Send student questions to [email protected] and we'll answer them here!
Helen has now made a page (here) with frequently asked questions all about penguins!
Q1: Where do the scientists sleep there? What do they research there? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School (Thanks to all of you for the great questions, we'll try to get to more of them soon! )
Antarctica has many research stations, mostly around the edges of the continent (see this map for a few of them). They were built to allow people to live and work here, with beds, office space, laboratories, and the usual things that you will need to live in a place for a few months. Many of these stations are only used during the Antarctic summer (which is during winter in the northern hemisphere), but some have people living there through the winter too - a much more difficult time in such a cold place.
We are currently staying at the biggest one of them all - McMurdo Station, which belongs to the US. I'm told it's called the 'New York of Antarctica' because it holds a huge population (well, huge for Antarctica) of about a thousand people in summer. Because it's so big and it's used even in the winter, there are facilities I didn't expect: a climbing wall, basketball court, bars, and even skis and fat bikes to use on the glacier. As for where we sleep, we share rooms that I think are something like a US college dorm. They're really nice for a research station, but not somewhere you'd want to live long term.
As for what they research - many, many things! As far as I’ve seen, there is research on biology, physics, chemistry, geology, oceanography, meteorology, and the list probably keeps going. So far, I’ve seen research on Weddell seal mothers, penguin behavior, atmospheric chemistry, fossils from Antarctic organisms that lived hundreds of millions ago, on lakes that have been frozen for thousands of years, and much more. It’s an exciting place!
- Mridul
Q2: How do the poles of Mars differ from those of the Earth? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Mars is further away from the Sun than the Earth, so it doesn't get as warm. So, just like the rest of Mars, its poles are colder than Earth's poles. Not only water is frozen, but also carbon dioxide (CO2), which makes up a lot of ice at the poles of Mars. You can see Mars' frozen poles with a small telescope in your backyard, if the time of the year is right (if the Earth is just passing Mars on its orbit). In the summer, Mars' CO2 ice goes back directly into its atmosphere without melting, we say that it "sublimates". As far as we know, if there is any life on Mars, it's in the form of microbes, so sadly there aren't any martian penguins!
- Marc
Q3: What do penguins do in their spare time? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
I’ve actually been chewing on this question for several days. Till two weeks ago, I would have answered that birds and animals don’t really have ‘spare’ time – they will be most likely to reproduce if they get energy when they can and conserve it when getting energy is too difficult or costly. And since those that reproduce define what the next generation is like (by passing on their genes), wasting energy or time is not likely to be common.
Then I came to Antarctica and met Adelie penguins.
A group of penguins (which I’m delighted to learn is called a ‘waddle’) spotted us working on the sea ice from several kilometres away and came scooting towards us on their bellies (they are shockingly fast on ice). They came right up to within 6 feet / 2 metres of us, walked amongst us, took a close look at our vehicles, and then after about 15 minutes decided to leave. It gets even better – they had apparently visited a group of us who had come out an hour before, but they returned to see the new group as well.
So what do penguins do in their spare time? They apparently go people-watching.
- Mridul
Q4: Is it true that it is always day there like for a few months and then always dark there for a few months? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Yes! And the reason may be familiar to you - it’s why you have seasons.
Because the earth tilts on an axis, a person standing exactly at the South and North pole would see 6 months of light and 6 months of darkness (though it’s not entirely dark the whole time, it can be like twilight). If you’re not exactly at the poles, you get short periods in between where you have days and nights. Right now we are about 1400 kms / 850 miles from the South Pole and there has been continuous sunlight the entire time we have been here. The next sunset will be in about one month, and then in a few short weeks it will switch to being entirely dark.
It feels very unusual to experience no darkness. Several people have trouble sleeping, but it can be quite amazing to walk out in the middle of the night and have about as much light as in the afternoon. No light sounds much tougher, though - I don’t know if I could handle several months of it.
- Mridul
Q5: Since Antarctica is the driest continent, how do you get and purify your drinking water? What food do you eat? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
At our station (McMurdo), there is a very large population, or at least the largest population on the continent (750 as of today). Because of this we have a treatment plant which processes water from the nearby ross sea. The food that we eat all gets shipped in by one giant cargo ship in February (it's coming to resupply us next week) as well as by military aircraft. Unfortunately we are at pretty low supply now, so it is a lot of frozen food and very little fruit.
- Chelsea
Q6: How common are igloos and who first built them? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
There are no humans who originated from antarctica, and I don't think I've seen any penguins building them. You'll have a better chance of finding igloos up near the north pole where they originated with Inuit people.
