South Pole EvBlog

By the way, thanks to everyone who has been sending me emails. I probably won’t have time to get to them but I really appreciate all of them. To make things a little more interactive, if you have a question or comment, I am making a Q&A section below.

In an effort to make my blog slightly less confusing, I am starting an abbreviation section.

BLOG

12/25/05

Well, all things must end. So too this great ev experiment. I’d like to say I’m leaving on top but these last several weeks have been hard the blog has suffered so. I’ve had some good comments, George and I both think the ice cream utter comment was hilarious. Yes, I laughed out loud at myself too. My favourite picture is the one Hollie stole to put on her blog too. It’s a picture of the pole with a bunch of stuffed penguins in front. Just hilarious. I’m going to keep taking pictures, both now and on Hollie and mine’s honeymoon in New Zealand. This is the end of the written literally disaster that we are going to try to keep all people under 10 away from. Anyway, for future BICEP and pole news, my compadre Cynthia is keeping a good picture blog, from which I have now taken several pictures.

http://www.physicschick.com/pole/

For lack of imagination or a better ending line…that’s all she wrote and thanks for all fish.

12/20/05

Oh boy, so after installing the telescope and adjusting it, then installing the boot and adjusting it, and then uninstalling the boot, and readjusting the telescope, then installing the ground shield, and adjusting it, then reinstalling the boot and adjusting it, then readjusting the telescope, these are looking chipper. We can’t take any data yet but the cryostat/receiver is on the mount which means the hardware is done. Now we are just being held up by software and electronics…

Bryan got in a few days ago. The man is a hero b/c he’s keeping kosher at the south pole, and I’m not talking “modern” kosher. The man brought 70 pounds of food for his 3 week voyage. I think we should all convince him to try out for the real Gilligan’s island show, he’d be a great professor. Anyway, it’s not a feat for the faint of heart, don’t leave your tzit-tzit at home.

So in my rant category of the week, what’s the deal with bankruptcy laws? Hollie and I are most likely going to get it in the behind b/c the laws changed in October and our wedding photographer decided to give us the heave hoe. We paid the guy already, we let him go home early from the wedding, and he returns the favour by: no digital pics, no albums. Let this be a lesson to all the young ones out there, business is business and don’t think it’s anything more than that.

BTW, just b/c bobby’s ego isn’t quite big enough, he was right about the current gold market. Looks like it’s a decent place to invest your bling, sort of speak….

12/17/05-1219/05

Snow and cold sucks

12/16/05

I’m back on a weird sleep schedule again, working 20 hours, sleeping 7. Whew…Unfortunately I am now keeping hours basically opposite of the satellite so I’m sure the web site hasn’t been updated in a while.

Another weird thing down here I noticed is that I get a lot more belly button lint than usual. Even more than when I lived in MN, Buf, or Ma. I think it has to do with the fact that there is so much static electricity here. Since it’s so dry, the air becomes a great insulator, and charge is allowed to build up. When you take off your shirt at night, and the lights are off, you can actually see the light from the sparks and the room flashes bright. I think a side effect is a large goop of BB lint.

We had to take the boot off b/c it was not secured very well. This is the part that separates the inside from the outside. We also flew the ground shield on the building which blocks radiation from the ground. We are really busy but things are going to slow down now b/c of the flights.

So my Professor and the winter over got boomeranged and the people leaving here got stuck for a little longer. The biggest movement of people to and from the pole occur at 3 different time, beginning, right before the holidays, and the end. Apparently there is a week backup in flights for MCM-CHC. It’s actually better for me to travel in Jan rather than now.

Ok, time to sleep…

12/12/05

Yup, busy week.

I didn’t sleep two different nights and got on a 36 hour schedule, 30 hours up, 6 asleep. Actually, the hardest part about staying up for 30 hours straight is the 16-20 hours. That’s when your body thinks it should sleep. The bonus here is that it’s always light out so it makes it easier to stay on weird schedules. Anyway, the telescope is now in place, the “boot” or rather the separator between the inside and outside is in place, and the electronics and computers are up.

I learned that the reason why no one could get on the official south pole website is that it isn’t reachable from the northern hemisphere. This presents a problem b/c I set up and helped develop a website for BICEP to be hosted from down here. Turns out, no one can get to it. Thx for the help dad/hollie for pointing all this out.

They are putting in a new 10meter, 30 foot telescope next door to do observations of a related effect. Its kinda fun watching the guy’s everyday. The funny part is only the project manager is down here right now and he is a really good guy. He actually goes out there every night with the carpenters and steel guys and helps them out. Anyway, way to go Steve. (Although it’s probably not kosher to publicize that information b/c of certain reasons.

I’m a little homesick now, I’ve only had about 3 weeks at home in the last 4-5 months. I don’t know how people who travel do it, but it you have any suggestions, send me an email.

Oh, major props to my friend Naomi who’s joined the peace core and is going to sub-saharan Africa to teach chemistry and physics. Now that’s hard core!

It is ridiculously warm here right now. REALLY warm. Last I checked it was 3.2F…no not -3.2F, 3.2F. I also learned that down here in the South Pole, 0F is actually -0F b/c it’s slightly colder down here. Today I walked halfway to work without any extremity covering.

WOW, IT just hit 7F, the warmest temperature ever recorded at the pole in 50 years of met data!! (No global warming my ass)

Oh yea, here’s a thanx to my cousins for sending me the picture from their holiday in St. Martin’s, (see the pict on the web) Way to rub it in!!! J Gotta love the fam

12/6/05

So I’ve officially changed my hours to match the satellite. That means getting up at midnight for midrats and going to bed at like 4am. Its tough on the first day, I couldn’t’ get up and slept in until 2am. But this morning I actually got up at 11pm.

Things are getting crazy in the lab. We are getting the insert ready, and getting the telescope mount ready. It’s going to be a busy week.

12/5/05

CAMERA IS FIXED!!

So yesterday was one of the coolest days here. There are underground tunnels, a mile’s worth, running under the station. Tunnels carved straight out of the snow and ice. See, you go down to the bottom of the beer can, and in the first tunnel, half way down on the right, is an access tunnel. Since the tunnels are underground, there isn’t much temperature variation, so the yearly average is the temperature down there, -50F. It is incredibly cold down there. But it’s such an experience! Of course, I don’t need to explain because most people go spelunking through ice caves, but for those few out there who haven’t, I have pictures!!

See, the camera was dropped by my fellow scientist, and the part of the camera that moves in and out got jammed. So my buddy Felix, who is a big whig IT guy in Raytheon, turned out to have a degree in mechanical engineering and a large set of cahones. He had taken apart his digital camera because of similar incident and so he was confident that he could fix it. Well, he took it apart. When I say apart, I mean APART. Sure, I took off the cover, something any rambunctious third grader with a jewels screwdriver could do. But I got scared when I saw the guts. Nope, not Felix. He went for it! So I am so grateful, I am going to name my firstborn after you!! (Subject to Hollie’s approval)

I also used the gym for the first time today. They haven’t finished the new Gym in the new building so you have to go over to the old one. The best way is down the beer can, yes again, through the underground tunnels, no not the ice ones, and out to the gym. It’s actually a pretty nice gym but I don’t know about you, but when I go to the gym, I like to go in shorts and a tee shirt and get warmed up. So I went in shorts and a t-shirt, and its F@#$%@#$% cold!! There’s a lesson to be learned here, but dammit I’m too stubborn.

12/4/05

We are moving right along with installing the telescope. The mount and electronics are in place, can move the telescope by hand. Insert looks good.

We had a “town hall” meeting today. The whole base gets together, they make announcements, and they give some talk. Today’s was about mass casualty incidents where they spent half the time talking about all the accidents that have ever happened in Antarctica. Oh my lord was it boring. Usually gross and grotesque things can keep people’s attention. The guy giving the talk, who is the doc at the station, was terrible.

12/3/05

So today is the first harsh weather day. It’s only -14F below but the wind is blowing at 25knots. It’s basically a white-out outside. It’s crazy, if you are near windows than you can hear the wind whistle. The wind chill is -40F but it’s supposed to be worse than that b/c of the total strength involved. I’ll let you know after I walk to work.

