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Fiber Optics In Antarctica Will Monitor Ice Sheet Melting

sciencehabit writes: Earth is rapidly being wired with fiber-optic cables — inexpensive, flexible strands of silicon dioxide that have revolutionized telecommunications. They've already crisscrossed the planet's oceans, linking every continent but one: Antarctica. Now, fiber optics has arrived at the continent, but to measure ice sheet temperatures rather than carry telecommunication signals. A team of scientists using an innovative fiber-optic cable–based technology has measured temperature changes within and below the ice over 14 months. This technology, they say, offers a powerful new tool to observe and quantify melting at the base of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

4 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me? by flaming+error · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is +4 informative? Seriously?

    For those who can't be bothered to read the summary, this is not about FO communications. Some guys are using the properties of fiber optics and light to figure out the temperature along a length of cable they dropped down a bore shaft to the ocean.

  2. Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me? by paul.hatchman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Perhaps you could use your obviously epic google skills to look up the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. You know the one the article is actually talking about? The one that is shrinking and unstable and could cause sea levels to rise by 1.2 metres? I think that's worth at least keeping an eye on. Don't you?

  3. Re: WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    No
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/no-warming-in-16-years.htm

  4. Re: This is not science by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

    So in your world testing a hypothesis isn't science?

    Strictly speaking, testing a hypothesis is the opposite, it's trying to prove the hypothesis false. The more you fail at disproving, the more likely it is to be correct.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."