Cookie day!

I was glad to learn today that cookie Wednesday is still alive and well at McMurdo! At lunch I had a chocolate chip, molasses, oatmeal raisin currant, and mint chocolate.  Mmmm....  I always looked forward to Wednesday during my previous visit.

LDB galley

Inside the LDB galley

Challenge for my 220 class: Complete the following sentence in the style of Dr Nutter.  "Cookies are ____  _____"  (Two words).  Er, maybe it's not such a challenge after all.

In other news, I started applying expensive silver teflon tape to those horrible panels-that-used-to-have-holes-in-the-wrong-places-and-now-have-holes-of-various-shapes-in-more-or-less-the-correct-places.  That process is going much better than the hole-making/rearranging/mutilation.

Dinner in the McMurdo cafeteria

For my Cincinnati friends, you should know that I had Cincinnati style chili last night here at McMurdo. Chef tells me that there was chocolate and cinnamon in it, as there should be.  I found it BETTER than both Skyline and Goldstar.  Which isn't saying much, really, since I am not a fan of either. But I could have had seconds on the stuff last night if I wasn't too busy eating the purple velcet cake dessert.

I should rename this post "More thoughts about buildings and food. Or rather, just food."

What are cosmic rays? Why bother?

I have always thought that the name "cosmic rays" is a little unfortunate. It is somewhat reminiscent of little green men and ray guns.   But cosmic rays could not be further from alien life forms.  They are simply a stew of atomic nuclei and electrons, accelerated up to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.  They are responsible for the majority of the background radiation we Earthlings experience.  If you have heard that airline pilots experience more radiation than groundlings, it's true - cosmic rays from space are the reason. The atmosphere absorbs them, so there are more at the top of the atmosphere than the bottom.  Some scientists study the ones that make it all the way through the atmosphere--I even used to work on an experiment that looked at particles created by cosmic rays that could penetrate all the way through a mountain!-- but my current experiment is focused on detection of the electron component above the atmosphere.

Tycho's supernova remnant

Where do they come from and how do they get here?  The space between the stars is not really empty (although it is a far better vacuum than we humans can create on Earth in the laboratory).  It has a gas of atoms floating in it.  Sometimes those atoms are ionized, meaning that just one or two electrons have been removed from the atom.  This provides a "handle" for electric fields and magnetic fields to use to move the atom around. When a violent event such as a supernova shock passes through the gas, it strips off any remaining electrons, and accelerates the bare nucleus and free electrons to very high speeds, within a wee fraction of the speed of light.

Now begins a long and arduous journey from the source, where the cosmic rays (for these nuclei and electrons are now promoted to full-fledged cosmic rays) originate, to Earth, where we can detect them.  And herein lies one of my favorite aspects of cosmic rays: I will never go to other parts of our galaxy, but I can study other parts of our galaxy as it comes to us. Astronomers look at ethereal photons with their telescopes; I look at small pieces of extrasolar matter with mine.  The galaxy comes to me!

The journey is fraught with danger.  The path they take is determined by the weak magnetic fields present throughout the galaxy, which guide the cosmic rays hither and yon in a random walk through the galaxy. During their galactic stroll, the cosmic rays can run into unaccelerated atoms (the atomic gas between the stars) and smash into pieces.  They can also slowly lose energy by scattering off those same atoms, and even the magnetic fields.  If they lose too much energy, they never make it to Earth.

Although they are invisible to the naked eye (these aren't meteorites!) we have instruments that can "see" them. Since we want to look at the them before they hit the atmosphere, we need to get our instrument up above the atmosphere. Ideally that means a space vehicle like a satellite, but a satellite-based payload requires over a decade of planning and waiting in the queue for a slot. A great alternative is an extremely large high altitude helium-filled balloon. These can go into "near space" (99.5% of the way there) for a lot less expense, and with a much shorter queue. NASA's Long Duration Ballooning (LDB) program provides these technological marvels, and you can basically get a slot any time. Plus, balloons are way cool.

About McMurdo

I have been here before, so I feel a bit jaded about the whole Antarctica thing.  It is pretty cool, though.

A few wrote asking to learn more about the facilities. I wrote a post describing some background on McMurdo in my first blog. Here's the link (don't be fooled by the dark lettering that I can't seem to change the color of - there's a link there in that seemingly blank space).  In it I describe my fist impressions and some of the facilities, with pictures.  Nothing much has changed, except the food is better, and there are more hiking trails available.  You can also follow the McMurdo Station webcam link in the right hand column to see a live picture.  The blue building in the center is the dining hall.  I'm in the dorms that are light brown with dark roofs slightly to the right of the blue building in the picture.