Ok, so this weather is awesome. I mean if you have to be in bad weather, then this is the type of bad weather I want. It is crazy outside right now. Its times like these where it really sucks not to have a camera. Although, in this case pictures don't do it justice. The sound is deafening. The sun is out providing this eerie orange color everywhere. There is also a circular rainbow around the sun from all the ice crystals in the atmosphere. Then there is the ice wind. Its as if the ground were alive, crawling around. As if there were ghosts attacking, like something out of a Star Trek episode. It’s harder to walk but since it’s so warm outside, it’s actually warm wearing all the gear. Until you are actually in weather like this, there is no way to describe the experience.

Then of course it’s too hot once you get inside b/c some numnutz has the heat cranked up. Still, they are almost done tearing down the penthouse so there is something rattling up there.

Also, they moved the big pile of snow outside the dining room so we can all see the South Pole from the galley. There is this big barber shop pole surrounded by flags from different countries marking the ceremonial South Pole. Then of course there is a small ankle high stake in the ground 20m away marking the real South Pole. None of that is so important b/c

a. Everything still looks like it moves around in a circle in the sky no matter where you are in the station

b. The whole ice sheet in Antarctica moves 10m a years down hill, so in 50 years, the “pole” will be on the other side of the building. Although, in like 3 years, the pole will probably be under the building which will be neat.

12/2/05

So, I’m on this new schedule now, as Hollie can attest to, to align my waking hours with the satellite. So I am getting up at midnight and going to sleep mid afternoon. So if anyone wants to call me, I should be up by 6am east coast time. See, that doesn’t sound so weird, right? Anyway, it doesn’t really matter here b/c the sun is always up.

So they have a little Greenhouse here (10 million dollar price tag) to grow fresh veggies all year round b/c during the winter you can’t fly them in or out and frankly it’s hard during the summer as well. Apparently the “Greenhouse webcam” went down yesterday and the people in charge were so upset they emailed the station supervisor. Instead of, ya know, asking one of the computer geeks to plug the cable back in. That’s how I heard about it anyway, the geeks were a little pissed the veggie people went over the geek heads. My theory is the lettuce sabotaged the camera to get away and the tomatoes got caught-up in some booby trap on their way out( Or as we like to say in our family, they got ketchuped on the way out)

So an interesting fact about the South Pole is that since the air is so dry, it’s incredibly easy to build up static charge. In fact so much that if you turn your lights out in the room and take off your sweater, you can see the sparks. Anyway, because of this they installed a copper rod all the way around the building. At first I thought it was some type of handicap railing or something, who knew?

12/1/05

I started my “regular” routine of being the computer guy for the group even though most of the other people here know 10 times more about Linux than I do.

We are getting all the computers and electronics for the experiment set up. The problem is we only got permission to plug things in a couple of days ago. See, the building isn’t done being constructed; there are still little things to do here or there. Today, we all got to climb up a ladder to the second floor b/c there were no stairs; “little things”. Anyway, there was a huge catfight to see if we could plug things into the wall and if it would be safe. And apparently after much deliberation, they decided that if we wore hard hats and goggles, then it was safe for us to be there and plug things in. Thank goodness we all have our hardhats to protect us from faulty wiring. (Actually, I am friends with the electricians down here and they do a good job, it was more of a CYA issue)

Ok, so in the spirit of this terrible book I just read, “The hydrogen economy”, I have a thought. See, the whole world is supposed to go on hydrogen fuel cells eventually, but you still need to get power from somewhere. My question is; where is the best place to test this new technology? Texas, like they would put up with it. Saudi Arabia…they are floating on oil. No, the best place to test something like this would be to do a project at the South Pole. See, they spend a huge amount of time and resources on flying in fuel here. Actually, I think a majority of time if I am not mistaken. Anyway, for anyone who’s ever driven out to Palm Springs or east of the bay area on the way to the 5 knows the best thing to do in a remote location with lots of area and a healthy amount of wind is to put up wind electricity generators. I mean, the South Pole is so perfect for this technology it’s scary. There is nothing here, period. Emptiness in all directions, and there is ALWAYS wind, ALWAYS. If they went to wind generators and fuel cells, they could really open this station up a bit. There’d be enough flights to actually bring in things like fresh food and mail. Anyway, that’s my rant of the week. Solar technology is useless for the most part b/c the sun is gone 9 months of the year and only gets as high as 23.5 degrees even on Dec 21. Geothermal…uh no. Biomass; they do burn some waster here for fuel but again that has to be brought in. NO, the only natural resource that the South Pole has is empty land and bad weather.

11/30/05

Today was the day. Froggy assured me at Breakfast that he would be by at 10am or so to drop the telescope in…any takers on when they actually showed up?

The telescope drop in procedure is supposed to be a really big deal. They sent out a station wide email to let everyone know. Unfortunately, they were incredibly careful with the telescope mount. They moved that thing so slowly, it took almost two hours. The most interesting part was trying to tip the mount upright as it had been shipped lying down on its side. The crane they used had two hooks, one grabbed the top the other the bottom. They lifted the whole thing up, and then dropped the bottom hook back down. After that, they just picked it up and put in inside the hole. Everything went pretty smoothly.

They also installed big hooks inside of the room. We attached large hand chain wenches to these hooks. The reason for this is to life the cryostat or “the big white fridge part”. I’ll try to post some pictures of this but the telescope breaks down like this:

There is a large blue telescope mount that moves everything around and has 3 independent axes.

There is a large white cryostat or fridge that slides into the mount

There is then the optics tube which goes into the cryostat

Then the “insert” goes into the optics tube. The insert holds all the detectors and super-cooling fridge parts.

It’s basically a game of how many tubes can we fit into other tubes.

Anyway, we unpacked the cryostat out of its crate and hoisted it up. Apparently the packing material for the cryostat was bought from a place that makes couches, so we have enough foam insulation to kill a wildebeest and make 3 or 4 couches to boot.

11/29/05

They were supposed to drop the telescope mount into the building today but things run on South Pole time here so that won’t happen until tomorrow now. Apparently the crane wasn’t big enough so they needed a bigger crane. The crane operator, froggy, assures me that it will be tomorrow. I think that just about says it all.

Kudos to John Kovac though, our post-doc, who has been working really hard and who spend the night, after working the entire day and morning, scrubbing the rust off the aluminium plate. Its reasons like this, the devotion we have from the team, that I know BICEP is going to succeed. If we can’t do this, it’s going to take some huge jump in technology to get the goals done. (Which is probably coming anyway…)

I got to talking with the graduate student from Quad and learning more about their project. I also got a tour of their telescope. Since Quad is looking for much small features, their telescope is much bigger, and hence makes a great tree house. No no, seriously, there is a foam seat right smack tab in the center of the telescope right where the “light” comes in. You have to climb up two ladders to get to this place. I didn’t have my camera but I’m sure there are pictures to corroborate the story. Unfortunately, b/c BICEP is much smaller, we just have a small cave underneath with just enough space for 1 person to stand in and no lighting.

11/28/05

Apparently the total death count for the 50 years of pole is 3. One winter-over died from making a bad batch of moonshine, another person was crushed by cargo, but I never heard what happened to the third person. So a winter-over is someone who stays at the pole over the entire winter. See, it’s too cold during the winter to fly planes in or out, so no one can leave. Winter is about Feb 15^th-Nov1st. Basically when the weather gets colder than -50F - -60 F the hydraulic fluid freezes and you can’t fly the plane. Below -60F - -70F the plane fuel freezes and there is no more combustion.

Today we got ourselves a mighty plate. They cut a hole in the roof for the telescope to stick out of, which happened days ago. They built a large wooden platform for the telescope to stand on so it can stick out of the top of the roof, and then you put a big aluminium plate, 6’ X 6’ X 1” thick. The problem is this, as materials go, wood is not exactly the hardest or stiffest in the world. In fact, in California, wood is known for standing up to earthquakes better then other materials like brick or concrete b/c wooden can bend like a spring. So we intentionally put our sensitive telescope on top of a large spring, umm, anyone see a problem with this?

