 | |
| Vol. 18, No. 7 | Oct. 15, 1998 |
| |
| Vol. 18, No. 7 | Oct. 15, 1998 |
It's a pleasant place," Leonard M. Shulman said of the South Pole scientific village he visits every year, "if you can get past the physical discomfort."
Summertime in Antarctica-from about November until January- means the sun never sets. The temperature hovers around -22 degrees Fahrenheit, sometimes soaring as high as -10 degrees F, said Shulman of the Bartol Research Institute at UD, who will depart in January for his 10th trip to the South Pole.
One of roughly half a dozen Bartol employees who frequent Antarctica's many research facilities, Shulman said that living quarters, located a few hundred yards from the geodesic dome of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, have improved since his first, two-week stay in 1985. But the camp's tent-like accommodations remain rugged, he said.
"You live in what's euphemistically called summer camp-wooden frame buildings with insulated cloth sides," Shulman said. "In the earlier years, sometimes the heater would fail at night, and then you would hear people's soda bottles popping under their beds as they froze. It was a lot less comfortable than it is today." The installation of centralized heating in the living quarters has dramatically improved conditions for Shulman and other visitors.
Still, even the simplest tasks can prove challenging in the Antarctic. Walking 50 yards to the bathroom facilities, for example, requires donning boots, a parka and sunglasses in the middle of the night, Shulman noted.
And, with the sun shining continuously, he said, "You forget when to stop working. You just keep working and working because it always looks like the afternoon."
But Shulman said he enjoys his annual trips to the South Pole, largely because of the camaraderie among the 160 or so people who live and work at the camp during summer months. "It's a family atmosphere, very friendly," he said, "and we usually have lots of good food."
Shulman visits Antarctica to maintain the scientific instruments he either built or assembled for Bartol faculty members including John W. Bieber and Paul Evenson, who study cosmic rays-the fast-moving particles hurled toward Earth by solar disturbances, dying stars or other space events. Specifically, he makes sure Bartol's neutron monitors are working properly. An electronics engineer, Shulman designed and supervised the construction of much of the equipment used in Bartol's observatories.
The monitors let Bartol researchers count neutron particles, one component of the cosmic rays that regularly shower the Earth's surface. Some monitors are located near the South Pole camp, Shulman said, while other instruments must be serviced aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker vessels, the Polar Sea and the Polar Star, and at the McMurdo Base, the small town along the continent's coastline.
Why visit such a foreboding continent to count neutron particles?
In interstellar space, Shulman explained, cosmic rays "are thought to be constant." But ray showers vary on Earth because they're influenced by solar events. Consequently, Shulman said, "When we study the neutrons in cosmic rays, we're actually studying the results of solar processes and modulations in the solar 'wind' or magnetic field around the Earth."
Solar wind has been known to zap electrical power grids on Earth. It also can damage satellite communications systems, wreaking havoc for cellular telephone users, and it may even pose a health hazard for astronauts, said Evenson, who also has been to Antarctica. Because cosmic rays travel nearly as fast as light, they reach Earth faster than the solar wind and, therefore, may someday help researchers predict solar-wind related mischief.
The Antarctic facilities maintained by Shulman are part of a project known as Spaceship Earth, established by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to foretell problems associated with bad space weather. Spaceship Earth monitoring stations have been set up in Antarctica and eight other locations worldwide, including Newark.
Researchers Glenn Spiczak and Tim Miller also visit Antarctica regularly in support of research projects directed by faculty members Thomas Gaisser and Todor Stanev of Bartol. To reach Antarctica, Bartol employees typically fly first to California, then to Christchurch, New Zealand. After donning heavy, cold-weather gear, they eventually board a C-130 cargo plane for a nine-hour flight to the McMurdo base. Another three-hour flight takes them to the South Pole research area.
Bartol's presence in Antarctica has been strong for decades, said Bartol President Norman F. Ness. Facilities at the South Pole include the Pomerantz Observatory-named in honor of Martin A. Pomerantz, who served as director of the Bartol Research Institute from 1959 until 1987 and currently holds an emeritus position. A highland plain in Antarctica-the Pomerantz Tableland-also recognizes his pioneering use of the South Pole as an astrophysics and astronomy laboratory.
In addition to Shulman's neutron monitors, Bartol researchers make use of the South Pole Air Shower Experiment (SPASE), an array of cosmic particle detectors maintained by Bartol and the University of Leeds of Great Britain. Yet another facility, AMANDA (the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array), jointly operated by Bartol and various other institutions, measures flashes of light that occur when high-energy neutrinos from space interact with ice crystals beneath the Earth's surface.
"Most people think of space as being empty, but space actually has quite a bit of stuff in it," Shulman said. "The solar wind is plasma that blows at a speed of about a million miles an hour. When activities on the sun affect that wind, we can see that with the neutron monitors."
-Ginger Pinholster
Photo by Jack Buxbaum
