The whole collection of blogs is incredible. I am utterly stunned by and in awe of the facilities that have been built down there.
Given the excruciatingly harsh conditions of the environment, I cannot imagine what the construction process must have been like. Looking at a lot of the pictures conjures a feeling for me like it all must have been built by some advanced alien civilization and left behind for us to occupy. The construction crews who created all that stuff should be celebrated as heroes as far as I’m concerned. Very impressive.
What surprised me is how ordinary much of the construction is - lots of it looks similar to things I’ve seen in the Midwest. The collection of doors struck me the most - some of those doors were just normal doors, others looked like a walk in freezer.
Part of that may be a complex construction may work better, but a simple one can be repaired on site by those who are there.
Most of the main station (exterior) doors are walk-in style. The same goes for most of the scientific outbuildings. A lot of the smaller outbuildings, like the climbing gym, have relatively "normal" doors.
There is a lot of wood construction, because it insulates well, it's light (extremely important for cheap construction), there's no moisture to speak of, and it's easily repaired. A lot of the walls are wood with a ton of insulation and metal cladding [0]. The windows are beefy, though weirdly they were designed in with metal frames which I imagine leak a lot of heat. Most of the interior construction feels somewhere between a corporate and a university space. It was built by government and defense contractors, so there is also a bit of a barracks feeling about it too.
McMurdo has them, but the general store accepts cards. I don't think the bars accept cards and tipping for volunteer services (e.g. barristas) is quite common. Pole does not (it's cash only). And then there's Palmer which is card only. Most contractors can "widthdraw" money out of their paychecks to get a periodic stipend while they're down there, otherwise you have to take out a big wad in McM to last the summer/winter (e.g. scientists usually can't because we're paid by universities, not USAP).
I can't say I'm shocked. Effectively cities probably tend to function like cities in a lot of places. I assume something like an aircraft carrier might be different but I wouldn't even bet against ATMs there.
Great set of posts! This one brought to mind: I think there's an unexplored niche of vampire movies where our protagonist lives 6 months in each hemisphere per year to minimize downtime in a coffin. With careful planning and a private jet, you can probably reduce sun time to a few hours per year. This would be an interesting calculation to do.
Bonus Sunday thought: It's always said that ants are found on all continents except Antarctica, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant (surely there must be some ants in the buildings). I've always thought it would be interesting to try to introduce them there, sort of like a modern-day Herostratos.
Modern humans are much better at successful bio-insulation. New Zealand's first colonists couldn't help but bring rats, there were rats everywhere there were humans, they snuck about large boats, the colonists were humans, they brought rats and, (with some small but growing exceptions) there are still rats everywhere humans live on New Zealand today.
However, by the time Amundsen Scott was built in 1956 we'd got much more conscious of why this is a bad idea and of how to prevent it. So the only reason there would be ants at Amundsen Scott would be if we intentionally wanted ants there, and I can't think of any reason why we would. If they "escaped" they can't live on Antarctica, the penguins make it look easy but it's really hard to live there, an ant colony would need human intervention to basically feed and protect the ants.
Your question made me wonder why the cycle would be a year long. I realized that's because when standing at 90 degrees north or south you're just rotating on the spot. There's only the yearly day/night cycle because of the 23.5 degree tilt of the earth's axis, and this doesn't change relative to the plane of the orbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9MU4TouzII&t=61
This also explains why across 24 hours on the video in the blog the sun just "revolves" at the same height across the sky. In reality it's setting but it's imperceptible.
At less than 90 degrees (anyone know the longitude?), the earth's rotation comes back into effect and the sun does go "behind the earth", i.e. it sets, daily, for a few months.
> At less than 90 degrees (anyone know the longitude?), the earth's rotation comes back into effect and the sun does go "behind the earth", i.e. it sets, daily, for a few months.
I was wondering too. It looks like it's at about 84 degrees that there is a normal day night cycle (for some definition of normal, there is only a few minutes of daylight at the winter solstice).
