There’s a rescue mission happening at the South Pole, Antarctica – and the NBC Today Show interviewed me for their report.
https://youtu.be/B_9FiOoJk9o
Learn more on my time in Antarctica
(On my YouTube Channel – Will be replaced with official Today Show YouTube Channel link when they get around to uploading it themselves)
In the news today, the existence of cosmic neutrinos was confirmed by Antarctic scientists. I had the opportunity to work at the South Pole Station during the operation of the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory, and feel lucky to have become friends with PI Albrecht Karle and his team.
A few articles about Ice Cube and related projects I helped out with there:
From The Guardian: “Existence of cosmic neutrinos confirmed by Antarctic scientists”
Antarctic scientists have confirmed the existence of cosmic neutrinos – ghostly particles that have traveled from the Milky Way and beyond. These particles carry messages from distant galaxies, and could potentially help solve several cosmic puzzles.
A good week for neutrinos: highest-power beam delivers oscillations, space delivers highest energyNeutrinos are subatomic particles created by some of nature’s most energetic and violent phenomena, such as black holes and massive exploding stars. Spotting them is difficult, however, because they have very high energy and nearly no mass. If you can catch a glimpse of them they make the ideal long-distance messenger because the information they hold is pristine, unchanged as the particles travel millions of light years through space.
Now, Albrecht Karle at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues working at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica have sorted through billions of particles that bombarded their detectors between 2010 and 2012 and identified 21 ultra high-energy muons – secondary particles created on the rare occasions that neutrinos interact with other particles.
During my deployment to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica in the Austral Summer 2012-2013, my good friend Blaise was working with the Daniel M. Soref Planetarium at the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Throughout the summer season, Blaise worked with a RED HD Video Camera and a very wide angle lens to film daily lives around the station- including mine, as well as various aspects of the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory.
The footage Blaise captured was produced into the planetarium presentation “Chasing the Ghost Particle: From the South Pole to the Edge of the Universe“, released December 2013, and playing at planetariums nationwide. (Full Dome Database Listing)
Deep in the ice at the heart of Antarctica, IceCube, the biggest and strangest detector in the world waits for mysterious messengers from the cosmos. Scientists are using tiny and elusive particles called neutrinos to explore the most extreme places in the universe. These ghostly neutrinos give us an exclusive way to study powerful cosmic engines like exploding stars and black holes.
In this 30-minute show, stunning simulations of the most energetic places in our universe, and the galaxies around us, are the prelude to a thrilling journey inside IceCube, looking for traces of neutrino collisions in the ice. From one of the most remote locations on Earth to the unexplored regions of the cosmos, Chasing the Ghost Particle: From the South Pole to the Edge of the Universe will take you on a journey you won’t forget.
Since I was working on the station during filming, I’m actually in the planetarium movie a few times, which is very cool! Screen grabs included, and a “demo copy” of the film is included below.
Last Austral Summer, I spent 3.5 months living at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica. Among my many jobs on station, one of the most rewarding was the work I did with the Askaryan Radio Array drill and deployment teams. During my time working with the ARA, I got to spend some good time with Scientist Terry Benson. Here’s his excellent slide deck going over the science he’s working on at the South Pole, including details of the ARA Drill Rig I helped construct and test. Specifically, I helped construct the water tank overflow gutter, wired up the emergency stop switches, troubleshoot the main pump system, maintained the hose bindings, and tended to the drill as it operated.
About a half mile grid north of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, there’s a strange, frozen monument: Spoolhenge. Originally these giant spools housed the cables and pipelines that now wind their way through, around, and under the south pole station. When the supplies were offloaded from the spools, these empty monsters were stacked up on the ice to create the Spoolhenge monument.
Cable spools, standing frozen on the polar icecap.
On my way out to the reels…it’s about a 10 minute jog out. Starting from DZ, past the Cryogenics Laboratory, past a few berms, and then out to the frozen giants.
Interestingly, it looks like Annie Noble did a whole art expo on Spoolhenge.
Today, a quick exploration of the rooftop of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Photos.
Getting up to the roof involves going out on one of the decks, and then climbing a narrow ladder.
On the roof, there are safety lines strung up all over the place – in strong storms, it’s required to clip in. These lines were installed by Flexible Lifeline Systems.
The view from the top. From left to right, you can see: The Beercan leading to the underground service corridors, vent towers from the power plant, spoolhenge, summercamp (blue tents), “the golfball” – our satellite uplink, a DHC Twin Otter operated by Ken Borek Air, the ice runway, triangular comms antennas from the emergency comms office in the station lifeboat, an emergency Iridium data uplink antenna also part of the lifeboat.
Also on this exploration, I found the south pole’s Campbell–Stokes Sunshine Recorder, which I previously blogged about.
This week, I was fortunate to be given unprecedented access to the Keck Array Microwave Telescope in the MAPO Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station by the Keck Array Science Team, in order to witness the disassembly of two of the five cryostats that form the telscope array. Photos.
The Keck array is a microwave telescope, just like Bicep2 and the South Pole Telescope (SPT). However, Keck (or SPUD, as some call it, depending on which side of the funding table the person you’re asking is sitting) is special. Keck, in an effort to up sensitivity and resolution, has taken the best of all worlds, and combined them into one super-telescope. They’ve taken the extremely successful and proven focal plane design from Bicep2, as well as the extremely efficient and self contained pulse-tube cooled cryostat from SPT, and made it into their own super telescope. And then multiplied it by five.
