Science and fundamentals

Antarctica brings together conditions not found together anywhere else: the oldest and thickest ice on the planet, the driest and cleanest air, months-long nights in winter, organisms adapted to extreme cold, and a territory with almost no direct human activity.

Under the Antarctic Treaty, science is the continent’s primary activity, and research is what gives countries the right to make decisions about it, as discussed in The Antarctic Treaty.

According to COMNAP, the council that brings together national Antarctic programs, in 2017 there were 29 countries with 40 year-round stations and another 36 summer-only facilities, not counting camps and refuges.

Climate and atmosphere: weather stations, balloons and instruments measure temperature, wind, ozone and atmospheric gases. Some records began during the International Geophysical Year in 1957 and are among the longest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Ice: drill cores extract samples, cylinders of ice that hold air bubbles hundreds of thousands of years old. At Dome C, the European EPICA project reached 3,270 meters depth and recorded about 800,000 years of climate, as described in Antarctic Ice.

Astronomy and physics: the plateau’s dry, cold air and months-long night benefit the South Pole Telescope and the IceCube neutrino detector, buried in the ice, discussed in Light and sky in Antarctica.

Life and rocks: biologists study penguins, seals, krill and the microbes in the ice and in subglacial lakes. Geologists show, from rocks and fossils, that Antarctica was once part of the supercontinent Gondwana with South America, Africa, India and Australia, and that it once had forests.

Antarctica is the place in the world where the most meteorites are found. Meteorites fall everywhere on the planet, but on the ice a dark rock stands out from afar, and the movement of the ice sheet carries and concentrates them in blue-ice areas near the Transantarctic Mountains, where the wind removes the surface snow.

The U.S. ANSMET program, which searches for meteorites every summer since 1976, has collected more than 23,000 specimens. Teams from Japan, China, Europe and other countries have found thousands more, and most of the catalogued meteorites in the world came from Antarctica.

Among them are pieces from the Moon and Mars. The first meteorite recognized as coming from the Moon, ALH A81005, was found in the Allan Hills; and the Martian ALH 84001, found there in 1984, became famous in 1996 when scientists suggested it contained signs of ancient life, a hypothesis that remains under discussion.

McMurdo, of the United States, on Ross Island, established in 1956, is the largest station on the continent. It has a port, runways, laboratories and workshops; in summer it receives about a thousand people, and in winter it stays with 150 to 200. It provides support for the South Pole station and for inland field camps.

Amundsen-Scott is located at the geographic South Pole, at 2,835 meters elevation, on ice that moves about 10 meters per year. The elevated building, opened in 2008, hosts up to about 150 people in summer and around 50 in winter.

Vostok, of Russia, was opened on December 16, 1957 on the East Antarctic plateau, at about 3,500 meters elevation, above the subglacial Lake Vostok. There the lowest temperature ever measured by thermometer was recorded in 1983, −89.2 °C, as described in Antarctica’s climate.

Concordia, of France and Italy, at Dome C, 3,233 meters, has operated year-round since 2005. The isolation is so great that the European Space Agency uses it to study how people react to long missions, similar to trips to Mars.

On the Peninsula, the British Rothera, on Adelaide Island, has a runway and a quay and is the main base of the British Antarctic Survey. The Brazilian Comandante Ferraz, on King George Island, has its own page in Brazil in Antarctica.

Two stations house families and have a school. Argentine Esperanza, established in 1953 on Esperanza Bay at the tip of the Peninsula, accommodates military personnel with spouses and children year-round. Emilio Marcos Palma, the first person born on the Antarctic continent, was born there on January 7, 1978.

The Chilean Villa Las Estrellas, next to the Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base on King George Island, was inaugurated in 1984 and has houses, a school, a post office and a chapel. Between 1978 and 1985 at least 11 children were born in Antarctica, all in Esperanza or Villa Las Estrellas.

King George Island is the busiest part of the region. In addition to the Chilean Frei and the Brazilian Comandante Ferraz, it hosts stations from several countries, such as Argentina’s Carlini, Russia’s Bellingshausen, Uruguay’s Artigas, Poland’s Arctowski, China’s Great Wall and South Korea’s King Sejong.

No one lives in Antarctica permanently, and there are no indigenous people. Those there are scientists and the teams that support their work: cooks, doctors, mechanics, electricians, pilots, sailors and technicians.

According to data used by the Australian government, based on COMNAP, there are about 4,400 people in summer and about 1,100 in winter, counting stations on the continent and nearby islands. The United States, Argentina and Chile are the countries with the most people in the region.

Many people stay only a few weeks in summer. Those who remain for the winter usually have contracts of about one year and arrive before the end of summer, when the last planes and ships depart.

In the interior, winter means months without regular flights. At the South Pole, the season is generally from February to October with no planes, and the Sun spends about six months below the horizon, as described in Light and sky in Antarctica.

On winter teams, each person takes on multiple roles. There are fixed routines, communal meals, a gym, a library and traditional celebrations, such as the midwinter dinner around June 21, observed at nearly all stations.

Station doctors are trained to work alone, and each person’s health is evaluated before travel. Darkness, cold and isolation affect sleep and mood, which is why these studies interest space agencies.

Most cargo arrives by ship in summer: fuel, food, spare parts and construction materials. Icebreakers open a path through the sea ice, and unloading can take days. Waste goes the opposite way: under the Madrid Protocol rules, almost everything is removed from the continent.

People usually arrive by plane from cities such as Christchurch (New Zealand), Hobart (Australia), Punta Arenas (Chile) and Cape Town (South Africa). There are blue-ice runways, compacted-snow runways and some gravel runways, like those at Rothera and the Chilean base Frei.

For the interior, there are ski-equipped aircraft and tractor convoys. The crossing that links McMurdo to the Pole, about 1,600 kilometers, transports fuel and cargo over the ice in sleds pulled by tractors.