The last of the four BICEP graduate students flew in today. Kiwon was pretty chill as usual but Cynthia was ready to go as soon as she landed. They had been stuck in McMurdo over the holiday weekend, apparently binging on wine and stuffing themselves silly. Welcome to the altitude and dryness, because McMurdo is a resort town compared to the pole…

The camera was dropped by someone taking a picture of me today…grrr…no more pictures. Although I have 215 so far which should be done uploading by the end of today

We also got in our last shipment of crates for a bit. The fun part about these crates is that instead of using bubble wrap to pack things, someone went out and bought a much squishier more expansive substance. Snickers…Chocolate…caramels…Almonds…Cookies….If we weren’t going to get fat and unhealthy from having 6 different types of desserts at each meal, then snacking in between meals will definitely do it.

11/27/05

I found out this morning that the computer lab has these neat little sim card readers. This way you don’t have to plug your camera in, you just take the sim card out and put it in the reader. What will they think of next? Although as I am typing this, I remember my Uncle Joe telling me this last Passover.

I found out some interesting stuff about the pole. First of all, there isn’t really any place on earth where you can stand and a compass will spin around in a circle. I am at the geographic South Pole; the Russians are at Volstok, the magnetic South Pole. Apparently, the Earth’s magnetic field only looks like a dipole, i.e. a regular bar magnetic, far away in space. In fact, the place with the strongest magnetic field is somewhere in Russia. Volstok is just where the magnetic pole would be if there were nothing else taken into account.

What this means is that all the iron and other magnetic material in the earth’s crust changes where the field goes. In fact, the magnetic north pole is about 8-10 degrees from the geographic pole; the southern magnetic pole is about 15 degrees.

Also, the Americans are at the geographic South Pole because of some French judge 50 years ago. Apparently, as the story goes, the Russians wanted the geographic pole, and the Americans could care less. When the Russians petitioned the international body for the rights to build here, a French judge said the US already called “dibs”. Of course, we didn’t but loved the idea of ticking off the Russians…J

The other thing that really pissed me off is every Sunday there is a science lecture. Tonight’s was from a project called Ice Cube (No, not about the XXX /gangster rap star) This is a neutrino/cosmic ray observatory that costs 270 million dollars. What a joke. First of all the lecturer was terrible. How do people that bad at lecturing become professors? Of course, if you’ve ever taken a college class you are wondering the same thing about some professor you’ve had. Secondly, this is ridiculous. 270 million dollars for WHAT? My project is going to prove the basic understanding of where we came from and we get less than 1% of the ice cube budget. They will be able to tell you that cosmic rays come from super jets from the centers’ of galaxies no one will ever visit, or that there is a certain rate of neutrinos coming from, the sun or supernovae. Basically, two things that are not a huge surprise nor deserve this type of cash.

Now I’m a science guy, and I think science should be funded. How bout a system that funds projects based on scientific return instead of which state has an influential senator that sits on appropriations and will see the GDP from their state double if they approve this project. Arggghhh, oh well that’s life. Maybe I should move to Wisconsin?

11/26/05

Turkey day. Rich and Matt and I were supposed to take a hike out to the old abandoned plane and then to the South Pole. Matt got trashed last night so that was off. Finally got to check email and download pictures. I still need the IT’s help to get them uploaded. The computer security here is ridiculous. Basically you can check email…and you can’t even always do that.

So I decided to walk around myself and relax. I went over to the dome and engineering to check them out. I went over to “summer camp” or the external housing. This is where they put most of the carpenters/plumbers/GA’s. Imagine a huge sausage, cut in half, then take out the insides, installed a couple of cardboard walls and shower curtains. Makes one feel real lucky to be in the new building, that’s for sure. Hiked over to riches quarters and then we went to the game room that those guys generally used. (As opposed to the one 10 feet from my door) Apparently there are two, one smoking, one non-smoking. Guess which one is more popular?

After a few games of shesh-pesh we headed over for turkey. There was an entire appetizer period before hand. Most just cheese and crackers but some fruit and a little dessert as well. Mmm, dessert. After going in the dining hall was decked out and all set up. There was a little speech given by Vladimir, the NSF rep and then we dug in. Two types of turkey smoked and baked. I think the smoked was better. I tried some of the sweet potatoes but ugghh. I hate that stuff. The rule here is all you can eat but you must eat all you take. I had Yuki finish the potatoes. The stuffing was pretty good, but I’ve never really had bad stuffing before. After going through the whole line, then there was salad. See, it’s a treat to get salad down here b/c we all know how fast lettuce goes bad. Plus, I don’t think most people appreciate it nor the nutrients involved. Anyway, we had a little grad student section for BICEP/Quad and the post-docs and researches sat on the other side.

Afterwards we had lots of time to kill so I convinced a couple of suckers, I mean people, to play chess. With all the hoity toity smart people here, I expected better. Then on to ping pong where I got smoked, but it’s really some good fun. Usually we just end up hitting everyone else in the room with the ball. All in all, it’s pretty hard to top last year’s turkey day.

11/25/05

Second day of work. I am starting to get a little more acclimated. But still gassed….

We got the crane today and that was a hoot. We hauled all the empty boxes down to the ground, and hauled new ones up. We still don’t have permission to plug anything into the walls so our ~ 50K worth of computers and electronics are being used as paper weights for now. At least, that’s what we tell the inspectors…

Tomorrow is thanksgiving, but it’s just not the same. I like being around family at the holidays, its just not going to be the same. Unless you count the -30F weather, in which case it feels just like Buffalo.

There are always thanks to be had; at least I’m not Cynthia and Kiwon who are stuck in McMurdo for 5 days by themselves. McMurdo’s not bad, but I’m sure it sucks to be stuck there on the way down

There are lots of things to do on station, including reading of course. However reading before bed is not easy b/c the light switch is so far away. They do have a plug right above the bed, so if someone would have let me known before hand…

TIP: bring a reading light to the South Pole

My lips are ridiculously chapped after just two days. Maybe it has something to do with the ridiculously cold dry atmosphere. Maybe its b/c I’m sucking on the soft serve machine like the utters of a cow. Either way…

Tip: Bring some really good chap-stick

11/24/05

First day of work. The experiment is out in the “dark sector”. Mind you this is summer at the south pole so the sun never sets, never changes declination, and is always somewhere between 0 and 23.5 degrees. I take a shuttle to work, like a van but on ginormous wheels. From where the shuttle drops us off, we walk by the other CMB projects, one is Quad, the other is ACBAR which just finished and is being taken apart. Anyone in need of an observing site at the South Pole?

We are on the second floor of DSL. We’ll see if you can figure out what that means. So this is my first day at 10,000 feet and 2 floors are like the entire empire state building. I am completely gassed just from getting to the lab. Inside, most the crates that we got so far, we shipped a total of 11 I believe, have been unpacked. About half, are “in-the-mail” as the cargo guys like to tell us. We pretty much just spent the day unpacking and getting organized. We need the crane to get the rest of our stuff up.

We are also waiting for the guys to cut a hole in the roof for the experiment. See, we were supposed to be in the third floor room, or “penthouse”, just fire codes killed us and that is why we are deploying this year instead of last year. Although, last year I was busy getting engaged, so it worked out better for me. And in the end, isn’t that what matters most, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars and people’s careers being put on hold.

It’s about ¾ mile to and fro so I got gamey for lunch and decided to walk, in -30F, -60 WC weather. I made it half way and would have walked the whole way except one of the snowmobiles from another project called ice cube came by. Snowmobiling is fun; I highly recommend you try it if you get a chance. Like riding a snow bike, no not bicycle, but safer b/c you are on ice. Although, I’m not sure if my parents or wife would agree.

Food’s not bad, but the desserts are killing me. I think I actually put on weight since I got here. Even after all the extra calories you burn, eating desserts three meals a day can’t be considered healthy. They are always there, haunting me. Haunting my dreams, so delicious, and every meal/day is different. Its like Martha Stewart on Steroids or whatever cooks take. STRESSED by DESSERTS

It’s normal to have a breakdown or two while here. Apparently a couple of winters ago, some yahoo started to pile up food in his room and acted all weird. Then took off and no one new where. They sent a helicopter after him and found him 20 miles towards McMurdo.

10,000 feet down to 0

800 miles

-30F

-60 WC

Huge cliffs, mountains, crevasses

1 person

No radio

200 Oreo cookies

I’m not a betting man, but the Vegas odds of death/no death have got to be pretty bad. Bobby, Bulbysaur, any takers?