I went to the Outdoor Recreation training after dinner tonight.  It is required to take the long hikes out to Castle Rock and the Cape Armitage loop, which goes across the sea ice.  The latter trail is the only trail I have not been on, so I am looking forward to taking it.

It was a really tough day today, and it is good to be back relaxing in the dorm room.  I am grateful for the enforced end of day because of the shuttle schedule, otherwise my colleagues would want to stay out at LDB 24/7.  They just must be built of sterner stuff.  Tonight a band of some sort is playing in one of the bars (there are three bars here), so I'll check them out and call it an early night.

Work, work, work

We've been working our tails off day in, day out, to get the instrument back up to snuff. We had to pull a channel yesterday to replace a bit of electronics. That was relatively easy compared to the task I have been assigned today: I am working on placing pre-made panels on the instrument sides. While the panels are very pretty, they are totally the wrong size. I have been creatively using a drill as a router, in addition to employing other machinist anathemas.  In the six panels mounted so far, of 32 pre-drilled holes only 12 were in the right places. 

So I have nothing to report on the playing scene. So far, every day, I have gotten up at 6AM, showered & dressed, eaten breakfast, and caught a shuttle by 7:30.  After the ~45 minute long ride to the LDB site (7 miles out, no way to ski directly there, no vans available for us to have for our small group), we work until noon, eat a very good lunch on site (awesome flourless chocolate tort today) and then work all afternoon until we catch a 5:30 shuttle back into town. The cafeteria is open only until 7:30pm, so we dump our stuff in our rooms and race to dinner, then have about three hours before we collapse, exhausted, into bed.  Then it begins again.  Some are chafing under the limited schedule. There are no other rides out or in from the LDB site during the day except the cook's shuttle back into town at 3:30 pm, but we are too busy to go into town early.

Mt Erebus behind stuff sitting around the LDB site, including the stairs to nowhere

We did do some training yesterday morning, so we stayed in town until about 9AM. Wee.  I don't even remember what the training was for.

Despite my haggard outlook, I still admire the view from from the hanger now and then and marvel at being in Antarctica. 

So my synopsis of my time here to date follows:

All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy.


I'm ready for a nice hike.

Don't be shy

I can't tell if you are reading this or not. Let me know by posting a comment!  If you don't have a google account, don't worry - post anonymously and sign your name. 

What questions do you have? What pictures do you want to see?  What stuff from the store do you want?  (They have tshirts, fleece vests, mugs, pins, posters... you name the tourist item, they probably have it).

Day 3: Starting to work, starting to play

CREST getting delivered to our hanger.

This is our third full day at McMurdo. We arrived in time for a late supper last Wednesday, so I won't count that day. On Thursday we unpacked our shipping containers and set up the lab. Yesterday we took delivery of the instrument, and removed its shipping container from around it. That meant removing lots of bolts.  Today we got the instrument talking to our ground computer, and took stock of what repairs might be needed.  We identified two veto photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) that weren't giving a signal, and several crystal PMTs that weren't working either. In addition, we verified that one STAC (group of 16 crystal PMTs sharing a piece of electronics hardware) that was not working just before shipping it down was still not working. That's our starting place for our repair work.

BTW- There is a strange issue with blog post dates. My computer is on Eastern time and that's the post time that is used. But I am 18 hours IN YOUR FUTURE! So while this blog may post as being sent in on Friday, for me it is Saturday afternoon.  If you do something wrong I will will know about it before you even think of doing it. So don't.

CREST in the hanger, awaiting our attention

My days consist of getting up at 6am, having breakfast, then catching a shuttle to the LDB site (which takes ~45 minutes).  I stay until 5:30pm, when another shuttle takes me back to McMurdo proper, where we have dinner (over at 7:30) and decide what to do with our evening. Lunch is in a special galley at the LDB site, and I must say that I am eating like a king. We had beef Wellington today, with fresh cheeses (blue, goat, smoked cheddar, among others), fruit, salad, fresh-baked bread.... Yum!

Meanwhile, in the short evenings after dinner we have just begun to explore. For now we plan to work every day (including tomorrow, Sunday, the traditional day off at McMurdo) until we have a good handle on the extent of our needed repairs.  Last night I (re)visited the coffee bar, where I watched the last bottle of red wine on the station get drunk (not by me!).

