There isn’t much to hear in the middle of Antarctica. As CU Boulder’s Brian Hynek puts it, “There’s just wind and not wind.”
There isn’t much to hear in the middle of Antarctica. As CU Boulder’s Brian Hynek puts it, “There’s just wind and not wind.”
But on some nights, the scientist, who traveled to the continent this winter, also listened to the glacial ice moving below his campsite in Davis-Ward. This moraine valley is tucked into the Transantarctic Mountains, a several-hour flight south from McMurdo Station, the most common stopping point for scientists visiting the forbidding continent.
“You’re laying right on top of the ice, basically just on your Therm-a-Rest, and you could hear it cracking down below—a really eerie cracking as the ice moves away from you,” said Hynek, an associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences.
Hynek, who studies the possibility of life on other planets, however, didn’t make the long journey to one of the loneliest places on Earth to explore the South Pole. He was hunting for pieces of alien worlds.
Read more at University of Colorado at Boulder
Image: Top: ANSMET researchers photograph an asteroid on the ice. (Credit: John McBrine)