- Chelsea
Q7: How do other living organisms get water for survival in winter? Especially penguins. - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
Penguins drink melt water on the ice, or use snow to get their water. They also have glands that help them filter salt from their bloodstream.
- Chelsea
Q8) Do mushrooms, fungi and cacti grow in Antarctica? How can they grow without enough soil? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
Antarctica is very dry, but no cacti here. There are fungi, with tiny ones in the water and ~400 species of lichen on land. Some of them might be familiar to you, if you've ever seen the colorful lichen that look like little maps crusting on rock. Nothing like mushrooms from what I can tell.
- Chelsea
Q9: Since there is lot of ice as freshwater there, why can't we take it continents where there is scarcity? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
That's a tough question. Part of the reason is that the ice here is very important, and many things like climate in other areas of the world depend on the stability of the ice in antarctica. It would also take a lot of effort in terms of shipping, fuels, etc., to transport enough of this ice out to other parts of the world.
- Chelsea
Q10: Is there anybody researching aurora lights in Antarctica? Can you tell us why it comes and why is it mostly green? Have you seen this? Is there any proof? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
I haven't seen it down here in McMurdo, since during the summer it is 24 hour daylight. However we toured a monitoring base here that studies auroras. They happen all the time, whenever charged particles from a solar storm travel to earth, get caught in our magnetic field, and follow that field to the poles. When they interact with our atmosphere, that's when we see the aurora, and the color depends on which compounds in the atmosphere they are interacting with. Some of us have seen the northern lights, as we live in northern canada and the united states, but to see it here we'd have to stay for a very long and cold winter. FYI in antarctica it is called the Aurora Australis.
- Chelsea
Q11) Why is Antarctica a continent? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
Antarctica sits on its own continental plate. What's really interesting is that antarctica used to be connected to Africa, India, Australia and South America back when all the continents formed one large group. You can still find fossils of animals that match across all of these very distant places.
- Chelsea
Every continent is a big piece of land - a continental plate - composed of the light rocks. Together with oceanic plates made of heavy rocks, they build the Earth's crust. Antarctica seems like it's all build of ice, but underneath the ice (sometimes very thick ice - even 3km) there is a solid rock - the Antarctic continental plate.
- Ewa
Q12) Do you always carry life boat and life jackets? Can you tell us about something interesting that you did there? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
When we work at drilled holes in the sea ice, we don't use these items, but when we take a helicopter to the ice edge (where it meets the ocean), we have all sorts of safety measures in place. We wear life jackets and are secured to the ice by fixed ropes and ice screws. Sort of like the things you would use with ice climbing, except we're leaning off the ice to sample the water below.
- Chelsea
Q13) Were you afraid when you went there? Were you forced to go or did you go because you were interested? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
We were definitely not forced :) We all applied to be a part of this trip, since we were all interested in how organisms adapt to harsh environmental conditions and wanted to learn more about what this looks like at the southern end of those extremes.
- Chelsea
Q14) Why did you go with a team to Antarctica and not alone? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
When you travel or work in remote areas, it is very important that you always have a group to support you. There is so much work and equipment to use when you do a scientific expedition, you need enough people just to carry all the gear. In our situation, we were members of a team of early career scientists who were down to sample all kinds of things on the ice. Some of us study organisms in water, some on land, and some even study life in space, and together we use our complimentary skills to study life under ice.
- Chelsea
Q15) Why did you decide to go on this adventure? What did you like most there? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
I've (Chelsea) worked in arctic and alpine areas for a number of years, and was really interested to see how things were the same or different in the antarctic. My favorite part about being here, apart from seeing penguins for the first time, is looking across the ice to see the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, which are beautiful mountain peaks with massive glaciers flowing out of their valleys into the sea ice.
- Chelsea
Q16) What type of clothes do you wear? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
So much wool! We always layer many times, as you can be quite warm while travelling out to our field locations, but it gets very cold when you have to sit and wait for samples. We wear thick fleeces, a very warm down coat and insulated pants. We also sometimes wear ski goggles to protect against wind and snow, as well as thick gloves (with liners), and warm hats.
- Chelsea
Q17) If there is a drought or hailstorm in Antarctica, what will you do? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
Interestingly, Antarctica is considered a polar desert (it does snow here, but not very much). So you could say that this area is always in drought, and you can tell it is very dry when you arrive as you start having to drink much more water than you are used to in other areas of the world. I have yet to see a hailstorm, however there are many snow storms that blow through, with very strong winds. If we are at the station, we take cover in buildings, but if you are on the ice you might not have time to get back to the station. We always check the weather to try to predict this, but if anything were to go wrong and we got stuck out there, we take all of our warm clothes plus a 'survival bag', which has a tent, stove and food to keep us warm while the storm blows over.
