Slashdot Mirror
The Millennia After Tomorrow?
frankthechicken writes "Analysis of a three-kilometer-long ice core drilled from the Antarctic, has revealed our planet has had eight ice ages during that period, punctuated by rather brief warm spells - one of which we enjoy today. And fortunately, the end of the world is not the day after tomorrow, instead it may be expected on Sunday, 17000."
It's interesting that the last 100m of ice should be so difficult. I wonder if there are any additional complications from waiting until November to finish the drilling... At that depth, they say the ice is just above the melting point from geothermal heat, so I'm assuming that it is somewhat plastic and under huge pressure from the 3km of ice above it. I wonder if they had to take precautions against pressure closing the hole before they finish drilling?
Very impressive, anyway. I hope they manage to complete the ice core this time. It's amazing to think of how long that ice has been there, untouched.
I check Google News frequently, because if the world ended, how else would I know?
I expect there would be a story something like, "The world has ended, if you are still working, you are out of touch."
What is the proper way to behave when the world ends? Do you make backups and shut down your computer?
Don't do anything radical, because it might be a mistake.
Off topic: I put some links together of the 36 books and movies that say that the U.S. government has become corrupt: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Note that the Slashdot submission didn't reference the BBC story.
Hmm... it's a surprise to see this on Slashdot. I suppose some explanation is in order.
I'm part of an isotope science research group at my university (please, no pasting links - they're not that hard to find anyway). I'm just finishing my honours degree on new meteorite dating techniques, but other students/professors/staff do a lot of work on heavy metal contamination of the environment (mainly lead as an indicator of industrialisation and global dust levels, and indium and bismuth as volcanic indicators). We collaborate with a number of research groups around the world, including the one in Grenoble and others in Venice and Tasmania.
The work we do mainly involves Thermal Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (TIMS - uses a solid sample), while other labs use TIMS as well as Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS - uses a liquid or gas source). We have and are analysing the Vostok, Dome C and Law Dome samples. One professor in my lab has used TIMS to show how the lead in the ice cores has risen dramatically in response to such events as the Roman Empire processing large ore bodies (to make weapons, shields etc - this was published in Nature ~1994) and also the start of the industrial revolution. Our general focus at the moment is completing a climatic record going back as far as we can. However, due to the extreme cleanliness of the ice cores, processing must be carried out in Class 10 clean rooms (initially at sub-zero temperatures to prevent the ice from melting) to prevent contamination. We routinely measure amounts of lead on the order of a few picograms (10^-12 grams) or less. It is rather slow going.
To give an idea about the problems involved in drilling the ice cores, you have to realise that 3km underground there is a lot of pressure due to the weight of the ice sitting above. 3km is roughly Antarctic bedrock, which is a far down as we can drill. The further down you go, the denser the ice becomes and hence harder to drill. However, you can't just speed up the drill to get the ice faster because you will melt it. The last few hundred metres before bedrock will take a lot longer to drill than the ice above it.
The initial decontamination procedure of the ice cores is somewhat lengthy and inconvenient. As we are looking to find heavy metals in the ice, we have to remove any contamination caused by the drill. So we use a plastic lathe (all of our lab equipment is teflon and is soaked in 10M HNO3 for about 3 months before use) to strip the outer layers of the ice core in succession (the core samples we receive range from ~0.3-1.5m in length). Keep in mind you are working at about -18 degress C here for about 6 hours at a time - not fun. Then we analyse small chunks of the inner core. The decontamination is normally done in Tasmania, and then we get samples shipped on dry ice to us and other labs around the world. There have been some rather tense moments as planes have been late and baggage delayed!! While I remember, a 30cm ice core might be worth around $30k (total cost of drilling / length of ice recovered).
Um, I think that's most of what I can add without going into extremem technical detail, but I'll try to answer any questions anyone has.
You forgot:
Nuclear war/winter
Global warming catastrophy
AI conquest (ala Matrix or System Shock. Mmm.. SHODAN...)
Alien invasion
Religious Armageddon
The return of disco
Freak biological accident (eg: virus)
Grey goo/nanotech-style disaster
Mass civil/govt/corporate war (ala Titor)
Universe collapsing
Death of Windows/Microsoft
Intergalactic phenomenon (eg: black hole, solar colision, etc)
Any of us getting a date with a supermodel
Earth's core stopping
Global scale natural-disasters (think Noah's ark)
Sun exploding or expanding
RIAA stops suing people
Chemical accident/atmosphereic poisioning
Bush says something intelligent
Linux finally having it's "year of the desktop"
I think that about covers it.
If we continue climate research and do nothing it will be too late to do anything before we really know for sure if we really are contributing to global warming with pollution. However, if we assume that warming is a fact and that it is our fault we lose little and may just save the world. The cost of doing nothing is too high to tolerate.
Incidently figures collected state that the temperature was rising steadily for 1000s of years but started rising much faster once the industrial revolution started.
Most, if not all, Climatologists now believe the evidence of global warming through pollution and human activity has been proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Actually I heard recently that the US Department of Defence now list global warming as a risk to US national security (ABC tv Australia, Landline).Landline global warming report.
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte