just can't call an electrician and expect immediate service like back home. Usually, you need some sort of community to cover your living needs. Power generation is only part of what you need to think about when you're going to live here. What about your food? Water? Waste disposal? These things just don't happen by themselves. Also take into account that it's dark here for seven months out of the year- think of Alaska but colder and darker and without any trees- that's what kinds of conditions you can expect here, and I don't see stampedes of people heading off to live in the tundra, even though there's lots of room up there! Antarctica is the only continent not previously inhabited by native peoples- there are no Antarctic Eskimos here. Why? Because it's too hard without a lot of help.
Also, aside from the Antarctic Treaty keeping gated communities out of this relatively virgin continent, why would anyone want to live here? Unless you have an interest in developing the resources here (or a giant, flamboyant ego), most people would have very little interest in living here year round. I come from California: Southern California. Do you know who's moving into the area, clogging the freeways with too many SUVs who don't know how to drive, using up the precious water to water their green grass lawns? People from the mid-west escaping the cold. They, like most people living in the temperate zones of the earth have no interest in living in a place where it's NEVER above freezing. I don't live in California anymore and I don't seek to return there anytime soon because of this (and yes, I'm very ashamed at the sorry state of the government at my home state). So unless someone or some country out there decides to put something economically interesting, like an oil field or a strip mine someplace in Antarctica, there isn't much of a system to support individuals out here. You can't just live off the land here. Here at the South Pole, whatever you bring with you is what you have, other than that, there's nothing but ice: 9,000 feet of it until you hit bedrock. If you got stranded by yourself with no help here, you will die. It's not a matter of building shelter out of native materials (ice), growing food (more ice!), and finding a nice native boy washed up on shore to serve you (carved out of sea ice) a la Robinson Crusoe. Without food, warmth, and shelter, you WILL die here!
I have heard of children born on Antarctica, I believe at some of the Chilean bases there have been experiments where children have been born on the continent and raised there to see if a community could function being so small and isolated. As far as I know, this hasn't happened at any of the American bases. In fact, if you get pregnant at any of the American bases, you would be immediately shipped out as a medical risk. I also think there's another reason why there are no children in Antarctica: politics. We Americans take our citizenship seriously- although there's a lot of grumbling about it, there usually isn't any question that a person born on American soil is an American citizen, right? Well, what about native born Antarcticans? Do they have any rights? Do they have some level of citizenship above any of the other visitors, being able to dictate what goes on where they were born? I believe that this is something that makes researchers and politicians shudder alike. At the moment, Antarctica doesn't "belong" to anyone. All that could change if issues like citizenship come into play and the continent starts getting divided up among whoever can afford to do it. The technology is there to put a real hospital here now, but I think there are other reasons that keep it from happening right now- cost and politics being the most obvious. But who knows? If they put a hotel here (probably only slightly before they put a space hotel in orbit), there could be a whole industry of people coming here to have their child born at the "bottom of the earth"- or maybe just conceived here. I'm not sure I would want to brag about the latter if I were the result of that.....
8. I've got a friend/relative/acquaintance in Antarctica. Can you help me locate them?
That depends. They say that people come to Antarctica for many reasons- for research, for the adventure, and also to escape. Yes, people come here to run away from the real world and it's quite effective, if temporary. So maybe this person doesn't want to be found? But ask me and maybe I can help you out. But I know more about Pole than I know about McMurdo, and I know even less about Palmer so it might be impossible for me to do anything.
9. What kind of camera do you use?
I have two cameras: a Canon 10D and a Pentax Optio S4. You can usually tell the difference as the Optio has slightly less resolution on the full sized images. I've been using two lenses on the 10D, a 16-35 mm zoom 2.8 and a 15 mm fisheye. I've also noticed that the zoom lens doesn't stay in focus very well at low temperatures, however the fisheye has been good no matter how cold it gets (with the camera in a heated box), so for long exposures, it seems like fixed focal lengths might have an advantage. The animations were done with the 10D with an electronic remote trigger to continuously shoot frames over the course of the clip and the frames linked together using Adobe Premiere. The longer ones were done with a 1 GB compact flash card- this died late in the season and I'm using my backup 512 MB card. Not as much space so my clips are shorter. For shooting aurora, setting the camera at ISO 100 at f2.8 for around 60 seconds seems to work well. Longer than this, you get streaking stars (unless you want that effect) from the rotation of the earth. Also at these exposure lengths, stuck pixels are very apparent, but nothing that a little Photoshopping can't handle as there aren't too many. But I'll be returning in the winter of 2005 with some new equipment to try out some new things.
You can email more questions too.