My Correlations colleague Tamsin Gray has been updating us on her activities down in Antarctica. I still find it remarkable that there are people regularly going down there, doing all sorts of scientific experiments at several stations. Click the map on the right for a larger view of the layout of the many stations down there. Keep an eye out for Tamsin’s posts – not the least because there are occasionally pictures of cute penguins – to get an idea of some of the things her team are up to.
Recently, for example, Tamsin told us about some new (toys) tools they were working with – tiny airplanes! They fly around and do meteorological measurements.
Over on Correlations I did a post about Antarctica that briefly mentioned some of the physics being done there (AMANDA and IceCube, the neutrino telescopes), but the primary purpose of which was to point to a marvelous radio documentary about the remarkable 1914 Shackleton expedition. It is called “Walking Out of History”. I really recommend it:
Today, NPR did an encore airing of a documentary about this (made by John Rabe for American Public Radio Works in 1999), and I recommend it highly. It’s a gripping story. I found an excellent website with all the material, including maps, photos, interviews and recollections, transcripts, commentary from latter-day Antarctic explorer Ann Bancroft and others, and so forth. It’s just great. I thought I’d share it with you. The site is here.
Go ahead and have a look at the whole post for more.
-cvj
