In Celebration of the International Polar Year (2007-2008)
The Exploratorium Ventures to the Bottom of the World
November 28, 30; December 2, 7-9, 14&15, 21, 28 and January 4, 11&12, 18, 25
In the Exploratorium’ s Phyllis C. Wattis Webcast Studio and Online at: www.exploratorium.edu/poles
Made possible by the National Science Foundation

Please check the website for event times and for further updates on scheduled live connections to Antarctica.

An Antarctic Scene

In celebration of the International Polar Year (2007-2008), the Exploratorium’s Live@ crew will be talking with scientists at McMurdo Station and the South Pole about the myriad of research being done there. Meet scientists pulling giant cores of ice from miles down, watch as penguins dive under the ice, and see scientists reach for the sky with their weather balloons! Learn about the giant trap under the ice that catches the tiniest particles from outer space, and a new 10-meter telescope at the South Pole. Scheduled webcasts include Sunday, December 2 at 2pm; Sunday, December 9 at 2pm; Friday, December 14; Time TBA; Friday, December 21; Time TBA; and Friday, December 28, Time TBA, and January 4, 11, 12 (Time TBA); January18 at 8am and January 25 at 1pm – all PST. These programs and the continuation of webcasts in January will be shown at www.exploratorium.edu/icestories . Make sure to check the schedule for updates. The schedule is as follows:
Wednesday, November 28th, 1pm (ANDRILL)
Join us for an overview of the ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) Project, a multinational collaboration among 200-plus scientists, students, and educators from five nations, to recover sediment cores (layered sections of earth) from under the Antarctic ice and seas. By drilling back through time, ANDRILL scientists hope to reconstruct the distant history of environmental changes. This will help them understand how fast, large, and frequent the glacial and interglacial changes were in the Antarctic region. Knowing this history may also help scientists predict the timing and location of possible global-warming scenarios.

Friday, November 30th, 1pm (ANDRILL) — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
The ANDRILL Project is a feat of engineering. How do scientists drill and retrieve sediment cores from under the ice and sea, and why do they do it? We’ll talk with scientists and engineers at a sea-ice drill site and learn more about the ANDRILL Project.

Sunday, December 2nd, 2pm (ANDRILL) — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
Learn more about the ANDRILL scientists. Watch them examine a sediment core, find out about new developments, and discover ancient diatoms (single-celled marine organisms that leave behind beautiful skeletons) with geologist Christina Riesselman.

Friday, December 7th, 11am (South Pole Telescope) — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
Last winter, we covered the assembly of the South Pole Telescope. Today, we’ll revisit that process, discover what scientists have learned from the telescope so far, and find out, from project leader John Carlstrom, what work needs to be done this year as the scientists fine-tune this amazing new piece of technology.

Saturday, December 8th, 2pm
Join Exploratorium senior scientist Paul Doherty as he serves up hands-on activities related to science in Antarctica.

Sunday, December 9th, 2pm (ANDRILL) — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
Today we wrap up our conversations with the ANDRILL Project scientists. As a special treat, we’ll speak with project leader and geologist Dave Harwood, who will offer an overview of the project and what lies ahead for it.

Friday, December 14th, 1pm (date and time subject to change) — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
Meet glaciologist Slawek Tulaczyk and his team, who work in the fast-emerging field of ice sheet dynamics. No longer thought of as giant slabs of slow-moving frozen water, ice sheets are energized by a complex system of subglacial lakes, floods, streams, and ice quakes. This group will have just returned from a month at a remote camp on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and will have lots to tell us about their icy adventures.

Saturday or Sunday, December 15th or 16th, 2pm — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
David Ainley has been studying four colonies of Adelie penguins in Antarctica’s Ross Sea for over 20 years. Join us for a conversation with David and find out all about the population dynamics of penguins and how they’ve responded to environmental and climate change over time.

Wednesday, December 19th, 2pm
Join Exploratorium senior scientist Paul Doherty as he serves up more hands-on activities related to science in Antarctica.

Thursday, December 20th, 2pm
Join Exploratorium senior scientist Paul Doherty once more as he serves up hands-on activities related to Antarctic science.

Friday, December 21st, 10am — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
Join us as we talk with scientists working on the South Pole Telescope. In today’s program, we’ll learn about the various projects and teams of people on the project, how they work together, and how they analyze the data they receive.

Friday, December 28th, 8am
Meet scientists and engineers at the South Pole who are hard at work drilling holes in the ice for a unique telescope called Ice Cube. When completed, this telescope will take up a .6 miles (1 cubic kilometer) of the ice sheet and consist of dozens of strings, each containing 60 detectors suspended in crystal-clear ice more than 4,900 feet (1500 meters) below the surface.

Tuesday, Dec. 11th, 8:30pm — Please note, NOT A WEBCAST, NOT for the PUBLIC
Every year, the AGU (American Geophysical Union) conference is held in San Francisco. At a reception for scientists and educators, we will have a live chat with scientists in Antarctica.

Friday, January 4th, 1pm
Today, we’ll hook up with scientists at Palmer Research Station in the Western Antarctic Peninsula. This is one of the most rapidly warming places on earth, and the site of a Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Project. The scientists are getting ready for a month-long research cruise off the shores of western Antarctica, to study how this rich marine ecosystem is responding to melting sea ice and global climate change.

Friday, January 11th, 1pm
Join us as we talk to NASA scientists about balloon research in the stratosphere over Antarctica. This season, three giant helium balloons will launch near McMurdo Station and circulate in circumpolar air currents above Antarctica, collecting data about cosmic rays, very high energy particles that zip through the galaxy at nearly the speed of light. If conditions permit, we’ll be talking with the balloon scientists from their ice facility at Williams Field, where the giant balloons are inflated and launched and their flights are tracked.

Saturday, January 12th, 8am
Today, we’ll continue chatting with scientists on the Ice Cube telescope at the South Pole. This unique telescope is designed to capture the movement of neutrinos. Neutrinos are subatomic particles with infinitesimal mass that slip through the universe, earth, and even our bodies without leaving a trace. Scientists study these ghostly particles for clues about supernova explosions, black holes, and gamma ray bursts, which in turn will shed light on the mysterious nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Friday, January 18th, 8am — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
In our final talk with the South Pole Telescope staff, we’ll learn about data collection. We’ll focus on the receiver, a very precise instrument that is a sensitive, state-of-the-art data collector with a thousand “eyes” pointed to the distant universe. We’ll also meet the scientists who will be wintering over at the South Pole for eight cold, dark months.

Friday, January 25th, 1pm — LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA
Join us for more conversations with David Ainley and the penguin researchers, who will be wrapping up their field season at Adelie breeding colonies in Antarctica.