The tube to under the Ice

Inside the tube under the Ice.

There is something new this year that I have not done before. There is a metal tube with windows on the bottom that gets lowered into a hole in the ice.  You can climb down the tube (one person at a time!) and view the underwater world under the ice. There were lots of wee sea urchin larvae swimming about, and the sunlight filtering through the ice was eery. Nearby on the top of the ice there was a Weddell seal sunbathing.  These are monstrous beasties, and make me think of a giant sea slug. While we watched, it began shuffling about, eventually disappearing into a small hole in the ice.   I also gave my colleagues a small tour of the station.   I'll give you one later, so stay tuned!

Fat Weddell seal

Arrival!

I thought I would share this picture I took of myself right after getting off the plane, which you can see in the background.

I am working on a few posts to describe the science we are  exploring and how the CREST instrument works.  Until later!

Getting around town

(This post is culled from my other blog for the third and fourth grade classes at St. Joseph Elementary.)

Every day I go for a 30-45 minute ride (only ~ 7 miles) from McMurdo Station out the the Long Duration Ballooning site (LDB).  I spend so much time on various forms of transportation that I thought you might like to know about them.  Certainly getting around on snow and ice takes a special kind of machine, so there are some real interesting ways to get around town here. Some of the vehicles are from the original establishment of the base in the 50’s. They built them to last then. Here are pictures and descriptions.

Derelict Junction

All of these are picked up at Derelict Junction, a rather nondescript mudhole/bus stop by the dorms.

A Delta

The Delta’s are odd all wheel drive vehicles that are kind of like articulated buses. Passengers ride in the box and bounce around. The wheels are big to avoid getting stuck in mud and snow.  The box is very cramped. The windows are small and usually fog up so badly or are so dirty that you can not see out, and you can get seasick in there.  There are sick bags in the box for such occasions. If you're lucky you can ride in the front seat, and the view is much better. You can see ice pressure ridges, where the Ross Ice Shelf is pushing up against Ross Island. The shelf is fed by a glacier which dumps a tremendous amount of ice in it, and it has to go to sea, but our little island is in the way.

Ice pressure ridges near the Transition.

Ivan the Terrabus

Ivan the Terrabus –  I love the name.  Ivan is more comfortable but slower.  You can see out the windows.  The view is quite spectacular.

Van

Vans– these get used when the temperatures are colder and the ground is frozen.  Notice how large the tires are.

Snowmobiles– no doubt you have seen these before.

Tractor pulling a helium tank

Yours truly on snowmobile

Tractors galore– earthmovers, forklifts etc all use treads, not tires, since tires would get mired in the muck. Note the trailer in the picture also has treads. They work well on ice and raise a lot of dust in town.

4 wheeler

4 wheelers – the LDB crew could not live without theirs during my last visit. They have little sleds they haul stuff behind.

Planes and helicopters – The C130’s and LC130’s (in air) haul passengers and cargo (the L means it has skis AND wheels). The are operated by both the “Kiwi” (New Zealand) Air Force and the New York wing of the US Air National Guard. I came in on a C17 this time, and a C130 the first time. The C17 Globemasters are operated by the US.  There are also planes called Twin Otters (on ice in photo below), which go to field camps deep in Antarctica because they can take off and stop on a dime, and helicopters, for nearby drops.  They are piloted by Canadians.

C130 in the air; Twin Otter on the ground in front of a tractor.

Icebreakers and research vessels: I toured both the research vessel (Nathaniel B Palmer) and the icebreaker (Swedish icebreaker Oden) in January 2008.  These are both highly specialized big boats. You should be able to find a lot of information about them on the web.

Icebreaker Oden

Nathaniel B Palmer

McMurdo at last

I made it!  I am writing from the hanger at the LDB (Long Duration Ballooning) site, about a 30 minute ride from McMurdo.  While I am still not completely checked out to use the internet from McMurdo proper, I can access it from the LDB site because I am behind their firewall.  We made great progress unpacking today.  There were two big sea crates awaiting us upon arrival. We made quick work of them and are now waiting for the instrument itself to arrive.  My guitar made it just fine, and I have checked it out a bit already after tuning it.

I am finding it much colder at this time of the season compared to the December and January I spent here before. Temperatures are single digits (Fahrenheit).  Long johns etc are barely keeping me warm if I stand around outside.  Fortunately, I only have to wait for a bus and walk to meals outside. The rest of my life is inside the hanger, galley, or dorm.

