The team of scientists and young researchers at POLENET, stationed at Byrd camp on the west Antarctic ice sheet, have been video podcasting since October 2009. Their
seventh features kickin' music by the Weepies. SLYT:
Antarctica (song)
posted by friendlymilkman
on Jan 2, 2011 -
2 comments
How we lost the cure for scurvy. "Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747...but here was a Royal Navy surgeon in 1911 apparently ignorant of what caused the disease, or how to cure it. Somehow a highly-trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times."
posted by rodgerd
on Mar 8, 2010 -
90 comments
Early in the days of
exploration of Antarctica, Australian geologist
Douglas Mawson turned down an invitation to join Robert Falcon Scott's
Terra Nova Expedition in 1910 (
Cool Antarctica previously). Instead, Mawson lead his own expedition, the
Australasian Antarctic Expedition (December 1911 to December 1913), an expedition to chart the 2000-mile coastline directly south of Australia, one of the least-visited parts of the continent throughout the early years of Antarctic exploration.
The group's efforts and activities are well documented, and many remnants of the expedition remain on Antarctica.
The conservation of Mawson's Huts is now an ongoing effort from
Association of Australasian Palaeontologists (AAP)
Mawson's Huts Foundation. While most efforts were focused on the recovery and treatment of artifacts inside the main hut, the group also searched for the
Vickers (
Aviation)
monoplane that was modified to become an "air tractor", or motorized sledge. The remains of the plane were last seen in 1975.
Now the plane has been found, thanks to an exceptionally low tide and a bit of luck.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 5, 2010 -
11 comments
Blood Falls - The iron rich red liquid gushing from a buried Antarctica lake shows how life may have existed on a snowball Earth, or on Europa.
posted by Artw
on Apr 18, 2009 -
52 comments
On Oct. 27th, 1915.
Sir Ernest Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship, moving the crew and supplies off of the
ice bound Endurance. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition would never achieve it's goal of crossing the continent, instead Shackleton would become famous for somethings far greater: his masterful and amazing ability at leadership and survival for himself and his crew of 27 men under the harshest conditions imaginable.
[more inside]
posted by mrzarquon
on Oct 27, 2008 -
59 comments
A new campaign plans to relocate polar bears to Antarctica to protect them from the effects of climate change. Based on the rates of ice melt in the North, scientists say most polar bears will be
gone by 2050. The first bears will be
moved on Earth Day, April 22. The relocation will be the initial step in a planned five-year program to migrate 3,000 polar bears from the Northern Arctic to the southern continent of Antarctica. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
plans to rule soon on whether to list polar bears as endangered species; however, it has indicated that relocating polar bears would be much less expensive to taxpayers than listing them under the 1973 act.
posted by commonmedia
on Mar 31, 2008 -
24 comments
After two big Antarctic ice shelves
broke off several years ago, a
world of new species was found underneath.
Pictures and a press release came out yesterday, showing spindly orange starfish among other interesting creatures. Here is some more
information on the expedition.
The fact that the shelves melted when they did is most likely a result of global warming, but having them out of the way gave researchers a golden opportunity to study what lives beneath the ice.
Other occassions where a disaster has simultaneously been a great research opportunity include radioactive fallouts: at Chernobyl the evacuated area has been
monitored for the past decades to see which species move in and how they thrive (
previously on Metafilter)
posted by easternblot
on Feb 26, 2007 -
21 comments
More gloomy news on the whole climate change thing. It seems that Greenland's ice caps are melting three times as fast as previously measured (ultimately, in a thousand years or so, leading to a 6.5m sea level rise). While at the other end of the planet, it's
not snowing as much as we hoped to limit sea level rises. But hey, we can still
laugh about it, right?
posted by wilful
on Aug 10, 2006 -
29 comments
The last hope of life on earth: Svalbard. Most of humanity
depends on just 12 plant species, down from over 7,000 historically. Fortunately, seeds can be viable for
up to thousands of years, and seed banks have already preserved many species, including the
entire plant population of Antarctica. But with
seed banks being destroyed as the result of wars and accident, Norway has
has begun work on an underground facility, protected by polar bears, in the
Arctic permafrost that is designed to hold millions of seeds, as
"final safety net" for humanity.
posted by blahblahblah
on Jun 19, 2006 -
36 comments
Listening to Antarctica is a daily web diary, including audio clips (RealMedia) of ambient sounds and conversations onboard the Aurora Australis, a research vessel currently on its way to the Australian Antarctic bases. Margot Foster's next port of call is
Casey Base.
posted by Jimbob
on Mar 16, 2005 -
4 comments
Big Crash! An iceberg the size of Long Island is about to impact a land-bound ice mass in Anarctica. Stand back!
posted by erebora
on Jan 12, 2005 -
10 comments
Dream Dollars "Discover the mystery of Nadiria, the Lost Colony of Antarctica. Nadiria flourished as a utopian colony deep inside the Antarctican ice shelf for over thirty years until its mysterious disappearance in 1899. Here are the beautiful reproductions of its unusual currency, Dream-Dollars, studied by scholars and dream researchers for almost a century. Long unavailable, these exotic notes will amaze, astound, and fascinate all those interested in the strange and the beautiful."
posted by anastasiav
on Jan 15, 2004 -
11 comments
Iceblog! "Antarctica: the best place in the world to be naked" (and take a bunch of awesomely beautiful pictures, too).
posted by WolfDaddy
on Dec 23, 2003 -
16 comments
Seal kills scientist A British scientist has been killed by a leopard seal whilst snorkelling in Antarctica.
I had no idea that a seal could (or would) attack a human. These things can grow to 23ft long! They are known to feed on penguins, but a human is a fair bit bigger than a penguin, so this is one nasty animal, not the doe-eyed creature we coo over in nature programmes...
posted by jontyjago
on Jul 24, 2003 -
45 comments