The highlight of the day was duct tape, yes duct tape. I got myself a piece of cardboard, and went OCD on my window. Did you know it takes about three pieces of tape to really be light-tight? Anyway, sleep will be redefined for the rest of my trip because of duct tape and cardboard. I just have to keep thinking, this is the forefront of research science, this is the forefront of research science. What did man do before duct tape anyway?

11/23/05

I have 7 hours to catch my pole flight. There is this huge hill, not too creatively called observation hill or ob hill, overlooking the whole McMurdo base, which is a volcanic Island. We actually landed on the frozen sea ice if you can believe that. Its only 10 feet deep. Anyway, being a little pumped up, I stretched my legs and climbed the mountain (750 feet). Got to the top, took two pictures, and my batteries died. It’s amazing what curse words can be uttered at the top of a mountain in the 7^th continent. I am definitely going to have to rectify this because it was absolutely gorgeous up there. You could see 360 all around, active volcanoes, mountains, and the sea. Something you’d see in LOTR.

BTW, my ACL is doing great for all those keeping tabs. (I had reconstructive surgery last Jan)

It’s now about 2am and I get back to base in time to catch the end of midnight snack. Everyone else goes to sleep but I’m a little wound up as you can imagine. I sit down a table with some locals. Two woman and two men discussing how much it costs to climb Mount Kilimanjaro (sp?) One of the women had been to all 7 continents, and I’m not talking the airports. The others were discussing that the hip place to go was western Africa b/c hardly anyone goes there. I thought the 7 continent woman was bold b/c apparently she travelled around by herself. Also disheartening was that she had a negative view of Israel b/c when she went to the wall in Jerusalem, some of the religious nutjobs (Is nutjob 1 word or two?) screamed at her and even threw some things. Anyway, it was quite a trip hearing about these people and their adventures around the globe.

I was about to leave when they reopened the kitchen for the 3am snack. Apparently, a plane had just come in (which is 1 of the two pictures I got from ob hill) and so they had to serve a 3am meal. Which in my opinion was better than the midnight meal. Ok, so the regular meal food was fine but the desserts are plentiful. These people down here love their desserts!

After a nap, we took off for the pole. What a different experience than the last flight: 3 hours, only 5 of us in an entire C130. I slept most of the way. Here is where I met Clem, a Professor at Chicago working on our sister project Quad. My project is called BICEP, or used to be until a rich eccentric guy gave a pile of money to our professor at Caltech Andrew Lange, so we are now called The John Robinson Gravitational Wave Background Telescope or JRGWBT for short. Anyway, Clem’s pretty funny, and British which I think makes him seem smarter. Either that or he is an officer for the Empire and his goal is universal domination.

Landing out at the pole and stepping out into that -30F, -60F windchill air for the first time is an experience. Mind you, the South Pole is also at 10,000 feet. We have to go up two flights and get our orientation and room assignments. I go to my room and find someone already living there. I ask the person in charge and they guessed I had a “squatter”. Turns out it’s my post-doc John Kovac. After a meal and a new room, I basically slept all day and got settled. Turns out our rooms are pretty posh for the South Pole. Unfortunately I live on the first floor and the men’s bathroom is on the second floor. So every time I have to pee in the middle of the night, I have to walk up, get completely winded, and then I get to go to the bathroom.

By the way, some things here are designed well and some aren’t. For example, they have mostly all singles on base, good b/c who really wants to share. I rather have my 5’ X 10’ closet. They have blinds that remind me of straw baskets for window shades. My theory is that it actually makes the room lighter to have the shades down because it diffuses the light to every part of the room. My first night there was not the best, but if you know me, I can almost always sleep anywhere, anytime.

11/22/05

Boomerang

Well, it was another early start. Got to the Antarctic center, threw on my ECW and got on the buses to head out to the air field. There were two buses and I just jumped on the first one. Then off to the air field. I had never seen a C130 plane before; they were quite smaller than what I had imagined. This was a New Zealand operated flight. The reason for that is the kiwis have their own base in Antarctica called Scott base located 2 miles from the American base called McMurdo. For logistics reasons, everything goes into McMurdo.

We got off the plane and started loading 5 at a time. They hand you a sack lunch with two meals worth of sandwiches because the flight time is EIGHT HOURS. To say that things on the plane are crowded is an insult to the crowds at sporting events and NYC. You are elbow-to-elbow with the next person, and the foot to foot with the person in front of you. Not only that but it takes them 30 minutes or so to pack everyone in, so the first people on the plane get to enjoy an extra half hour of fun.

TIP: Get the very last seat in the second bus and try to be the last person on the C130

They hand out ear plugs because the C130 planes are loud. The smarter veteran people have those earphones that airplane ground crew wear. I actually spent most the time without earplugs but if you like to listen to music, the earphones are the way to go.

TIP: Bring earphones with your ipod

We took off and I started talking with the people around me. Out of 50 people, only 4 of us were going to the pole, and I was the only scientist. Every one else was going to McMurdo or a field camp.

Field camps are little outposts scattered around Antarctica for whatever reason.

There were ten people from a meteorite expedition. They go out to a field camp in some valley and look for meteorites. Apparently most of the world’s meteorites are found in Antarctica. The reason why they look in valleys is that when the ice shelf moves, the solid rocks and particles get trapped in the valleys and then through time they come to the surface. Not all of them come to the surface, but enough to keep these people in business.

I was also recounted a story about this one expedition to the South Pole that started a little late in the season. So late that the commander told the boat to leave after a week if the party didn’t come back. Well wouldn’t you know if, a week into the expedition, the sled with all the food went over the edge into a crevasse and only two people were still alive. I won’t gore you out here, but things turned ugly.

The leader of this pack had a brand new ipod that could not have been any bigger than half a deck of playing cards. It holds 2GB of songs and has 14 hours of battery life. Just plane unbelievable….

I also sat next to Bob on this plane; he was on my Quantas flight as well. He does ballooning out of Texas and had helped with Maxipole and Boomerang before. These balloons are just incredible. They come in a box weighing 5,000lbs. They are made out of 8 thou (thousandths of an inch) saran wrap type material. When inflated you can fit the HOUSTON ASTRODOME inside!!! They get up to 120,000 feet.

There was also a guy who used to fly planes in the air force, a U2 to be precise. Apparently the planes can fly above 70,000 feet. Compare this height to the balloon height above. One would think the US could come up with a more realistic number than 70K? The planes also take special fuel, so if they have to land in a non certified US base, they actually have to fly the fuel out to the plane! Now, I believe regular jet fuel is J8, I think the guy told me J15 is what the U2’s take.

It was at this point that the crew member came and told us we were going back to Christchurch! After an hour of flight or so, we turned back, or boomeranged! On the way in we dumped fuel. Apparently the take off and landing weights of planes are different! No one could quote an exact number but I got the feeling it was like 50% or so. Even commercial aircraft have to do this. So the next time you are on a 747 that has to turn around for whatever reason, look out the window at the engines and look for a plume coming out.

It was 11am now, and we had to wait and see if they could fix the COMPASS. That’s right, a compass. We turned around the plane, spent all that time and money b/c they couldn’t get the needle to point in the right direction. Doesn’t exactly brew a lot of confidence.

There I met a guy who I’ve become friends with, Rich. He was in the army as a mechanic and is now a plumber down at the pole. One thing to keep in mind is that there is probably close to a 10-1 regular person to scientist ratio down here. Or rather they like to call us “beakers”.

We then were told that we were going to give it a try! (It’s now 2pm) Another friend down here, Felix, who is an IT manager, suggested we try to be the last ones on. Not because of the loading time but b/c apparently the last couple of people sit across from a cooler and can stretch out their legs! Even with the extra leg room, things were not exactly comfortable.

TIP: Its worth repeating, last is first.

There a met a woman who was going to work ground crew for McMurdo. She was American but had been living in New Zealand for several years. Also, I met another woman who was going to be a cook at McMurdo and had been travelling around the world as a cook going from place to place. Chef’s are finicky people though, she actually carries here own set of knives. Compare this to my Oceanographer friend from Maine who wasn’t allowed to check a single golf club onto his domestic US flight. Ahh, airline security. Anyway, the point is, I hope you are getting a feel for the type of people who sign up for this gig.

