Part 6 The Cloud of Unknowing I mentioned in an early blog that it is difficult to get a sense of direction here. North, south, east, and west could be any direction. The time of day is also impossible to judge without a watch because the sun plods a slow oval around the sky, never…
Part 7 Measured by Music Momme, the German physicist on the team, explained to me today that the seismometers have been gathering data for two years on the ice shelf’s reaction to infragravity waves from the sea below. Momme is also a jazz guitar player, so I have the luxury of a musical scientist helping…
Part 1 Arrival at Yesterday Camp I flew out this afternoon to Yesterday Camp with Cathy, Laura, and Momme on the second flight aboard a ski plane called a Twin Otter. These planes ferry science teams to and from McMurdo to their deep field camps. They are also embedded with those teams to transport people…
Part 2 The Noise, the Silence, and the Music It is flat here. Really flat. The horizon is identical in every direction. There is no geographic feature to use as a frame of reference. To complicate matters, there are two different systems of navigation that make “true north” the opposite physical direction from “grid north.”…
Part 3 “Second to the right and straight on ‘til morning” We loaded up the gear on our small fleet of snowmobiles and headed out into the open ice today. We drove about 15 miles to one of 30 seismic stations that need to be removed and returned to the researchers at UC San Diego….