Yeah, that makes sense. It's actually not that surprising when you think about it. I'm not sure how vampires deal with Twilight. There's a long twilight in those regions.
When I went to Sweden for a semester, I knew the “days would be short” but what I didn’t understand was _how_ they would be short.
I imagined the sun “flying across the sky” quickly to make it a short day.
In fact, the sun barely peeks up over the horizon, glimmers with some disorienting side-light for a few hours before settling back below the horizon. This created an effect which was like a literal twilight zone and was totally surreal.
I visited Reykjavik during the winter solstice, and stayed there for a bit over a week. I had the same misapprehension as you. At noon, the sun was just barely over the horizon and it felt like days never got much brighter than twilight. It was very strange.
Even northern Germany, in Gottingen, was jarring to this American. You carefully planned your day around daylight, and made sure to go outside at lunchtime.
> After the sun reaches its peak, it begins to set. It’s still rotating in perfect circles around the sky; they’re just getting lower and lower each day.
It would be very cool to have an extremely long exposure/solargraph of this!
One of my winter experiments that never got off the ground was to make a lunargraph. I don't think there are many places you could "easily" do that. I did also try making a solargraph as a test, with a 3D printed enclosure, but I think the extreme cold does funny stuff to the reciprocity of the paper and it was a pain to wipe off the frost every day.
To a lesser extent, a friend of mine moved to Fairbanks, Alaska with her husband where they’d get near-full days of sun in the summer and dark in the winter.
They made it about five years (they were there on a med school debt reduction program to work in smaller communities) and then noped the hell out as fast as they could. They are both pretty resilient people but really struggled with the months of these daylight patterns. Even after “getting used to it” they felt the oppression of the dark seasons particularity hard.
I’d be curious to know what the science is around making this more bearable for long term stays in that type of condition. I’m laughing at the photos of tropical beaches in the cafeteria photos from the article but I’m guessing those honestly probably do offer a slight marginal boost!
From what I’ve read regulating the light is extremely important - which necessitates going far indoors at set times where you can have non-blue light to simulate sunset. Endless day can wear on you like endless night, but the night can fought with proper lighting.
This. I lived way up north a few years ago - near 70N - and the winters were a breeze. What wore me down was the summers - you could work into the evening and still have plenty daylight left to socialise outdoors after work.
If you weren't careful, though, suddenly you'd notice that the pesky sun was higher in the sky than it had been a couple of hours ago, and you knew you were in for a hard day.
The counter-argument I've heard from someone who lived there is that--relative to northern continental US--you basically have the same amount of non-work light in the winters (i.e. zero). But you have as much light as you could ever want (and maybe more) between the equinoxes.
Fun fact, I saw the temperatures they're getting and I just looked this up to be sure.
The freezing point of Carbon Dioxide at atmospheric pressures is -78.5C, which it reaches sometimes at the south pole.
So apparently carbon dixodie can freeze out of the atmosphere (deposition) and turn to solid carbon dioxide ice in mid-winter. Though I believe because the partial pressure will be too low, you'd need to concentrate the CO2 first.
It has been considered to sequester CO2 at Antarctica by just cooling the air a bit more (e.g. with a few gigawatt of wind farms), and keeping the solid CO2 in a "CO2 landfill".
The station is at 10,657 feet (it's on top of a mountain) and the air pressure is 679.1 mb. Though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_ice#/media/File:Comparison... is a log chart for y and doesn't have many minor ticks for X ... I want to say it's closer to -83 °C. It's significant enough that you'd notice (if you were to go outside).
the timelapse of the sun just traveling in a circle is probably one of the most bizarre things i've seen of a real natural phenomenon. it's one of those things of just so outside my normal experience that i had never actually thought about it, but seeing it like this definitely shows how weird things are at the poles.
imagine how livable (or not) a planet would be if the planet's axis were even more extreme
> imagine how livable (or not) a planet would be if the planet's axis were even more extreme
For a SF take on the effects of living on a planet with very extreme days (and years) take a look at the Helliconia series by Brian Aldiss [0]. Helliconia is a planet in a double-star system whose 'year' lasts for about 2500 Earth-years, and the seasons last for centuries. When the primary star dips below a mountain range, you might not see it again for 100s of years. Civilisation rises and falls over these timescales, with winter inevitably causing a reset as farming and other activities crash.