At midnight we finally arrive in McMurdo!!!

11/22/05

OK, so yesterday, got up bright and early. (As some of you can tell from the rambling of the last entry. Got to the Antarctic center no problem. Put all of my heavy ECW (extreme cold weather) gear on, went through the screening process and found out the flight was canceled!! Uggghhh. Waiting is definitely the hardest part. That’s what it is all about in getting to the pole, just hurry up and wait.

So we had to get back in our regular clothes and go back to town. Mind you, we did not get back any of our checked baggage so things were a little smellier the second day.

By now I had enough of paying 5-10 NZ dollars to get around town. I went into the city center bus station located du south of cathedral center and got a metro card. The bus ride to and from the airport/Antarctic center is 7 dollars a ride. With the metro card, its 1.50.

TIP: If you are ever in Christchurch and are going to be taking more than 1 bus ride, get one of these cards

The third day in Christchurch is way worse than the first two. I know we have to be back at the center at like 7am tomorrow, and it’s already 1pm. We can’t exactly get into too much trouble, can we?

I had soft serve for lunch. Now some of you have had soft serve ice cream/frozen yogurt before, and you wither like it or dislike it. I think it would be more fair to characterize myself as a soft-serve-monkey. Their soft serve in New Zealand is a little creamier than in the US and much much sweeter. Plus, it tastes like they are using real ingredients to sweeten the product, which just is disgusting. I swear, have they not heard of high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweetener?

For dinner I went to this Middle Eastern place. Not bad, the guy was from Egypt and had come to New Zealand for the life-style. Had some lamb thang and chatted with the guy about the middle east/Israel stuff like that. I think this is a constant all over the world that if you meet someone from the middle east, you can bond with them by talking politics about the middle east. Especially Israelis…there are 4.5 million Israelis or so, and 9.3 million opinions.

What lifestyle you may ask…let me explain. New Zealanders like things quiet. They aren’t loud. They like to hang out with their families. For an exciting night, they chose to go hang out at some one else’s place and have a dinner party. No one ever gets trampled to death at a Rugby game, although this is probably when you will hear a kiwi (the nickname for a new Zealanders) make the most noise. They only have THREE television stations in New Zealand. Everything voluntarily closes at 2am, besides the strip clubs of course. I know what you are thinking to yourself, sounds a little like Christian conservatives. Well, their not that religious, believe it or not.

As a bonus for staying in Christchurch for another day, I got to see it rain. Yeah! It was at this point that I started in on my second book of the trip and cut my loses.

11/21/05

DELAYED in CHC for one more day

So I woke up at 430 and got ready, and was waiting at the main place at 515 for our 530 shuttle, and THEN I found out that the flight is delayed...weather...its raining. I swear, I thought the weather people in the states were bad. Here, they can't even predict out 12 hours... unless it is the polar people who didn't bother to look at the weather report. Which at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if that was true.

Ok, so after looking at the weather report, we could have left 2 hours ago. The storm just started at 4am. From the radar maps and reports, it looks like we may be here for another day. I'm glad I brought enough money; at least I don't have to worry about that.

By the way, the last couple of days I seriously thought that it never got completely dark in Christchurch because the sun didn't seem to start setting until 9pm, and then when I woke up in the middle of the night, it always seemed like dusk outside. I figured it out this morning; the streetlights are RIGHT outside my room lighting it up like a Christmas tree. It’s like they never heard of blinds down here. All I have in the way of shades are some white doyley partially transparent window coverings.

I met two people on my bus ride back from the Antarctic center last night who are here on holiday (vacation for you yanks) from Melbourne. Both of them are originally from Thailand. One is in medical school, the other physical therapy. Tlo & Tracy, this is for you. Here, they only do 6 years of schooling combined between undergrad and med school years. Although the residency period is the same. Also, apparently they don't work that hard, only a couple hours of studying a day, and almost none on the weekend. The med student said she only studied 4 hours last weekend for her FINAL exams from all of med school and that is why they were here. Then I went to the local watering hole to see if I could catch any American football games, but alas there were none. Although I totally recommend the "Holy Grail" if you are ever in Christchurch. The Tui beer I had was actually really pretty good. However, I met and Irish guy, who now lives in Melbourne, who works in NZ repairing farm equipment. He said my experience in meeting people from Melbourne was typical b/c the population is now around 50% Asian. I then got completely schooled on the game of Rugby. Apparently last night the black shirts beat the greens, and the poms beat some other helpless team. (That is, New Zealand beat Ireland and England beat someone else) Although, I think poms is more of a derogatory term for the English...

Apparently they all think Americans are "puffs" for wearing pads for our American football games. Then I explained how big and fast the middle linebackers and defensive ends are, and they conceded that it might be painful if a Ray Lewis or Julius peppers say on your face. I could see how they enjoyed Rugby though; picking up the strategy is interesting after watching football. Apparently, they punt all the time to gain yards, and that is one of the main strategies. They do have good kickers though, for their field goals are just as long as the states with a ball that's slightly bigger. Another interesting strategy is they will occasionally surround their own guy, and the whole team will just push them forward, against the other team who is pushing back. The neatest thing is they have to touch the ground in the end zone to score, so a common practice is to actually slide in like they are superman. Also, if you ever see someone do this, they try to slide near the goalpost even after they enter the end zone because they kick their extra points are taken from a spot on the field in line from where they touchdown. The scoring is very similar to American football, their TD's are worth 5, with 2 point extra points, field goals are still 3 points.

So the main sport of New Zealand is National Rugby games, and it’s so popular they actually have TWO national team squads. The next most popular sport is league Rugby, followed by local Rugby. Then...Cricket? Seriously, objectively, no matter how boring you think baseball is, it's still much better than watching a cricket match.

Apparently, gambling is also legal everywhere in New Zealand and Australia and there is a casino not too far from where I'm staying. Every pub you walk in, they have a little side room with slots. It seems like there are a bunch of degenerate gamblers everywhere; ahh kinda feels like home....

I met of a couple of airplane service people who work on the planes we fly. They are air force national guard. Apparently, years ago at the pole, they lost 1 plane. It was white out conditions and they tried to land. They hit the ground so hard the wings flexed down and got caught in the snow and were ripped off. No one was hurt. I was told this story by the post doc on the project who's been coming down here for years. When I told the maintenance guys this story they laughed and said, "Figures, Navy pilots". Apparently they switched from using navy planes to air force planes 10 years ago because the air force guys could do it for so much cheaper and were much faster. These guys claimed that in the 50 years of their units "cold planes" branch of the air force, they have never lost a plane due to maintenance. The claim is that after each flight the plane is inspected, this is as opposed to commercial jets which are apparently not inspected often at all. The unit is based out of Albany and they go train in Northern Greenland. They do survivor cold training where they drop them out of a plane in -60 degree weather, and they have to survive for a week. They even have to build their own igloos. Maybe I'll try building an igloo in my spare time. Although, seeing as how its -33 and 20mph winds with blowing snow, maybe I'll wait a couple of days. (That feels like -61)

11/20/05

Slept in a bit today. Had my first New Zealand breakfast, but only 1 wacky thing to talk about. They had a breakfast bar that was a bunch of bran flakes dried together. Try to imagine a squirrel putting together a breakfast bar. Needless to say it tasted more like paper than cereal. The bananas here are absolutely terrible. I tried regular looking ones, ones that looked a little older, some that looked younger, and they all tasted terrible. The apples are fine but for having the people of your nation named after a fruit, the kiwi’s here are only average, nothing special.

I went to a pub/pizza place called Winnebago’s last night for dinner and who would have guessed it; they were having a three-on-three basketball tournament. One team had this 6’ 8” guy, and they won the whole thang. New Zealand’s version of Shaq.

Here’s a shout out to my bud from Oregon who’s also blogging. I recommend a visit to the site just for the picture of his bunny. http://www.kungfuramone.org/

Walking through the center of town yesterday, they had a lifesize chessboard and chess pieces. Clearly I couldn’t resist…and I won the game, with a little help from the man with the bamboo pole. (Pictures to be posted soon, I’m having computer conflicts with my camera)

I got my cold weather gear today. I brought wayyyyy too much stuff. Thanks for help packing babe!! I will probably need to ship some stuff home before the honeymoon. I am using 70lbs of excess cargo for my stuff, and I need all of it. The people here aren’t the friendliest or most helpful in the world, its best to find someone who has been down before and ask them what to do. Apparently the weather has been great this year so far, only two cancellations and no boomerangs yet.

