The whole collection of blogs is incredible. I am utterly stunned by and in awe of the facilities that have been built down there.<p>Given the excruciatingly harsh conditions of the environment, I cannot imagine what the construction process must have been like. Looking at a lot of the pictures conjures a feeling for me like it all must have been built by some advanced alien civilization and left behind for us to occupy. The construction crews who created all that stuff should be celebrated as heroes as far as I’m concerned. Very impressive.
Great set of posts! This one brought to mind: I think there's an unexplored niche of vampire movies where our protagonist lives 6 months in each hemisphere per year to minimize downtime in a coffin. With careful planning and a private jet, you can probably reduce sun time to a few <i>hours</i> per year. This would be an interesting calculation to do.<p>Bonus Sunday thought: It's always said that ants are found on all continents except Antarctica, e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant</a> (surely there must be <i>some</i> ants in the buildings). I've always thought it would be interesting to try to introduce them there, sort of like a modern-day Herostratos.
When I went to Sweden for a semester, I knew the “days would be short” but what I didn’t understand was _how_ they would be short.<p>I imagined the sun “flying across the sky” quickly to make it a short day.<p>In fact, the sun barely peeks up over the horizon, glimmers with some disorienting side-light for a few hours before settling back below the horizon. This created an effect which was like a literal twilight zone and was totally surreal.
> After the sun reaches its peak, it begins to set. It’s still rotating in perfect circles around the sky; they’re just getting lower and lower each day.<p>It would be very cool to have an extremely long exposure/solargraph of this!<p><a href="http://xyzon.nl/solargraphy/" rel="nofollow">http://xyzon.nl/solargraphy/</a>
To a lesser extent, a friend of mine moved to Fairbanks, Alaska with her husband where they’d get near-full days of sun in the summer and dark in the winter.<p>They made it about five years (they were there on a med school debt reduction program to work in smaller communities) and then noped the hell out as fast as they could. They are both pretty resilient people but really struggled with the months of these daylight patterns. Even after “getting used to it” they felt the oppression of the dark seasons particularity hard.<p>I’d be curious to know what the science is around making this more bearable for long term stays in that type of condition. I’m laughing at the photos of tropical beaches in the cafeteria photos from the article but I’m guessing those honestly probably do offer a slight marginal boost!
Fun fact, I saw the temperatures they're getting and I just looked this up to be sure.<p>The freezing point of Carbon Dioxide at atmospheric pressures is -78.5C, which it reaches sometimes at the south pole.<p>So apparently carbon dixodie can freeze out of the atmosphere (deposition) and turn to solid carbon dioxide ice in mid-winter. Though I believe because the partial pressure will be too low, you'd need to concentrate the CO2 first.
the timelapse of the sun just traveling in a circle is probably one of the most bizarre things i've seen of a real natural phenomenon. it's one of those things of just so outside my normal experience that i had never actually thought about it, but seeing it like this definitely shows how weird things are at the poles.<p>imagine how livable (or not) a planet would be if the planet's axis were even more extreme
It’s been stated by others but I’m going to repeat it once more, one of the best blogs out there!!! The way it’s written, the whole style of it, the photos, the subject… the mix of all these things leaves you wanting more. For sure I’d pay if it was subscription based and was more frequent :-)
I believe there is an overnight camping experience in Antarctica of you come on one of the tourist cruise ships. I always thought this was funny because the sun never sets so I imagine you're just sitting in a fully lit tent until someone comes to tell you it's morning and time to go back aboard the ship.
Incredible shots. As beautiful as they are, these photos and videos show how utterly inhospitable large parts of the earth is. Humans can live comfortably on only a tiny fraction of earth.
At night, in the dead of winter, it gets within 60C of the record for superconductivity. Outside. Mars is warmer, in general, but there is effectively a vacuum, as far as breathing is concerned.
Antarctica... icy graveyard of hubris, not hostile to humanity, but worse... utterly indifferent, a blank wall at the edge of the universe, defying us to find meaning in it.<p>So you can see why I'm not going.