Wasn’t there an Asimov story with a similar twist? The scientists discovered that there was a rare point where all three stars would set and drive everyone mad.
exactly. if the planets in the habitable zone had that kind of orientation, where would the livable zones be located? or a planet that was tidally locked to the sun like the moon is to the earth? a circadian rhythm would seem to be non-existent. equatorial life seems like it would be the optimal locations
It’s been stated by others but I’m going to repeat it once more, one of the best blogs out there!!! The way it’s written, the whole style of it, the photos, the subject… the mix of all these things leaves you wanting more. For sure I’d pay if it was subscription based and was more frequent :-)
It is prolonged, if it appears. In most places where you can view it (typically sunset over oceans?) it lasts seconds. The flash still relies on the air conditions being amenable above where the sunset is. It's not uncommon for the horizons to be hazy because of blowing snow in your line of sight, or for there to be clouds, etc. But the Sun can be at the right elevation below the horizon for minutes to hours.
Byrd claimed it lasted over 35 minutes during his expedition in 1929.
Me too. I SAW the green flash on the beach at Naples, FL. Before, it had been just the title of a very dog-eared book in the UC Berkeley Physics library, that almost everyone in the department had thumbed through at some point.
I believe there is an overnight camping experience in Antarctica of you come on one of the tourist cruise ships. I always thought this was funny because the sun never sets so I imagine you're just sitting in a fully lit tent until someone comes to tell you it's morning and time to go back aboard the ship.
If you're curious what spending the night on Antarctica might look like, this video shows one experience (although it's from a part of the year with daylight & darkness).
Welcome to summer camping ie in norway, finland or similar. Sun is just barely above horizon all day, and just moves a bit lower during 'night'. You can get used to it, sort of.
The issue is not cold, but whether you can get a highly competitive position at the South Pole Station. In order to see the sun set, you have to be part of the skeleton crew which maintains the station during the winter-over. There are no flights going in and out during the winter. If you see the sun set over the South Pole... you'll also be stuck seeing the sun rise as well. In the months between you'll be working in perpetual night.
There is probably still a limit, because you need to breath fresh air.
A human breathes at about 6 liter/minute. In terms of mass and converting to seconds, that's 0.1293 gram/second.
Heat capacity of air is 0.7 Joules per gram per kelvin. So the power needed to heat up incoming air 1 degree kelvin is 0.1293*0.7=0.09051 Watt.
Times a hundred (-60C to body temperature), that's 9 watt. Since the human body produces about 100 watt of heat in total, that's maybe still feasible. But having that percentage of your body heat being drawn out through your airways and lungs is getting dangerous.
And it gets colder on Antarctica. And exertion will speed up breathing.
Researchers on Antarctica apparently deal with by breathing through snorkels that pass through their jacket, so that the rest of the body can help to heat up the air:
I'd stress that this is at the colder locations on the continent, not the South Pole. The bigger challenge is actually the altitude. Physiological altitude can (occasionally) hit 14k ft at the Pole and those days are rough.
Temperature bottoms out around -100 F/-72 C and if you're outside, you're breathing through a gaiter/balaclava). That's sufficient to warm it up. I don't recall there ever being a situation (even that cold) when breathing was challenging due to the temperature alone.
Weird fact: you can't whistle when it gets that cold. I don't know if it's something to do with the immediate dense condensation or the temperature. It's not the pressure or the humidity, because indoors is OK.
