Dawn in Antarctica

I've packed my bags:  I have a box of scientific supplies that I put into the large padded duffel bag.  There was still enough room for all my cold weather gear.  Everything fits except a long, heavy stake to stabilize a piece of equipment under water.  It's just too long to fit in the padded duffel with the box.  Thus, I'm taking a second bag, the black one.  I'll put a camera tripod and my water bottles in with the stake.  Bekah might have something to add, too.  I also have a carry-on backpack, which will hold my computer, a book, toothbrush etc. and a change of clothes.  My cameras and travel documents are in the purse-like bag, which is my second carry-on. Note the luggage tags: Here's my packing check list for personal gear.  There are many many many many other scientific things that we've ordered from NSF or shipped in advance.  Some are also in my bag, but not on the list here. - [ ] Clothing     - [ ] Head         - [ ] 1 Helly Hanson hood

A good sleeping bag can keep you warm at night, as my niece Valerie learned on her Girl Scout trip a few years ago.  But what makes a good sleeping bag?  How do you stay warm if it's -20°C outside?  To stay warm, you want to minimize the amount of heat that is conducted away from your body and the amount that is advected away. Solid objects conduct heat.  If you touch a cold object with your bare finger, heat moves from your finger to the cold object, making your finger cold and the object warmer.  This is conduction.  Different objects conduct heat differently.  Metal conducts lots of heat whereas feathers conduct very little.  Thus, feathers are good insulators, and we want our sleeping bags made out of feathers rather than metal.  They are also softer! Air, water, and other fluids conduct heat, but they also advect heat.  When air moves, the warm air next to your body is blown away and replaced by cold air.  This is advection and is one of the causes of the wind-chill effect

I'll be gone for about two and a half months.  There are so many things to resolve before I leave.  Who is going to take care of the dog?       Actually, this one is easy: Ray will.  He'll take care of Talus as well as I do. Who is going to watch the house?       Again, easy: My mom volunteered to "vacation" in my home. Who is going to advise my students?       I've met with each one to give them some goals to work on while I'm gone.  I trust them to be productive while the cat's away.  Some play isn't too bad either. Then there are the routine things.  Renew my drivers license.  Get several months worth of prescription medications.  Protect the eaves of my house from the Nutall's woodpecker who is looking for a winter home.  Adjust the irrigation system.  Buy the last few little things like stuff sacks to organize my clothes.  Dispose of used chemicals in my lab.  Make sure the text books for my class that starts in January are ordered. 

My dad really likes my description of base layers and why I chose what I did.  He thinks that others will find it very useful as they plan for their own cold weather adventures.  He suggested that we make it even more useful by including some extra information on how men can keep their private parts warm.  Here's what he wrote: When we talked about equipment, I skipped male specific recommendations since you are my daughter.  As I read your blog, I thought it might be useful to share more underwear recommendations.  Male organs (penis and testicles) have poor circulation and particularly if there is wind and I have a zip fly, they can get very cold even if the rest of my body is toasty.  My solution is to wear lycra compression shorts next to my skin that provide support and more importantly, hold my genitals snugly to my warm crotch.  Over these, I wear conventional loose running shorts before using the layering system you describe.  Conventional running shorts provide additional

As a professor, my job is to learn things that no one else has known before and to share that knowledge with others, especially students.  It's the best job in the world.  As a geologist, I try to learn new things about the earth and its history by making observations of the natural world, doing experiments, analyzing samples, and developing computer models. One of the unknown questions I am most interested in right now is how photosynthesis evolved.  We know that bacteria were the first to do it, and the bacteria that release oxygen (O2) are called cyanobacteria.  (Plants and algae adopted cyanobacteria, incorporating the cyanobacteria into their own cells.  The chloroplasts in plants and algae started off a billion years ago as free-living bacteria, and they evolved with plants and algae to become the chloroplasts.  We know this from similarities in the genes in chloroplasts and cyanobacteria.)  Based on the chemistry of rocks, we also know that oxygen first accumulated in the

Lots of layers keep you warm but also let you adjust to changes in temperatures and activity levels.  I have an excellent selection of insulating layers thanks to my dad! I haven't tried this yet, but I think I can wear every single one of them on top of my long underwear all at the same time.  There are two keys to making lots and lots of layers reasonable: some of the clothes need to be "too big" so they fit over other ones, and you need slippery layers between pile layers so that you can move.  (Remember that Calvin & Hobbes cartoon where Calvin's mom bundled him up so much he was essentially a sphere that couldn't move?  That's not good.)  Here's what I'm taking for my legs and torso: I have two pairs of pile pants.  The most important thing is that they do NOT have any zippers on the sides, not even for the pockets.  I want to be able to wear them sleeping, and I hate having zippers dig into my thigh.  If I'm camping out for seven week

Oh dear, what am I going to wear?!? This is my first trip to Antarctica, and I've had to figure out what clothes to bring.  Luckily, my dad is an experienced mountaineer, and I have a number of friends who have been to Antarctica that I can ask for advice.  I'll do several posts on clothing since I know Bailey and Emily will want to make fun of my lack of color coordination when they see the pictures.  Thus, I want to justify my choices before they can make fun of me. First, you don't want to take cotton.  It absorbs water and gets cold.  Wool and many synthetics stay warm when they get wet.  And although Antarctica is a desert, when you are in the cold and wearing plenty of clothing, and then you do something like moving equipment, it's easy to get too hot and start sweating.  That gets you wet from the inside.  As soon as you stop moving, you cool off quickly.  Thus, you want to be more careful of what your clothes are made of than what they look like. This is esp

Peter Rejcek, the Antarctic Sun editor, sent me an e-mail today asking about our research project, my role in it, implications for understanding early life, and relevance to possible life on other planets.   I thought you might like to hear my answers as well.  Here's an explanation of what I'm up to: My main research questions focus on interpreting the early evolution of life, mostly by characterizing the morphology of fossil microbial communities. I am particularly interested in intricate microbial structures that are preserved in some rocks that are 2.5 to 3 billion years old (fenestrate microbialites); they were abundant until just before O2 accumulated in the atmosphere, so these structures might be able to answer some important questions about the evolution of cyanobacteria. There are examples of similar structures in younger rocks as well as in some modern environments. In the modern environments, these structures (reticulates) are formed by motile filamentous cya

Lake Joyce is at latitude  -77.72°, longitude 161.58°, in Pearse Valley, Antarctica.  There isn't a Wikipedia entry for it yet.  There isn't even one for Pearse Valley.  Google Earth doesn't show any detail, although images are available. People don't go to Lake Joyce very often. This how we described Lake Joyce in our proposal to NASA when requesting funding for this research project:   "Lake Joyce is a proglacial, permanently ice-covered, meromictic lake with a maximum depth of 40 m.  It is located in Pearse Valley, north-northwest of Taylor Glacier. The lake receives meltwater from Catspaw and Stocking Glaciers, as well as direct runoff from Taylor Glacier."  The ice layer that covers the lake is 6 meters thick. Here's an Aster Image of Pearse Valley with Lake Joyce in the middle at the edge of Taylor Glacier: North is at about 10:00 on this image. Check out Dale's blog on our research.

On October 1, I start my journey to Lake Joyce in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Seven of us will be camping by the lake for seven weeks, exploring microbial mats that live under the ice. Dale, Ian, Bekah, and Chris will be diving under six meters of ice. Alfonso, Wayne, and I won't. We may or may not have an internet connection from our field camp. If we do, I'll blog; if not, I won't. Until then, I'll do some posting.