Antarctic Science
November 17, 2011
I'm having difficulties keeping up. Science descends on this station with great energy, and my tardy, baker-brained accounts, if and when I get them written at all, don't do justice to the fantastic happenings all around me. Not that I intend to abandon my efforts to parse the Science into [ahem] terms more intelligible to simple minds, but here I have collected some links to serve as a study guide.
Werner Herzog deserves credit for capturing better than I am able (from my limited vantage) the efforts of the scientists who return to the Ice season after season. His clips showcasing the muddy McMurdo mining town and its peculiar inhabitants are, I can attest, accurate! But the footage from the field camps--dives beneath the sea ice, microscope images of pseudopods, scientists who are here right now!--come together in a way that I find much more exciting.
Ice Diving. Henry Kaiser. Kaiser's footage features strongly in Herzog's film, and I've already posted the short clip I took of Kaiser's lecture last week, and you should definitely watch this too, but follow the link to see some more of his incredible adventures, often set to his own music, and more importantly, TAKEN THIS YEAR. As far as I can tell, this guy has the one of the most awe-inspiring jobs ever.
Foraminifera. Sam Bowser, et al. "Foraminifera are single-celled organisms (called protists). Their distinguishing features are net-like pseudopods called reticulopodia, and (usually) some sort of organic or shell-like outer protective layer, called a test. They are a very ancient group of organisms, at least 550 million years old."
The foramnifera both living and fossilized in the Antarctic sea-floor evidently hold great significance in understanding the evolutionary process, but they're also just stunningly beautiful. German biologist Ernst Haeckel produced some incredible drawings of foraminifera in his turn of the century book Kunstformen der Natur. Bowser distributed blue- and red-lensed spectacles to the audience before screening several images of the foramniferan's psedopods that leapt into three dimensions.
Dry Valleys. "The 15,000km2 Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA) contains cold desert soils millions of years old, special geological features, and unusual communities of plants and microorganisms. Its landscape includes glaciers, mountain ranges, ice-covered lakes, ephemeral streams, arid patterned soils and permafrost, sand dunes, and watershed systems. It is a region where life exists at the very extreme of environmental limits."
I attended the "Dry Valleys Training" on one of my days off, and that's as close as I'll ever get to visiting (I am eaten up with envy of this guy), but it was enough to blow my mind. Antarctica's longest and largest river, the Onyx. Don Juan Pond, the saltiest body of water on earth, so salty it never freezes. Ventifacts, stones blown into bizarre shapes by the wind carrying sand and ice particles. Never mind that the Dry Valleys serve as the testing ground for many of NASA's planned space projects.
Frost Flowers. Jeff Bowman, et al. "As surface seawater freezes during the polar fall bacteria, archaea, and phytoplankton are trapped within it. I am investigating how these organisms are distributed vertically within the ice, with a particular emphasis on which organisms are incorporated into microbially enriched structures known as frost flowers."
These folks came down at WinFly. I sat through this lecture many weeks ago and freely admit that although I continued to understand the words, nearly all of the information was over my head within ten minutes. His blog I find vastly more accessible. And I appreciate Bowman's very sane perspective on science in the Antarctic, since it ties in so neatly with my visit to Discovery Hut.
Marine Worms. Michael League, et al. "Polychaetes are segmented worms generally less than 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) long, but can vary greatly. They are marine worms that live throughout the world’s oceans and can survive in very harsh conditions including the deepest depths of the ocean. Once the worms have been collected, the research team will run temperature and nutrition experiments on them in the laboratory. These experiments will help researchers understand how the worms are able to adapt to these very cold waters, and how they will survive as ocean temperatures increase."
Penguin Ranch. Paul Ponganis, et al. "Emperor penguins are champion divers, the best among all birds. They can dive deeper than 1800 feet and can stay underwater on a single breath of air for as long as 22 minutes. We are interested in how emperor penguins dive so deep (diving physiology), and what they do during the dive (diving behavior).
"The study of emperor penguin physiology is important because it explains how a bird has evolved and adapted to swim underwater. The most important adaptations for diving are 1) an increase in the ability to store oxygen in the body, 2) the ability to tolerate low levels of oxygen in the body, and 3) the ability to tolerate the effects of pressure. These adaptations are also potentially relevant to our understanding of human physiology and medicine. For example, penguins routinely reach low levels of oxygen during diving that would cause us to pass out.
"Paul Ponganis is an Antarctic veteran who has studied emperor penguins in the field for more than 20 years. He is both a medical doctor (anesthesiologist) and marine biologist and has combined these fields to pursue a lifelong fascination: oxygen regulation in mammals and birds. Ponganis believes that by studying emperor penguin physiology, he can help doctors better understand hypoxia in human patients."
I have provided extra scientific words in this case because, quite honestly, the enormous audience that attended this lecture tuned out with a collective "Awwwwwww!" almost the instant the footage started rolling. And no wonder. This team recorded quite a bit of what we saw in March of the Penguins.
Werner Herzog deserves credit for capturing better than I am able (from my limited vantage) the efforts of the scientists who return to the Ice season after season. His clips showcasing the muddy McMurdo mining town and its peculiar inhabitants are, I can attest, accurate! But the footage from the field camps--dives beneath the sea ice, microscope images of pseudopods, scientists who are here right now!--come together in a way that I find much more exciting.
The foramnifera both living and fossilized in the Antarctic sea-floor evidently hold great significance in understanding the evolutionary process, but they're also just stunningly beautiful. German biologist Ernst Haeckel produced some incredible drawings of foraminifera in his turn of the century book Kunstformen der Natur. Bowser distributed blue- and red-lensed spectacles to the audience before screening several images of the foramniferan's psedopods that leapt into three dimensions.
I attended the "Dry Valleys Training" on one of my days off, and that's as close as I'll ever get to visiting (I am eaten up with envy of this guy), but it was enough to blow my mind. Antarctica's longest and largest river, the Onyx. Don Juan Pond, the saltiest body of water on earth, so salty it never freezes. Ventifacts, stones blown into bizarre shapes by the wind carrying sand and ice particles. Never mind that the Dry Valleys serve as the testing ground for many of NASA's planned space projects.
These folks came down at WinFly. I sat through this lecture many weeks ago and freely admit that although I continued to understand the words, nearly all of the information was over my head within ten minutes. His blog I find vastly more accessible. And I appreciate Bowman's very sane perspective on science in the Antarctic, since it ties in so neatly with my visit to Discovery Hut.
"The study of emperor penguin physiology is important because it explains how a bird has evolved and adapted to swim underwater. The most important adaptations for diving are 1) an increase in the ability to store oxygen in the body, 2) the ability to tolerate low levels of oxygen in the body, and 3) the ability to tolerate the effects of pressure. These adaptations are also potentially relevant to our understanding of human physiology and medicine. For example, penguins routinely reach low levels of oxygen during diving that would cause us to pass out.
"Paul Ponganis is an Antarctic veteran who has studied emperor penguins in the field for more than 20 years. He is both a medical doctor (anesthesiologist) and marine biologist and has combined these fields to pursue a lifelong fascination: oxygen regulation in mammals and birds. Ponganis believes that by studying emperor penguin physiology, he can help doctors better understand hypoxia in human patients."
I have provided extra scientific words in this case because, quite honestly, the enormous audience that attended this lecture tuned out with a collective "Awwwwwww!" almost the instant the footage started rolling. And no wonder. This team recorded quite a bit of what we saw in March of the Penguins.
