[ad_1]
In early January, the same month that the world celebrated the bicentennial of the discovery of Antarctica, snowmobile scientists were sliding on their diamond ice, dragging a platform of metal detectors in their wake. The researchers hoped to discover a hypothetical cache of iron-rich meteorites, the remains of ancient asteroids and potential planets, under frozen debris.
But the unexpected roughness of the ice made the platform shake to pieces. Components were being cut, and the electronic circuits quickly became unstable, with multiple points of failure. On the 18th on the Antarctic Outer Recovery Ice Fields, the device collapsed. All backup metal detectors had been used in previous repairs. No more repair work could resuscitate the unit.
“It was death by vibration, but also death by a thousand cuts,” he said. Wouter van Verre, an electrical engineer from the University of Manchester in England who helped build the system.
This is not an isolated story. The history of scientific exploration of Antarctica is riddled with stories of grief, most often loss of life for the continent’s earliest explorers. And while major technological advances and vastly improved safety regulations mean that the risk to Antarctic adventurers has been greatly reduced, the malfunction of the equipment that freezes scientific discovery persists there, he said. Daniella McCahey, Antarctic historian at the University of Idaho.
When a vital piece of kit fails, research can often only proceed with MacGyveresque engineering solutions. Or the projects end, leaving the prospects for further discovery uncertain.
But even much less complex technology can be vulnerable to the cruelty of Antarctica: during the years 1957-1958 The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, the explorers’ wristwatches, vital to indicating the time in a place with clearly strange hours of light and darkness, simply did not work.
“It is noticeably easier to keep the human machine running than physical machines,” he said. James Lloyd, an astronomer at Cornell University who spent two years at the Amundsen-Scott research station at the South Pole in the mid-1990s.
Preparation only takes you so far. You can test your technology as many times as you like in the lab or in wilderness areas similar to Antarctica. Those iron meteorite hunters did both, and even carried out a successful test on a strip of Antarctica. But until you try it on your eventual research site, “you don’t know how it’s going to work,” said Dr. McCahey.
“I promise you, there are no projects in Antarctica where the equipment works perfectly,” he said. Matthew Siegfried, glaciologist at the Colorado School of Mines.
There are no heavy supply stops equipped with abundant equipment on the icy end of the world, so expeditions bring as many spare parts as they can fly and hope for the best. “It is only a very short step of what can give resources to people in space,” he said. Liam Marsh, an electrical engineer from the University of Manchester who helped build the meteorite detection system.
Dr. Siegfried recalled once that he had driven his snowmobile 45 miles from the base to a remote GPS station, bringing cans of fuel. When he stopped to refuel, he noticed that the hand pump tubing supplying gas to the snowmobile had vanished, forcing him to transfigure other parts of his kit into a rather messy fuel transfer system , but ultimately effective.
This type of ad hoc repair work is seldom pleasant, van Verre said. You quickly miss the luxury of tables and chairs. Gloves are removed when playing with small components, leaving your hands exposed to a painfully violent chill.
Such difficulty can lead to moments of subsequent horror. Nelia Dunbar, director of the New Mexico Office of Geology and Mineral Resources, remembers bringing a snowmobile to camp after her transmission chain broke. Halfway through the repair, the snowmobile suddenly roared to life and backed away at top speed, narrowly missing smashing his team’s tents.
Even with perfectly working equipment, Antarctic malevolence can be remarkably inventive. Hank Statscewich, an oceanographer from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, visited the continent in 2014 to study ocean currents near a biological point. While there, a huge giant iceberg, pulverizing everything in its path, improbably parked just above its small submerged scientific probe, cutting its communication to the surface.
Surprisingly, months later, the shattered remains of the probe were found floating fast, its violent encounter with the iceberg was duly documented by its scientific instrumentation. Mr. Statscewich’s experience embodies the surprising reality about scientific expeditions to Antarctica: many manage to recover from seemingly terminal technological tribulations.
This includes the Manchester Meteor Hunters, who managed to find More than 100 space rocks, including several rich in iron, on the surface during your Antarctic adventures. A meteorite was found while dragging the body from the detector platform back to the camp. And, for 18 days, his custom team gathered invaluable data. Like every previous troublesome expedition, its dilemmas serve as learning experiences that will hopefully make the same setbacks less likely on future expeditions.
But if the past is an indication, it will be a long time before the senseless destruction of Antarctic scientific equipment comes to an end.
“It is an environment without regrets,” he said. Patrick Harkness, expert in space systems engineering at the University of Glasgow. “If you have made a mistake in your preparation, you will find out.”