Tip: Pack light, they will give you a bunch of fleeces, socks, etc. Not much need to bring you own stuff.

Tip: Don’t get the blue boots, they aren’t waterproof

Tip: “boomerang”, a flight that leaves for the pole, but had to turn around

Tip: Cancellations are plane flights that never take off. Then you spend an extra day in Christchurch.

Here’s another shout out, to my boss who noticed that there are some funny links on the wunderground weather web page. The MSN map of the South Pole paints a slightly bleaker picture than what I hope to see. Unfortunately there are no hotel rooms left at the pole… Try the meet locals’ link, there are actually 5 people who have been to Antarctica.

I finished my first book down here, “freakonomics”, by Levitt. He thinks Roe vs. Wade led to a decline in crime, and backs it up with some stats. He’s a cooky economics professor but the book is really interesting. Alex, you’d love it. (My brother, a highly regarded sociologist)

Apparently it snows in the winter here, but it’s gorgeous out now. Christchurch is just about as far south as Boston is north of the equator. Minnesota, depending on where you are, is actually further north. But anyone who has been to MN understands that.

I also finished a pack and half of tissues, I think because the plane was so dry. Also in part due to the magical snot fairies in my who conjure mucus from nothing. I swear, I could blow my nose all day and night and keep going. This is as opposed to Bobby, who doesn’t even OWN TISSUES?????

Ok, and the spell check down here keeps saying “center” is spelled “centre”. Helloooo, isn’t this why we had the Boston tea party Microsoft?

Another thing is the driving on the left hand side of the road is freaking me out. It’s really weird. Although, if you walk down the streets, people still mostly walk on the right hand side of the sidewalk, go figure? Maybe it’s because most of the people I am around are tourists, but even the people at the pub last night seemed to walk on the right hand side…

Needless to say, Go Bears!! Starting Levy was the best move Tedford ever made. If he started Ayoob, and we lost to Stanfurd, he’d be out. At least Levy can manage a game. Also, Go ducks…

11/19/05

Ok, so the idea has been put forward for me to log my adventure at the bottom of the universe, so here it is.

*Disclaimer: If I bore the socks off you and you decide to go on some shooting spree as a result of this ridiculous web page, then I accept only a small bit of responsibility.

*Disclaimer 2: This will be updated on my schedule, i.e. not that often depending on how bored I get from sleeping with penguins every night.

I’m in Christchurch New Zealand. I arrived after my 12 hour Quantas flight. The flight was really easy; good weather the whole way, and no turbulence. I watched war of the worlds, and Wedding crashers (Twice). I can’t believe Spielberg keeps using Tom Cruise?

I tried to sneak kosher spaghetti and meatballs into the country, what a snap. After getting off the plane, standing in line for 45 minutes to get my passport stamped, then waiting for my bags, then waiting another 15 minutes in line to talk to a guy to tell me which line to stand in, then waiting in line for another 15 minutes to get the food ok’d by a real live New Zealander, it was pretty straight forward.

Tip: Bringing in your own food is fine

I checked into my hotel already and walked around town a bit. It’s absolutely gorgeous here today. There is some Asian flea market in the town square. That and some big protest about the Chinese government killing thousands of people, blah blah blah...

Thank goodness there is a Starbucks on the corner, which I can ignore as always, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. Monday I’m off to Antarctica.

Q&A Section:

1. Why are you at the South Pole?

Seriously, who would come here? 3 things to know about the pole

Its wicked cold; average temp is -50F, because it’s so cold, all the water is frozen out.
It’s high; the continent is only about 1000 feet thick, but then there is another 9000 feet of ice.
It’s the pole, so the sky perfectly rotates about zenith ever day, even the sun.

High and dry make observing conditions great. Especially in the bandwidth that we use, the microwave band. This is a little like radio but is more the in-between region between radio and infrared. Sunlight is about 5000 times smaller in wavelength than what we look at. X-rays are 1000 times smaller than light. Radio wave proper are 100 times bigger. We work within a regime that is very close to what your cellular telephone uses.

Basically, this is the best place to observe if you don’t have the bling to go to space. Also, since the sky rotates perfectly around in a circle, it makes the strategy for how you point your telescope, which direction, how fast, etc. a lot simpler.

Since we are observing in the microwave regime, the same microwaves that your microwave oven is named after, it is especially important to get away from water. Water is a great absorber of microwaves; which is good for your over, bad for astronomers. Its so dry here, its hasn’t rained at the South Pole in like 10 million years!

2. No really, why are you at the South Pole?

Ok, so it’s the current scientific theory that the universe started from one explosion 13.5 billion years ago, not-so-creatively called, the big bang. There are three major pieces of direct evidence for this and a bunch of indirect evidence. (Indirect being, we haven’t found any stars older than 13 billion years or so.)

The three major ones are, in chronological order of discovery:

All galaxies are receding way from us making it look like we are at the center of an explosion
The leftover energy from the explosion in the form of radiation. The temperature of which is about 3K or -269C or -370F. (That’s Kelvin or scientist temperature, Celsius or the temperature unit most people use, and Fahrenheit some weird unit Americans use) This is equivalent to radiation in the form of microwaves.
The ratio of elements in the universe is as predicted by theory if there were some large explosion instead of a lower temperature long duration burning process such as in the sun.

I study B. the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, or CMB. (Of course the R is left of the acronym for the same reasons MRI’s are called MRI instead of NMR or NMRI)

For the first 400,000 years of the universe, things are so hot that electrons and protons can combine to form even the most basic element, hydrogen. It is a hot dense charged plasma. Basically, things are so hot and dense, that the universe is opaque to light, i.e. nothing can move around that far. At the magic temperature of 100,000 degrees, or 380,000 years pBB the universe essentially becomes transparent when the electrons and protons combine to form hydrogen. This means light can escape, and the CMB can travel the next 13.5 billions years unimpeded until it gets to our telescope.

Interesting factoid: The CMB accounts for about 3% of the fuzz on your television, well, on you older analog TVs, not your digital cable.

Since the universe becomes opaque at exactly the same temperature, everywhere, the CMB is exactly the same temperature. Then, as the radiation travels the universe, the actual universe expands to the size it is today. The actually fabric of space time expands. This cools off the radiation to 3K.

So if your eyes were tuned to microwaves, instead of a dark sky with little stars and the moon, you’d look up at the sky and basically see 1 solid color.

So your saying, “so what”? Well, it gets better. The CMB was found in the late 50s, or even early in the 40s. It was until 1990 that the Kobe satellite was able to tell that the temperature is not exactly the same everywhere. And when I say the same, I mean the SAME. No matter what direction you look, no matter what time of year, it’s always 3K. Well, this satellite found deviations from perfection, and not just any deviations, a specific pattern. These deviations are a part in 100,000. This is akin to every human being weighing roughly 150.00 pounds. That would be a strange world indeed.

These deviations are the type of pattern you would see if you had pockets of density fluctuations in the plasma right before the CMB was released. Ok, so imagine you have a bunch of matter, where gravity trys to pull that matter together forming a larger mass. As the matter is pulled together, it heats up, warming the CMB and matter around it. When it gets too hot too fast, it will re-expand, just like warm air rises. But then, once it cools, gravity can pull it back together again. Therefore, there will be patches of matters that oscillate hotter and colder, therefore there should be patches of hotter and colder in the CMB. That is exactly what we saw!

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_or.html

Not only that, but the patches on the sky have specific pattern for how big they are. You can imagine that it will be more common to have just a few fluctuations as opposed to many. That is also what we see! And if you are really good with an abacus, you can even predict exactly what the pattern looks like, that is the pattern of number of fluctuations versus size based on a few parameters.

http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/araa/node4.html

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CMB-DT.html

I suggest these two people’s sites; they are both excellent and go into way more depth

Ok, so blah blah, its been done. I still haven’t answered the question.