- Chelsea
Q18) Are there any animals besides penguins in Antarctica? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Yes! There are many animals, they just don’t all live above ground! :) There are birds called Skuas and whales, orcas and seals! Down at the seafloor there are many animals including fish, starfish, mullusks, sea snails and more. It’s hard to believe they can live in water that is below freezing, at -2 degrees Celcius (28 degF) but they do! Icefish have a special antifreeze protein in their blood and body fluids that keeps ice crystals from growing there so that they don’t freeze. Way cool!
- Kate
Q19) Can you cook there? What do you eat? Do you have wifi? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Hi, yes you can cook here. Camp stoves will work out in the open as long as it’s not too windy and we have several buildings at the McMurdo base on Ross Island (where we’re staying) that have electricity and allow you to use stoves/microwaves etc. There is even a cafeteria here where everyone can eat at. We are mostly served canned and frozen foods that are reheated, but we actually have a real baker who makes us nice breads and desserts. And there is even ice cream! :) At McMurdo base, we even have wifi and can send emails and check websites, although the load speed is pretty slow and we can not use our cell phones. Scientists who fly out to a site to do research (usually by helicopter) are in a more rugged environment, basically camping the whole time and would cook their own meals on the campstoves.
-Kate
Q20) How do you use the bathroom for number 1 and number 2? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Here at McMurdo base where we’re staying we have normal toilets and the wastewater gets treated/cleaned before releasing the water out into the McMurdo bay. They ship out all waste to treatment facilities in the U.S. Big ships come into the bay here and bring McMurdo supplies and take out trash and waste. We try not to leave any kind of waste here in order to protect the environment and animals that live here. Any research groups that go out into the field pee into bottles and collect their #2 waste and bring it back to McMurdo to get shipped out later. It might sound a little yucky but think about a penguin who is trying to eat a fish and instead ate something we didn’t clean first and let get into the water. Now that would be gross! (and possible harmful to the penguin!)
-Kate
Q21) Are any of you divers? - Thornapple Kellogg School, Middlevale, Michigan
At least one of us (Chelsea) is a trained diver, but diving in Antarctica is different from most other places and needs special training. The water is so cold that if you took the salt out of it, it would freeze – seawater freezes below 0 degrees C / 32 degrees F. The light can be quite dim too. But most importantly, because there is a layer of ice above you, you need to be very careful so that you can find your way back to the hole that you entered through.
- Mridul
Q22) What is your favorite animal there? - Thornapple Kellogg School, Middlevale, Michigan
Can I choose a bird? If so, Adelie penguins will win hands down! They are just delightful and amazingly curious about us. I’ve now been visited by them thrice and it is magical every single time.
If birds are ruled out, I would have to pick krill. These small shrimp are surprisingly charming, and I almost feel bad that they are eaten in huge quantities (trillions!) by baleen whales and seals. Almost – it’s rather nice to have lots of seals and whales around, don’t you think?
- Mridul
Q23) If there are two things you wish you knew about Antarctica before you went there, what would those be? - Inventure Academy, Bangalore
- Mridul
Q24) Is it hard working in the cold all day? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
It depends on each person because we don’t have the same sensitivity to cold temperatures, and also depends on where we’re living. For people coming from cold regions, it can be not too hard with good clothes (a big red coat that you can live in at -40°C and thermal underwear) while it can be more difficult for people living in warm regions. In addition, it can be more difficult at the beginning of your stay in Antarctica (few days), especially with our hands because they can be wet and very cold when we collect sampling seawater and ice. Thus, it’s very important to always take some hand- and foot-warmers (chemical packets that give out heat) to warm our extremities. When we worked, we move and can warm up very quickly.
- Virginie
Q25) What do you do about the low temperatures to keep warm? (Other versions: How do you keep warm in extremely cold temperature? / How do the scientists survive in Antarctica's below zero temperatures? / How do you deal with the cold?)
- 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
To keep warm, we do several things, such as:
* Wearing many layers of clothes like an “onion”, with thermal underwear and a big warm winter “Canada Goose” coat and always have multiple warm gloves.
* Always moving and occasionally doing the “penguin dance” to warm up your hands (a bit hard to describe - maybe we'll try to do a video of this).