The Keck has not one, but five identical cryostats, each housing its own focal plane. Having five instead of one gives the team an incredible amount of sensing options and flexibility. One distinct advantage that I was able to see up close and personal is that individual parts can be serviced and worked on without bringing the entire telescope to a halt.
More info on the Keck Array:
This past week, the Keck Array science team removed two of the five cryostats, and left three in place and operational.
Here are a few photos of the disassembly of the cryostats, stripping away all of their shielding and refrigeration to get to the heart – the focal plane.
Keck Array is housed in the MAPO Observatory, a 15 minute walk from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Although it’s only a short ways away, in -40 degree F temperatures, full sunlight, driving wind, and an active ice runway to cross, full gear and extreme caution must be used on the walk across the ice. It feels a bit like walking to class – although much colder. And at one of the most remote spots on the planet. That big plywood cone in the background in the groundshield of the telescope.
Looking straight up inside the telescope, as Scientist Colin Bischoff explains the inner workings.
https://flickr.com/photos/jamfan2/8229064838/in/set-72157632128663490/lightbox/
Before disassembly, the cryostats are inspected for defects or light leaks.
Disassembly begins – very slowly and carefully – each cryostat is custom built and unique, the result of thousands of hours of R&D.
The team mid-project. I even got to help out a bit!
The inner core is revealed. This is the core refrigerator that’s responsible for cooling the focal plane down to an incredible 250 millikelvin. That’s just barely above absolute zero. The refrigerator uses both commonplace Helium-4, as well as exotic Helium-3, which is contained within the smaller titanium pressure vessel in the close-up shot.
And finally, the heart of the beast – the focal plane. These four panels sense polarization of focused microwave radiation using chips filled with TES Bolometers. More info on Bicep2 and Keck’s TES Bolometers from NASA JPL:
Transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers sense small temperature changes that occur when photons are absorbed and converted to heat. The use of TESs enables arrays with a much larger number of pixels than is practical with spider-web bolometers. Sustaining its leading role in superconducting TES array technology, MDL developed and continues to improve a process to create arrays of thousands of TESs with high yield (>90 percent). These arrays are being employed on three major astro physics projects, all with the same goal: generating detailed maps of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
https://flickr.com/photos/jamfan2/8229070600/in/set-72157632128663490/lightbox/
That’s it. Thanks very much to the entire Keck Array Science Team for generously inviting me into their lab.
To support the various telescopes and experiments here at the south pole, a ton of resources are necessary – power, heating, environmental protection, and somewhat counterintuitively, cooling. Some of the telescopes here are so sensitive, and looking at such distant signals, that in order to work properly they need to be cryogenically cooled down to just above absolute zero. The only practical way to do this is with a complex refrigerator that uses liquid helium, which sits at 4 degrees kelvin in its natural state.
Liquid helium is a dangerous, volatile, expensive substance, and in order to be able to supply the experiments with an adequate amount of it, there’s an entire cryogenics laboratory right next to the main station.
The other day Engineer and Cryogenics Technician Flint Hamblin gave me a quick tour of the lab. A few pics:
The Cryo Barn, as it’s called, is a black structure, with huge insulated loading doors. It’s about a 10 minute walk from the station.
https://flickr.com/photos/jamfan2/8201601328/in/set-72157632052373951/lightbox/
Inside, there’s a ton of equipment surrounding huge liquid helium holding tanks. These tanks are vacuum insulated to prevent the liquid helium from boiling, and to protect people working around the tanks from being injured by the extreme cold temperature.
In order to get liquid helium over to the telescope (namely Bicep2), it must be carried in a specially designed “dewier” – a large vacuum flask. Flint transports liquid helium dewiers on the ice with a snowmobile.
Hello from the South Pole! For today, a quick trip around the world..
While I’m in Antarctica, I hear that I’ll have access to a (very small) post office, and I’d love to send you a postcard from the South Pole! There are two ways to get one.
A. Send me a letter or package yourself, and I’ll send you something awesome back. Maybe a post card? Maybe something else fun. Be sure to include your return address in the package, and be sure to ship soon – mail takes a long time to get to me. Here are the official mailing instructions from USAP. (PDF link) My mailing address in Antarctica is:
Jeffrey Donenfeld, GSC
South Pole Station
PSC 768 Box 400
APO AP 96598
B. Fill out this form and add your name to my post card list. This list is only for my personal friends, and I’ll give this list second priority for cards etc. If you put yourself on this list, and I don’t recognize your name, I probably wont send you a card.
Talk to ya soon!
-Jeffrey
(more…)
I want to live and work in Antarctica. It’s been a dream of mine for years, and starting about 4 years ago, I finally decided to make my dream a reality. As you may expect, getting a job – a real job, and not just a tourist ticket down to the South Pole is tricky. And to date, I still don’t have a spot on the polar team yet – but I’m working on it, day by day, getting closer making my dream come true.
I wanted to write this blog post to outline my long and complicated ordeal in researching and implementing my pathway to the ice. Over the past four years of this obsession, I’ve fielded just about every question I can imagine about how to connect and get a job there, and what living and working in Antarctica is like. I’m going to break this post up into two main sections: My job search timeline, and then general questions and resources that get asked a lot.
TL;DR:
I’ve been applying for jobs in Antarctica for 4 years. This past year was my strongest push yet, and unfortunately I did not get the job, despite all resources and effort applied. I plan on continuing the quest to make my dream job happen.
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This post has been removed at the request of the original content author.