Well, the standard big bang model is not perfect. When taken on its own, I would say it only has a 75% confidence interval for being correct. When take with the other evidence, >>99%. The problem is the standard big bang model is too imperfect. From our observations, the universe is more precise than what we would expect. Either things are too flat, too homogenous, or exactly tuned to have the correct mass, i.e. perfect. And in science, when something seems tuned to perfection, it’s generally wrong. Just see the ancient argument between Newton’s Gravity and epicycles.

The fix is the inflationary theory. Basically what is says it that there was a brief period of super-luminal expansion which makes everything seem perfect to us now when it reality it is not. A simple example is that of the earth. Locally, where you stand, you would be sure that the earth is flat and everything is pretty much the same. If you look at the earth from space you’ll see its round and made of all different types of things. The same goes for our universe, the only difference is we can’t stand back and take a picture to see what’s really going on.

If this theory is right, the universe started off with an even mightier than previously thought explosion, so much so that is shook space-time itself. Just like if you pop a balloon, it gives off a sudden pop, or a large sound wave, the universe should have given off a gravitational wave of immense proportions.

Everything gives off gravitational wave, you me, any time any mass moves. Gravity is so weak that these are impossible to detect. The only time they are readily visible, sorry LIGO and LISO people, is if you have all the matter in the universe in one place. That is exactly the big bang.

Now the interesting thing about gravitational waves is they are different from sound, which are longitudinal waves squishing air back and forth in the direction of travel, and light, transverse wave vibrating up and down like the string of a guitar perpendicular to the direction of travel. GW are tensor waves, as they travel, they squish in one direction, and expand in the other! Weird, no? Well, as we saw before, squishing and expanding will make the plasma, and hence the CMB warmer or cooler.

Except in this case the CMB becomes polarized. Basically more intense CMB is given off in one plane as opposed to the perpendicular plane, this is polarization. Written explanation won’t do this effect justice, but trust me, things become polarized. Check on Hu’s and Wright’s site, I think they have a pretty good pictorial demonstration there.

All types of vector fields, including gravitation waves polarization or traffic in LA, can be decomposed into two different modes, just like an x and y axis. The divergence mode, or mode that looks like everything points outwards, is much stronger for GW waves and has actually been detected a couple of years ago by our post-doc John Kovac. A more complete picture of this mode is needed though and that is what we and our sister project Quad are going to do.

The holy grail of CMB polarization physics is the curl mode, or the other mode where everything goes around in circles. This has not been detected and is the smoking gun of inflation. I.e. whoever finds this gets to call themselves a super big whig smarty two shoes. That is what we are really looking for. If anyone finds it in the mean time, can you send me an email?

3. Do you get to keep any of the penguins/do you get to eat any penguins/ do you get to see any penguins?

OK, so no one besides me wants to eat one but a guy can hope. So penguins are 1 step removed from being a fish, just like seals. They don’t fly and generally eat things you can find in the ocean. So at the South Pole, which is 900 miles from the ocean, 10,000 feet high, frozen solid with no access to water, being the driest place on earth, having no vegetation or natural food source other than ice, it’s a bad place for penguins. So no, no penguin interaction. Plus there are international treaties about taking home penguins from Antarctica, however getting international treaties about global warming, well… Maybe the global warming beakers need to find a cute and cuddly mascot? Like Chris’ bunny?

4. Can I send you something? Can you send me something?

I can send you something. If you want a post cards or care package of ice, lemme know. As far as you sending me stuff, highly doubtful. There is approximately 1 plane a day, during good times and that has to bring in everything we need. Items include but are not limited to people, food, clothing, wood, steal, snowmobiles, and especially FUEL. If you think gas is bad where you get it from, try 16 dollars a gallon. However, if you would like to try, go for it. Apparently though, letters get through within a week or 2, so if you want to send one, send it soon.

5. Bring warm clothing/Stay Warm

Ok, so I’d like to set some rumors and myths straight. First of all, yes, its -30F here with -60WC. However, there is a reverse Florida effect as well. This is the driest place on earth so there is no moisture to trap or transfer heat. Imagine if Florida had no humidity, it might be as nice of a place as San Diego then. Also, we are at 10,000 feet, which yes does make it colder, but it also makes the air thinner. Less air mass means less capacity to hold and transfer heat. I.e. if there is no wind, and you are in the sun, even a regular Boston/Buffalo/Minnesota jacket will do. Ski goggles are nice to keep blown snow out of your face and a facemask keeps your eyes and ears toasty. But I’ve been outside in short sleeves already for a few minutes, and because we are always inside, feeling fresh air is nice.

I must say though is that there is acclamation time. The first time I stepped foot off the plane and felt that -30F air, wow! I thought people were nutz. Turns out, once you get acclimated, its not all that bad. But let’s be real here, nothing beats southern California weather.

6. What did I do for thanksgiving

See above

7. How do you not get lost when there is a white out?

So when there is a white-out, all the places to walk all over the camp, even miles away, are marked by flags. That plus you know your orientation from the buildings gives you enough sense not to wander the wrong way.

8. When can I call you/when is the satellite up/What time is it there?

You are all more than welcome to call. The numbers listed at the top of the web page are technically Colorado numbers that are beamed down here. The “beaming” is transparent to me and you so its just domestic long distance. Unfortunately we don’t have voice mail here (we are at the South Pole so we should rough it a little) so email me and I can give you a buzz if you don’t get me.

The time difference is -3 hours from PST, -6 EST, officially New Zealand time. That is if its 2am here, 5am in LA, 8am in NY; (although there is a day difference, but don’t worry about that so much). I wake up at midnight here so I am awake for the full satellite time. The satellites are up ~2am-1pm here. If you go to the www.southpole.usap.gov website you can get exact times. Then you can convert to your time zone (plus you get to see the name of the satellite you are using).

9. How do you get to work?

I am trying to walk the mile or so to work for the exercise. If I didn’t, I am just a computer geek who sits around all day. Although a geek at the south pole which makes it a little less geeky. And yes it’s -40 WC or so but if you are all bundled up its actually too hot

10. What do they have for Breakfast? Lunch? Dinner?

The food here is fantastic first of all. (Except maybe if you are a big veggie, vegan, or glatt kosher) There are pastries of all sorts at all meals plus a soft serve ice cream machine running nearly 12/7.

Breakfast is always hot and includes eggs, bacon, sausage, different types of omelettes, keshes.

Lunch is different everyday including beef, chicken, fish, lamb dishes plus a vegetarian option that includes great tofu dishes, wheat gluten dishes, and grains like cous cous. All different style of Mexican, asian, American

Dinner is about the same as lunch, just served at different times

Plus, there is a leftover fridge that includes leftovers from the last few days just in case there is a single meal you don’t like, although I seriously doubt it.

Famous dishes include:

Best chilli I ever had

Pineapple/Chicken/Bar-b-queue sauce pizza

11. What commercial companies are there? FedEx? Starbucks? McDonalds?

None! Zip! Zilch!

If you want that starbucks coffee, tuff!! Bo big macs, No small macs, no crap here. This is basically a military operation where the only things that come in or out is in C130 military planes. The one exception is that I found out there is a private company that does extreme tours all over the world that fly twin otter planes into the pole for fun. They either fly all the way here, stay for 3 hours and visit the gift shop, or drop skiers off at some latitude and let them ski in.

12. How did you know what to do once you got to CHC? What happens before you get to the pole?

When you land in Christchurch, you will get off the plane, go down the escalator to the baggage section. As soon as you get off the escalator, there is a booth from Raytheon which will have a person that has all that information. Most likely there will be 10 or so people on the plane with you also going to MCM. Most likely by now you'll have noticed them b/c standing in line at customs in AUK, everyone has the blue penguin tags. Check in with the person first before getting your bags and they'll give you your hotel reservations.

Further along in the hotel, on the other side of the gift shops is a bank where you can change money. Depending on how many days before your flight to MCM and how you are going to pay for things, I would change about 100 dollars a day.

They will call you a shuttle which will cost $5 to go to your B&B/hotel. It'll take 20 minutes but that's the cheapest shuttle option. Raytheon has a special deal with this shuttle company. Otherwise its 7 dollars on the bus, or upto 10 dollars on any other shuttle.