- Virginie
Q26) Is it always below 0? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Surprisingly, it's not! January is a summer month in Antarctica and we've experienced +1 °C on one day. And the highest recorded temperature is 19.8°C on the Signy Island, and the highest temperature on the solid piece of land (not on the island) was 17.5°C (63.5 °F) at Esperanza Base, on the Antarctic Peninsula. However, if you go onto Polar Plateau - a large, flat icy area above 2500m, which most of the inner Antarctica is - the highest temperature ever recorded there was -7 °C - so always below 0!
- Ewa
Q27) Ms. Poniecka: I know that microorganisms can either be single celled or multicellular. In your research have you come across more single or multicellular microorganisms in Antarctica? - Attilio, Grade 6, North Cross School in Roanoke, VA
Right now some of us are doing research on single celled organisms - bacteria. We're studying different depths of sea water and counting cells in it. 1 liter of sea water can have even 2 billions of bacteria in it! And inside your body you also have some friendly microbes - gut bacteria - which can account for 10 times the number of cells in your own body. So wherever you go, there is always more single celled organisms than multicellular ones!
- Ewa
Q28) Can similar research work be conducted in the Arctic circle? - Inventure Academy, Bangalore
I think that similar studies can be conducted in the Arctic circle, but some differences are important. For example, there are the Dry Valleys in Antarctica (a very unusual environment) and some animals are specific to one pole (penguins at the South Pole and polar bears at the North Pole). As in the Southern Ocean, there are numerous icebreakers from different countries (e.g., Russia, Germany, Norway, Canada, US) which go to the Arctic between spring and fall, and people do research on biological, chemical, geological and physical topics. There are also different scientific bases with laboratories, where researchers can go to work (e.g. Resolute Bay, Nuuk). If there is no station and you want to work near the coast, it is also possible to work at an ice camp (tents on sea ice).
- Virginie
Q29) Does Antarctica have places that aren't covered with snow? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Yes! There are many places in Antarctica not covered with snow. A most remarkable example is the McMurdo Dry Valleys - they are called 'Dry', because the is no snow, but a barren landscape of rocks and glaciers. It's one of the driest places on Earth, so it's a desert, but a very very cold one. The other example is the biggest research station, where we are based - McMurdo station. Around the science village there is no snow, except of few occasions, when we'll get a huge snowfall and it will stay for several hours. Antarctic Peninsula also has large snow-free areas, because of its warmer, marine climate.
- Ewa
Q30) How do glaciers erode and/or change over time, if it's always so cold? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
There are several processes responsible for this. First, there is sublimation - the process in which the ice turns directly into a vapor thanks to the energy of the Sun. It's not very quick and you would not see a change in a day, but over time the surface of the ice will change. There are also biological processes like ice algae growing in the ice and changing its properties and speeding up melting or cryoconite holes - very little ponds with water, which melt the ice around them thanks to darkening of the surface. And probably the biggest change is caused by the movement of the glaciers. They are really really heavy - imagine tonnes and tonnes of ice pressing on the ice on the very bottom. The pressure is so large, that the bottom ice becomes liquid and acts as a lubricant for movement. Have you ever tried a water slide? Was it easy and fast to slide on it? The effect is similar for the glacier. And thanks to this movement, the calving is possible - pieces of ice break apart from glacier and create icebergs. This is how the mass, shape and surface of the glaciers change over time.
- Ewa
Q31) Is the ice melting in Antarctica? If so is it because of climate change?
Surprisingly, melting from the surface of Antarctica’s ice sheet is responsible for a very small proportion of the total ice that is loss from the continent each year. Instead, vast frozen rivers of ice (called glaciers) carry ice from the thick interior of the continent to the edges, and dump it into the ocean (forming huge icebergs!). This process is responsible for significant ice loss each year. However, whilst Antarctica loses ice from its glaciers falling into the sea, it is also gaining ice due to snowfall. It is very difficult to make measurements of ice loss and gain in Antarctica, because the continent is just so big! However, most scientists agree that Antarctica is losing ice faster than it is being replaced, causing sea levels to rise.
Climate change could be the cause of ice loss from Antarctica. A particular region of West Antarctica is currently experiencing some of the fastest rates of warming observed across the entire Earth! However, since Antarctica is a big place, climate change is not having an even impact across the continent, and some areas have even shown signs of cooling. Still, as the Earth continues to warm due to climate change, it is possible that Antarctica’s ice sheet could destabilize, leading to disastrous sea level rise.