I brought one of those balaclavas where you breathe though a metal heat exchanger the first time I went to Antarctica (living up high on Erebus). Totally unnecessary and not sure it did anything other than slightly impede my breathing.
This is referring to the fact that when you go up in the atmosphere over high latitudes (e.g. poles), air pressure drops faster than over the equator. So when polar people talk about "physiological altitude" they usually mean what altitude at the equator has the same air pressure as the altitude you're at down south. It will be a few thousand feet higher. Also, barometric pressure changes with weather can increase the "equivalent altitude," which is why the above commenter is saying it can "sometimes" reach 14 thousand feet. Storm fronts are generally low pressure.
To add on to what foobarbecue said, this I believe is because the earth is spinning, so just like the Earth is not a sphere (it's an oblate spheroid), the atmosphere is also "dragged" toward the equator than the poles. Sea level pressures at the equators are higher than sea level pressure at the poles because of this.
I'm not entirely sure, is this practically true? I would expect there to be an upper limit to energy we can concentrate in a given volume even when cosmic scales are involved.
I believe there is a technical physical limit but it’s insanely high (which is why “temperature in the center of the sun/nuclear blast” doesn’t really work). There’s no theoretical limit, no absolute hot to go with absolute zero.
Well, heat is caused by particles moving around, and they can only go the speed of light max, so there is a limit. It's still extremely hot though, anything physical would be blown apart by the surrounding near light speed particles in an imperceptibly short time.
Although temperature can be analogised to particles moving around I believe that at the extremes the fact that's just an analogy causes problems which would be relevant here.
What do you mean by "analogised"? That's literally what's happening, at least in a classical sense, right? Brownian noise, etc? I suppose it's not quite that on a quantum level though, it's closer to nuclear physics.
Incredible shots. As beautiful as they are, these photos and videos show how utterly inhospitable large parts of the earth is. Humans can live comfortably on only a tiny fraction of earth.
We have the technology to live quite comfortably at the south pole, the main question is money and budget, and dollars per kg of the fuel and food and other consumable supplies to keep it running. The south pole station having nearly zero local resources except for fresh water is not a bad analog for mars logistics.
If comfortably includes "with air conditioning in the summer and more than just a fireplace in the winter", that's cheating. Either humans can live comfortably in Antarctica, or we can only live comfortably in the vicinity of the equator.
Humans have lived "comfortably" long before air conditioning was available in many of the areas it now is. Either through creating dwellings that keep away heat and the simple act of not wearing clothing.
And fire is the oldest technology of human kind and has been in use since the dawn of human history.
At night, in the dead of winter, it gets within 60C of the record for superconductivity. Outside. Mars is warmer, in general, but there is effectively a vacuum, as far as breathing is concerned.
Antarctica... icy graveyard of hubris, not hostile to humanity, but worse... utterly indifferent, a blank wall at the edge of the universe, defying us to find meaning in it.
This was taken by Robert Schwarz who's one of the more prolific winterovers and also spent a lot of his time down there perfecting his photography. A common project for folks down there is building camera boxes. Quite often we use things like old insulated medical crates (think scrap polystyrene) with some heating device inside. 5 days is doable - people often put cameras out for days to do timelapses - but the impressive thing here is the tracking. It's also taken in summer when it's not that cold.
The first problem is power. I have no idea where he got a hookup from that spot - I'd guess running a cable from BICEP (the closest dish with the mast on the roof). Then there's heating for the camera, which you can solve easily enough if you have power, but the real challenge is keeping the tracker moving. I guess if you somehow insulated the entire gear assembly you could do it.
Given the excruciatingly harsh conditions of the environment, I cannot imagine what the construction process must have been like. Looking at a lot of the pictures conjures a feeling for me like it all must have been built by some advanced alien civilization and left behind for us to occupy. The construction crews who created all that stuff should be celebrated as heroes as far as I’m concerned. Very impressive.