If you arrive on the day you check in for your ECW, then you'll go straight to the Antarctic center, if not you'll go in to the city for the day. You don't need all your bags and will have to bring them back out the next day to check them anyway, so if you want, you can go straight to the Antarctic center instead of back to the city and drop off some stuff.

Once you check all your stuff the day before the MCM flight, they tell you to pack an overnight bag with enough clothing for a couple of days in case you get cancelled or boomeranged b/c they don't let you have your checked baggage back.

13. What is the phone access down there? Do you need a phone card?

Phone access is great as far as living at the end of the world. We have unlimited calling during satellite times. We have a phone in our room (if you live in the main station as opposed to summer camp) and in the lab. (Numbers at the top) The numbers originate as if they came from Denver. So it looks like a domestic called but it actually is automatically beamed to the south pole. The beaming process is transparent to you and I.

14. How do they regulate how long your shower is?

The water is turned on with a credit card type device they give you when you get here. You get two 2-minute showers a week. You scan the card to turn on the shower. When the time is up small electrodes protrude from the wall and start shocking you. I was once able to stand the shocks for an extra 2 minutes!!!

15. Did you pick your seat to NZ before leaving? What hotel did you stay in in NZ?

The NSF buys your plane ticket for you, ~$1800. Unfortunately, you can’t arrange a seat ahead of time as far as I know but I am going to try hard on the way back from NZ and the honeymoon with Hollie.

When I was in Christchurch I stayed in a quaint little B&B near the center of town called the Windsor. I recommend it if you are ever in CHC.

16. Do they have power outlets that take US plugs for my laptop, camera, ipod, etc?

In NZ, there are 110v plugs in the bathroom I believe. Still a travel charger isn’t a bad idea, they are small and easy to carry. At MCM and NPX its all US power.

17. How does the mail work there?

See #4. Although email is not bad. They use the iridium satellite network to get 24/7 email down here. These are a bunch of low bandwidth satellites but they cover the entire globe. Emails are limited to 24kb so no pics or super long emails get can get through until the bigger satellite get up.

18. Why is the airport code for the south pole NPX?

Apparently the Navy took all airport codes starting with N. Since this is a Navy station originally, bingo!

19. Which side of the road do they drive on in NZ? At MCM, CHC?

Left side in NZ, right in MCM, CHC. Driving on the left side is sooooooooooooooo freaky. It blows your mind!

20. Why does the pole move relative to the buildings, don’t they all move together?

Good question. So the pole doesn’t move at all!! The pole is always at 90degrees away from every point on the equator. The problem is the actually ice sheet on top of Antarctica moves (in pole speak towards grid west which means the pole seems to move towards grid east) towards NZ I believe. The geographic south pole is a property of the spinning of the earth, and the continents on top of the planet move in random directions without any care of which way the earth is spinning.

21. Am I going to discover something that could disprove the big bang?

Ahh, this is an excellent question as well, go Abramowicz’s!!! So the general facts that the universe is expanding and was smaller in the past and that it started with some giant explosion are as solid facts as DNA tells us how humans work. There is too much evidence, both direct and indirect that make these facts indisputable. (OK, nothing is indisputable, but its damn good.) What we are trying to do is iron out some of the details about how this explosion occurred and possibly how that’s related to the mysterious neutrino particle and the eventual outcome of the universe. So whether we find what we are looking for, or not, will not change the general facts about the BB. What is will do is possibly uncover strange and mysterious physics or even have something to say about superstring theory. We are trying to see back in the future at a split second after the BB, ~10 ^ -26 seconds after. This is something no other optical, infrared, x-ray, direct gravitational wave, or neutrino telescope can do or will ever be able to do.

22. Funny comment of the week from my buddy Sam Rosen who keeps it real: I think everyone north of the 35^th parallel can appreciate

Sam writes:

“Great pictures. This seems like such a cool trip. Every time I am about to complain about how cold it is here lately, I think of you, but then I complain anyway”

24. Runner up funny comment of the week:

Are there coconuts at the south pole?

Umm, Leah, no

25. Dude, you’re like the Professor on Gilligan’s island, can’t you build a camera out of snow and Ice?

True, I could, but the pictures would get all soggy when I took the camera inside… L

26. Is being at the pole tough on married life?

Seriously, it sucks big time. Especially for Hollie b/c I get up when the satellite gets up and try to call her at 6am. Sorry bout that babe…

27. What’s worse, rain or snow? Is the worse in Oregon/Minnesota/Boston?

Actually, after living in a bunch of different places here’s my ranking of the worst weather spots including the pole

1. Boston: Nasty winters, Nasty summers, old buildings, no underground tunnels, no culture that embraces the cold.

2. Buffalo: A close second but it has milder summers, and Niagara falls. Plus a president got shot there, how bad could it get?

3. South Pole: Two things make this 3 instead of 1. First, the novelty of it all. Second, the weather is always exactly the same, dry and cold, so you are well prepared.

Best weather:

1. SD: like there’s a question

2. tie goes to SF. The town just has charm and I love the tempered climate

3. Oregon: I grew up with web feet, who doesn’t love rain?

In the middle:

Minnesota: yeah, I have a soft spot for that cold miserable place. But at least its not one of the other 3…

Berkeley, Ca

Jerusalem, Israel

Carmiel, Israel

28. Funny note of the week, courtesy of my beautiful wife:

Something I just heard on 10 News at 11: "Newspapers are reporting that after the Rose Bowl in January, Reggie Bush is planning on leaving USC and entering the NFL Draft. And, in other shocking news, Tuesday follows Monday in the days of the week."

29. How com you can send me e-mail when the satellite isn't up?

ahh, a good question. See, there are 3 main data transfer satellites that the pole uses for communications but those are not the only visible satellites from the pole. There are probable dozens of satellites that we can see from the pole that are in various orbits. eg. New Zealand telecom has a set of satellites that the pole can see but the NSF doesn't want to rely upon them nor pay them the $$.

The problem is the 3 main satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, (an orbit that takes 24 hours) but not a geostationary orbit (an orbit of 24 hours which keeps them over the same spot of the earth). Therefore these 3 satellites wobble over the equator and when they are below the equator, we can see them from the pole. However, when they are above the equator, we cannot see them.

There is a set of satellites call the iridium network. They were put up in the late 90s and were supposed to dominate global communications. However, each satellite only has the capacity of an old modem, like 9600 baud, so they are basically useless in today's society. Therefore, the company went bankrupt. The satellite network was called iridium b/c it has 64 satellites, with 8 different satellites in each of 8 different geosynchronous orbits that cut the earth up like an orange. It was named iridium b/c the element iridium has 64 protons. (Actually, they changed the number to 72 satellites but didn't like that element so they kept iridium)

Now these satellites are used on a pay per basis used and the NSF has contracted a certain amount of bandwidth. However, since these are such old satellites. the amount of bandwidth per day is puny. Each email that is sent during off-main-peak times can only be 24K to get through the iridium network. Otherwise, the email is put in the queue to be sent when the 3 satellites are up. Actually, if there was an emergency during off-peak times, there are a certain amount of phone calls that are allowed over the iridium network. So if there is something really important, we can use the iridium phones.

Abbreviations:

CMB –The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation leftover from the big bang

DSL – Dark Sector Laboratory where the experiment is housed

BICEP/JRGWBT – The project names: Background Imager of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization or The John Robinson Gravitational Wave Background Telescope

CHC – Christchurch, New Zealand

MCM – McMurdo, Antarctica

NPX – The South Pole

pBB – post Big Bang

MRI – Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging

B&B – Bed & Breakfast lodging. Usually a house-sized building ran by 10 people or less.

NZ – New Zealand

24/7 – Somethings that lasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year

Kb, MB GB, TB – Amount of storage space, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte. A typical text email is on the order of kilobytes, a nice big picture is about a MB, or a short song. 1GB is about the size of the operating system on your computer such as window XP. 1 TB is way more room than most people need, unless you need to store scientific data taken over the course of a year.

F – Fahrenheit

C – Celsius, 1degrees C = 1.8 degrees F

K – Kelvin, 1degrees K = 1.8 degrees F, 0K = -273.13C

WC – windchill. Takes into account wind speed when computing temperature. Apparently originally calculated on how low it took a bucket of water to evaporate

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