- James
Antarctica has many research stations, mostly around the edges of the continent (see this map for a few of them). They were built to allow people to live and work here, with beds, office space, laboratories, and the usual things that you will need to live in a place for a few months. Many of these stations are only used during the Antarctic summer (which is during winter in the northern hemisphere), but some have people living there through the winter too - a much more difficult time in such a cold place.
We are currently staying at the biggest one of them all - McMurdo Station, which belongs to the US. I'm told it's called the 'New York of Antarctica' because it holds a huge population (well, huge for Antarctica) of about a thousand people in summer. Because it's so big and it's used even in the winter, there are facilities I didn't expect: a climbing wall, basketball court, bars, and even skis and fat bikes to use on the glacier. As for where we sleep, we share rooms that I think are something like a US college dorm. They're really nice for a research station, but not somewhere you'd want to live long term.
As for what they research - many, many things! As far as I’ve seen, there is research on biology, physics, chemistry, geology, oceanography, meteorology, and the list probably keeps going. So far, I’ve seen research on Weddell seal mothers, penguin behavior, atmospheric chemistry, fossils from Antarctic organisms that lived hundreds of millions ago, on lakes that have been frozen for thousands of years, and much more. It’s an exciting place!
- Mridul
Q2: How do the poles of Mars differ from those of the Earth? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Mars is further away from the Sun than the Earth, so it doesn't get as warm. So, just like the rest of Mars, its poles are colder than Earth's poles. Not only water is frozen, but also carbon dioxide (CO2), which makes up a lot of ice at the poles of Mars. You can see Mars' frozen poles with a small telescope in your backyard, if the time of the year is right (if the Earth is just passing Mars on its orbit). In the summer, Mars' CO2 ice goes back directly into its atmosphere without melting, we say that it "sublimates". As far as we know, if there is any life on Mars, it's in the form of microbes, so sadly there aren't any martian penguins!
- Marc
Q3: What do penguins do in their spare time? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
I’ve actually been chewing on this question for several days. Till two weeks ago, I would have answered that birds and animals don’t really have ‘spare’ time – they will be most likely to reproduce if they get energy when they can and conserve it when getting energy is too difficult or costly. And since those that reproduce define what the next generation is like (by passing on their genes), wasting energy or time is not likely to be common.
Then I came to Antarctica and met Adelie penguins.
A group of penguins (which I’m delighted to learn is called a ‘waddle’) spotted us working on the sea ice from several kilometres away and came scooting towards us on their bellies (they are shockingly fast on ice). They came right up to within 6 feet / 2 metres of us, walked amongst us, took a close look at our vehicles, and then after about 15 minutes decided to leave. It gets even better – they had apparently visited a group of us who had come out an hour before, but they returned to see the new group as well.
So what do penguins do in their spare time? They apparently go people-watching.
- Mridul
Q4: Is it true that it is always day there like for a few months and then always dark there for a few months? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Yes! And the reason may be familiar to you - it’s why you have seasons.
Because the earth tilts on an axis, a person standing exactly at the South and North pole would see 6 months of light and 6 months of darkness (though it’s not entirely dark the whole time, it can be like twilight). If you’re not exactly at the poles, you get short periods in between where you have days and nights. Right now we are about 1400 kms / 850 miles from the South Pole and there has been continuous sunlight the entire time we have been here. The next sunset will be in about one month, and then in a few short weeks it will switch to being entirely dark.
It feels very unusual to experience no darkness. Several people have trouble sleeping, but it can be quite amazing to walk out in the middle of the night and have about as much light as in the afternoon. No light sounds much tougher, though - I don’t know if I could handle several months of it.
- Mridul
Q5: Since Antarctica is the driest continent, how do you get and purify your drinking water? What food do you eat? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
At our station (McMurdo), there is a very large population, or at least the largest population on the continent (750 as of today). Because of this we have a treatment plant which processes water from the nearby ross sea. The food that we eat all gets shipped in by one giant cargo ship in February (it's coming to resupply us next week) as well as by military aircraft. Unfortunately we are at pretty low supply now, so it is a lot of frozen food and very little fruit.
- Chelsea
Q6: How common are igloos and who first built them? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
There are no humans who originated from antarctica, and I don't think I've seen any penguins building them. You'll have a better chance of finding igloos up near the north pole where they originated with Inuit people.
- Chelsea
Q7: How do other living organisms get water for survival in winter? Especially penguins. - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
Penguins drink melt water on the ice, or use snow to get their water. They also have glands that help them filter salt from their bloodstream.
