Natural Heart – Antactica.

Amazing science news of the day:  this amazing organism — Syringammina fragilissima — has been determined to be a gargantuan relative of the foraminiferans.  It is a single celled organism, encased in a fragile ball of sand-tubes!

There are still many mysteries inherent in how a single-celled form of life can demonstrate such creative, self-organizing properties.  As the article from New Scientist explains, we know almost nothing about it yet.  We don’t know how it eats, how it excretes waste, or how it reproduces.  The Syringammina appears to go through periods of building and resting and — like foraminifera — it secretes a form of glue, and gathers sediments to itself, to create the container-shelter.   Forams actually build structures with distinct/predictable shapes using different component grains, depending on their species!  I find the parallels strikingly similar (only on a much larger scale) with the foraminifera research of Dr. Sam Bowser, whose under-ice diving, foram-gathering and field-research camp I was privileged to observe first-hand at New Harbor, Antarctica.  Note:  Bowser’s extensive research on forams, including underwater footage shot at the New Harbor field camp, was featured in Werner Herzog’s recent movie Encounters at the End of the World (for anyone who wants to learn more about the odd world of forams).

I predict it’s just a matter of time until they figure out how to write poetry…

Zoologger: ‘Living beach ball’ is giant single cell – life – 03 February 2010 – New Scientist.

Survival Cache

http://gps.southbankcentre.co.uk/poems/420

The article was fascinating to me for another reason:  the scientist quoted in the story is the same Thomas P. Wagner who was such a terrific liaison for me while I was in Antarctica!  At that time, he was working for the National Science Foundation (Earth Sciences division) — but it seems he has since made the jump to NASA!  Wow.  There were NASA scientists sharing our lab at McMurdo that season, working on core-sampling equipment. Perhaps he was being recruited?  Great guy — wonderful to work with. Here’s a NASA video featuring Wagner:

“NASA climate scientist Tom Wagner provides a look at the state of Arctic sea ice in 2009 and discusses NASA’s role in monitoring the cryosphere.”

Wagner and I, along with the TAMDEF (TransAntarctic Mountains Deformation) researchers, flew down to reposition a GPS device on Deverall Island, the southern-most (icebound) island in Antarctica. Here is a panoramic photo taken by a researcher at Deverall, which includes one of their GPS units, if you scroll all the way to the right edge of the image. And here is are my own photos from that trip: The Scientific Method: Deverall Island

I Had Been a Polar Explorer

I had been a polar explorer in my youth
and spent countless days and nights freezing
in one blank place and then another….

* Many thanks to my bi-polar-photographer pal Stuart Klipper for bringing this poem to my attention!

Picturing the Cold
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/11/03/picturingthecold/

Here’s a link to Stuart’s new book, on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Antarctic-Circle-Pole-Guy-Guthridge/dp/0811862291/

PS: Rumor has it that Stuart’s new book is mentioned in the newest issue of Oprah’s “O Magazine” with a blurb & a photo!  Oprah says:  get your Christmas shopping done early!!

K.

My friend Bill Jirsa took this (very late one night) in McMurdo Station, Antarctica. You can tell how late it is by how bright the sky is…… 24 hours of light on Antarctica in December!

Antarctic Luggage!

After months of planning [ culminating in the USAP Science Support Project Profile paperwork ] there was still schlepping to be done at the Christchurch NZ Departure Center. The carry-on bags: two duffel bags (one containing official NSF-issued Extreme Cold Weather gear that we had to keep with us during the flight, in case of some unthinkable emergency), plus a laptop computer bag, a camera bag, and a giant parka. The dark portion of the image is a larger duffel bag, roughly large enough to contain a corpse. Everyone wore one set of polar-issue clothing during the flight, along with the red parka, which doubled as a sleeping bag.

Video: “March of the Emperors”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NhSQARojp0