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Armed with drills, scientists have trekked to the Earth's southernmost continent — Antarctica — to hopefully pull up a slice of geologic history. Specifically, scientists are trying to recover the oldest pieces of ice on Earth in hopes of learning how the Earth's climate has changed, writes Scientific American.
The goal is to retrieve an ice core, which has been preserved for years under layers of snow, by drilling multiple kilometers down. The cores act almost like the rings inside a tree, in that they can paint a picture of Earth's atmosphere over time. To make matters even more interesting, there is a "friendly race" between Europe, Australia, and the U.S. — where the project is called the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration, or COLDEX — to see who can first find and extract the ice.
Why are scientists searching for the world's oldest ice?
Armed with drills, scientists have trekked to the Earth's southernmost continent — Antarctica — to hopefully pull up a slice of geologic history. Specifically, scientists are trying to recover the oldest pieces of ice on Earth in hopes of learning how the Earth's climate has changed, writes Scientific American.
The goal is to retrieve an ice core, which has been preserved for years under layers of snow, by drilling multiple kilometers down. The cores act almost like the rings inside a tree, in that they can paint a picture of Earth's atmosphere over time. To make matters even more interesting, there is a "friendly race" between Europe, Australia, and the U.S. — where the project is called the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration, or COLDEX — to see who can first find and extract the ice.
Why are scientists searching for the world's oldest ice?
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