- Chelsea
Q8) Do mushrooms, fungi and cacti grow in Antarctica? How can they grow without enough soil? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
Antarctica is very dry, but no cacti here. There are fungi, with tiny ones in the water and ~400 species of lichen on land. Some of them might be familiar to you, if you've ever seen the colorful lichen that look like little maps crusting on rock. Nothing like mushrooms from what I can tell.
- Chelsea
Q9: Since there is lot of ice as freshwater there, why can't we take it continents where there is scarcity? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
That's a tough question. Part of the reason is that the ice here is very important, and many things like climate in other areas of the world depend on the stability of the ice in antarctica. It would also take a lot of effort in terms of shipping, fuels, etc., to transport enough of this ice out to other parts of the world.
- Chelsea
Q10: Is there anybody researching aurora lights in Antarctica? Can you tell us why it comes and why is it mostly green? Have you seen this? Is there any proof? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
I haven't seen it down here in McMurdo, since during the summer it is 24 hour daylight. However we toured a monitoring base here that studies auroras. They happen all the time, whenever charged particles from a solar storm travel to earth, get caught in our magnetic field, and follow that field to the poles. When they interact with our atmosphere, that's when we see the aurora, and the color depends on which compounds in the atmosphere they are interacting with. Some of us have seen the northern lights, as we live in northern canada and the united states, but to see it here we'd have to stay for a very long and cold winter. FYI in antarctica it is called the Aurora Australis.
- Chelsea
Q11) Why is Antarctica a continent? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
Antarctica sits on its own continental plate. What's really interesting is that antarctica used to be connected to Africa, India, Australia and South America back when all the continents formed one large group. You can still find fossils of animals that match across all of these very distant places.
- Chelsea
Every continent is a big piece of land - a continental plate - composed of the light rocks. Together with oceanic plates made of heavy rocks, they build the Earth's crust. Antarctica seems like it's all build of ice, but underneath the ice (sometimes very thick ice - even 3km) there is a solid rock - the Antarctic continental plate.
- Ewa
Q12) Do you always carry life boat and life jackets? Can you tell us about something interesting that you did there? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
When we work at drilled holes in the sea ice, we don't use these items, but when we take a helicopter to the ice edge (where it meets the ocean), we have all sorts of safety measures in place. We wear life jackets and are secured to the ice by fixed ropes and ice screws. Sort of like the things you would use with ice climbing, except we're leaning off the ice to sample the water below.
- Chelsea
Q13) Were you afraid when you went there? Were you forced to go or did you go because you were interested? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
We were definitely not forced :) We all applied to be a part of this trip, since we were all interested in how organisms adapt to harsh environmental conditions and wanted to learn more about what this looks like at the southern end of those extremes.
- Chelsea
Q14) Why did you go with a team to Antarctica and not alone? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
When you travel or work in remote areas, it is very important that you always have a group to support you. There is so much work and equipment to use when you do a scientific expedition, you need enough people just to carry all the gear. In our situation, we were members of a team of early career scientists who were down to sample all kinds of things on the ice. Some of us study organisms in water, some on land, and some even study life in space, and together we use our complimentary skills to study life under ice.
- Chelsea
Q15) Why did you decide to go on this adventure? What did you like most there? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
I've (Chelsea) worked in arctic and alpine areas for a number of years, and was really interested to see how things were the same or different in the antarctic. My favorite part about being here, apart from seeing penguins for the first time, is looking across the ice to see the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, which are beautiful mountain peaks with massive glaciers flowing out of their valleys into the sea ice.
- Chelsea
Q16) What type of clothes do you wear? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
So much wool! We always layer many times, as you can be quite warm while travelling out to our field locations, but it gets very cold when you have to sit and wait for samples. We wear thick fleeces, a very warm down coat and insulated pants. We also sometimes wear ski goggles to protect against wind and snow, as well as thick gloves (with liners), and warm hats.
- Chelsea
Q17) If there is a drought or hailstorm in Antarctica, what will you do? - Vijaybharathi Model School, Hyderabad
Interestingly, Antarctica is considered a polar desert (it does snow here, but not very much). So you could say that this area is always in drought, and you can tell it is very dry when you arrive as you start having to drink much more water than you are used to in other areas of the world. I have yet to see a hailstorm, however there are many snow storms that blow through, with very strong winds. If we are at the station, we take cover in buildings, but if you are on the ice you might not have time to get back to the station. We always check the weather to try to predict this, but if anything were to go wrong and we got stuck out there, we take all of our warm clothes plus a 'survival bag', which has a tent, stove and food to keep us warm while the storm blows over.