The food is excellent this year. It doesn't take much of a crystal ball to see a pudgier version of myself returning in the future.  Getting larger is a small price to pay.  This place really is magical. I can see Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano, smoking in the near distance. The Antarctic mountain chain is glowing a beautiful bright white right now. There is already 24 hours of daylight here, although in the late evening the sun dips enough to turn the mountains a rosy color.  The picture in the title at the top of this blog is a panorama of what I can see from McMurdo.

Christchurch: R.I.P.

As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel room in Christchurch NZ waiting to find out whether we leave for Antarctica (the "Ice") this morning or night. This is the third morning spent waiting like this. Each day I get up at about 4 AM, report to the front desk for a shuttle to the airport, and so far, while waiting, get a phone call from Raytheon (the government contractor operating McMurdo) that we aren't going today.  The weather in McMurdo has been very windy lately, so there are white-out conditions, which make landing a plane dangerous.  (See the McMurdo link to the right for the station webcam.)

Allergy-inducing beauty

So we wait in Christchurch. You are probably thinking "Geez, tough luck! Springtime in New Zealand, with pine forests to hike in, tons of flowers in bloom, and the wonderful city of Christchurch to explore!" Well, you are partially justified in your facetiousness.  I spent my first day walking around the botanical gardens, and my second hiking out of town. (I love the flowers, but so do my allergies.)  Yesterday I joined my colleagues for a short sailing trip in a bay near the town of Lyttleton. (See http://www.jacktarsailing.co.nz)  But Christchurch itself is merely a shadow of its former self.

Jolly Jack Tar Sailing

There have three major earthquakes and countless minor tremblers here over the past year. It started a year ago September.  That was bad, with many buildings damaged, but it was only practice for what happened February 22: a shallow earthquake measuring around 6 on the Richter scale that devastated the city.  Almost 200 people were killed. The once thriving downtown is now referred to as the "Red Zone" and is completely cordoned off.  Every tall building you see is destined to become landfill out in Lyttleton as the dock there is increased in size.  The whole city center was destroyed. The damage here would be major news were it not overshadowed by the much worse quake and tsunami that hit Japan a week later.  To add insult to injury, yet another earthquake hit in June, toppling many already-damaged buildings and damaging even more. As one resident put it, "There's no reason to go downtown anymore, except that there is finally plenty of parking."

All these tall buildings must come down.

So Christchurch as I knew it is gone.  But along the lines of "the king is dead, long live the king," something is emerging from the rubble.  After clearing out a section of the Red Zone, the locals installed a tasteful-looking shopping area created from shipping containers.  It is more a testament to the unquenchable Kiwi spirit than a viable shopping district. But it is a start at restoring something that approaches normal.  Meanwhile, residents are becoming non-residents at an alarming rate. The city's population is shrinking as the suddenly unemployed seek jobs elsewhere in New Zealand and Australia.

Christchurch downtown.

Christchurch as landfill.

Meanwhile, hotel rooms are at such a premium that I am paying high prices and am forced to have a roommate.  Oh well. Practice for McMurdo, I guess, where a roommate is required.

It's not quite 6AM now, so I won't learn whether we fly down today or not for another couple hours.

Getting there

Getting to McMurdo Station in Antarctica is non-trivial. First of all, not just anyone can go. You must have a reason. Mine is as a scientist to prepare the CREST instrument for a flight. McMurdo Station (on the Ross Ice Shelf, at 78 degrees south latitude) started as a US Navy base. After the Antarctic Treaty was signed by all nations interested in claiming territory Antarctica, military operations were not allowed there, and all territorial claims were dropped. The base is for science now.

There are certainly other parts of Antarctica you can visit. They are primarily on the peninsula.  It costs a bundle! Most tours go by ship from the southern tip of South America. It takes two or three days just to get from there to the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula.

So how do I get there?  First, I go to Christchurch, New Zealand (just about due north of the Ross Ice Shelf). From there, after a couple days, I catch a military transport plane  to McMurdo. Christchurch is a traditional jumping off point for Antarctic travelers. Scott and Amundsen started there on their race to the South Pole in the early part of the last century.

From Cincinnati, it took me 28 hours to reach Christchurch. The flight to McMurdo is 5 (C130 turboprop) or 8 (C17 jet) hours long. I am scheduled for a C17 flight.

All of this is paid for by NASA (who sponsors the research project) and the National Science Foundation (NSF, who oversees McMurdo Station). So really, this is your tax dollars at work.