- Chelsea
Q18) Are there any animals besides penguins in Antarctica? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Yes! There are many animals, they just don’t all live above ground! :) There are birds called Skuas and whales, orcas and seals! Down at the seafloor there are many animals including fish, starfish, mullusks, sea snails and more. It’s hard to believe they can live in water that is below freezing, at -2 degrees Celcius (28 degF) but they do! Icefish have a special antifreeze protein in their blood and body fluids that keeps ice crystals from growing there so that they don’t freeze. Way cool!
- Kate
Q19) Can you cook there? What do you eat? Do you have wifi? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Hi, yes you can cook here. Camp stoves will work out in the open as long as it’s not too windy and we have several buildings at the McMurdo base on Ross Island (where we’re staying) that have electricity and allow you to use stoves/microwaves etc. There is even a cafeteria here where everyone can eat at. We are mostly served canned and frozen foods that are reheated, but we actually have a real baker who makes us nice breads and desserts. And there is even ice cream! :) At McMurdo base, we even have wifi and can send emails and check websites, although the load speed is pretty slow and we can not use our cell phones. Scientists who fly out to a site to do research (usually by helicopter) are in a more rugged environment, basically camping the whole time and would cook their own meals on the campstoves.
-Kate
Q20) How do you use the bathroom for number 1 and number 2? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Here at McMurdo base where we’re staying we have normal toilets and the wastewater gets treated/cleaned before releasing the water out into the McMurdo bay. They ship out all waste to treatment facilities in the U.S. Big ships come into the bay here and bring McMurdo supplies and take out trash and waste. We try not to leave any kind of waste here in order to protect the environment and animals that live here. Any research groups that go out into the field pee into bottles and collect their #2 waste and bring it back to McMurdo to get shipped out later. It might sound a little yucky but think about a penguin who is trying to eat a fish and instead ate something we didn’t clean first and let get into the water. Now that would be gross! (and possible harmful to the penguin!)
-Kate
Q21) Are any of you divers? - Thornapple Kellogg School, Middlevale, Michigan
At least one of us (Chelsea) is a trained diver, but diving in Antarctica is different from most other places and needs special training. The water is so cold that if you took the salt out of it, it would freeze – seawater freezes below 0 degrees C / 32 degrees F. The light can be quite dim too. But most importantly, because there is a layer of ice above you, you need to be very careful so that you can find your way back to the hole that you entered through.
- Mridul
Q22) What is your favorite animal there? - Thornapple Kellogg School, Middlevale, Michigan
Can I choose a bird? If so, Adelie penguins will win hands down! They are just delightful and amazingly curious about us. I’ve now been visited by them thrice and it is magical every single time.
If birds are ruled out, I would have to pick krill. These small shrimp are surprisingly charming, and I almost feel bad that they are eaten in huge quantities (trillions!) by baleen whales and seals. Almost – it’s rather nice to have lots of seals and whales around, don’t you think?
- Mridul
Q23) If there are two things you wish you knew about Antarctica before you went there, what would those be? - Inventure Academy, Bangalore
- Bring fruit. Lots of it. The research stations are supplied by ship very, very rarely. Today is supply day and I’m so looking forward to some fresh fruit!
- Cotton clothes are useless because they make you cold and they are not worth carrying. I really should have known this after having lived in the northern US for a while, but I didn’t. Having grown up in Madras/Chennai, everything I'm used to wearing is cotton!
- Mridul
Q24) Is it hard working in the cold all day? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
It depends on each person because we don’t have the same sensitivity to cold temperatures, and also depends on where we’re living. For people coming from cold regions, it can be not too hard with good clothes (a big red coat that you can live in at -40°C and thermal underwear) while it can be more difficult for people living in warm regions. In addition, it can be more difficult at the beginning of your stay in Antarctica (few days), especially with our hands because they can be wet and very cold when we collect sampling seawater and ice. Thus, it’s very important to always take some hand- and foot-warmers (chemical packets that give out heat) to warm our extremities. When we worked, we move and can warm up very quickly.
- Virginie
Q25) What do you do about the low temperatures to keep warm? (Other versions: How do you keep warm in extremely cold temperature? / How do the scientists survive in Antarctica's below zero temperatures? / How do you deal with the cold?)
- 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
To keep warm, we do several things, such as:
* Wearing many layers of clothes like an “onion”, with thermal underwear and a big warm winter “Canada Goose” coat and always have multiple warm gloves.
* Always moving and occasionally doing the “penguin dance” to warm up your hands (a bit hard to describe - maybe we'll try to do a video of this).
- Virginie
Q26) Is it always below 0? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Surprisingly, it's not! January is a summer month in Antarctica and we've experienced +1 °C on one day. And the highest recorded temperature is 19.8°C on the Signy Island, and the highest temperature on the solid piece of land (not on the island) was 17.5°C (63.5 °F) at Esperanza Base, on the Antarctic Peninsula. However, if you go onto Polar Plateau - a large, flat icy area above 2500m, which most of the inner Antarctica is - the highest temperature ever recorded there was -7 °C - so always below 0!
- Ewa
Q27) Ms. Poniecka: I know that microorganisms can either be single celled or multicellular. In your research have you come across more single or multicellular microorganisms in Antarctica? - Attilio, Grade 6, North Cross School in Roanoke, VA
Right now some of us are doing research on single celled organisms - bacteria. We're studying different depths of sea water and counting cells in it. 1 liter of sea water can have even 2 billions of bacteria in it! And inside your body you also have some friendly microbes - gut bacteria - which can account for 10 times the number of cells in your own body. So wherever you go, there is always more single celled organisms than multicellular ones!
- Ewa
Q28) Can similar research work be conducted in the Arctic circle? - Inventure Academy, Bangalore
I think that similar studies can be conducted in the Arctic circle, but some differences are important. For example, there are the Dry Valleys in Antarctica (a very unusual environment) and some animals are specific to one pole (penguins at the South Pole and polar bears at the North Pole). As in the Southern Ocean, there are numerous icebreakers from different countries (e.g., Russia, Germany, Norway, Canada, US) which go to the Arctic between spring and fall, and people do research on biological, chemical, geological and physical topics. There are also different scientific bases with laboratories, where researchers can go to work (e.g. Resolute Bay, Nuuk). If there is no station and you want to work near the coast, it is also possible to work at an ice camp (tents on sea ice).
- Virginie
Q29) Does Antarctica have places that aren't covered with snow? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
Yes! There are many places in Antarctica not covered with snow. A most remarkable example is the McMurdo Dry Valleys - they are called 'Dry', because the is no snow, but a barren landscape of rocks and glaciers. It's one of the driest places on Earth, so it's a desert, but a very very cold one. The other example is the biggest research station, where we are based - McMurdo station. Around the science village there is no snow, except of few occasions, when we'll get a huge snowfall and it will stay for several hours. Antarctic Peninsula also has large snow-free areas, because of its warmer, marine climate.
- Ewa
Q30) How do glaciers erode and/or change over time, if it's always so cold? - 8th grade science class, Showalter Middle School
There are several processes responsible for this. First, there is sublimation - the process in which the ice turns directly into a vapor thanks to the energy of the Sun. It's not very quick and you would not see a change in a day, but over time the surface of the ice will change. There are also biological processes like ice algae growing in the ice and changing its properties and speeding up melting or cryoconite holes - very little ponds with water, which melt the ice around them thanks to darkening of the surface. And probably the biggest change is caused by the movement of the glaciers. They are really really heavy - imagine tonnes and tonnes of ice pressing on the ice on the very bottom. The pressure is so large, that the bottom ice becomes liquid and acts as a lubricant for movement. Have you ever tried a water slide? Was it easy and fast to slide on it? The effect is similar for the glacier. And thanks to this movement, the calving is possible - pieces of ice break apart from glacier and create icebergs. This is how the mass, shape and surface of the glaciers change over time.
- Ewa
Q31) Is the ice melting in Antarctica? If so is it because of climate change?
Surprisingly, melting from the surface of Antarctica’s ice sheet is responsible for a very small proportion of the total ice that is loss from the continent each year. Instead, vast frozen rivers of ice (called glaciers) carry ice from the thick interior of the continent to the edges, and dump it into the ocean (forming huge icebergs!). This process is responsible for significant ice loss each year. However, whilst Antarctica loses ice from its glaciers falling into the sea, it is also gaining ice due to snowfall. It is very difficult to make measurements of ice loss and gain in Antarctica, because the continent is just so big! However, most scientists agree that Antarctica is losing ice faster than it is being replaced, causing sea levels to rise.
Climate change could be the cause of ice loss from Antarctica. A particular region of West Antarctica is currently experiencing some of the fastest rates of warming observed across the entire Earth! However, since Antarctica is a big place, climate change is not having an even impact across the continent, and some areas have even shown signs of cooling. Still, as the Earth continues to warm due to climate change, it is possible that Antarctica’s ice sheet could destabilize, leading to disastrous sea level rise.
- James