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[wind blowing]

[indistinct voices on radio]

[vehicle whirring]

[indistinct chatter on radio]

[upbeat song playing on radio]

[man] Everyone thought it was

this big, dead, benign block of ice.

But there's some big lakes under this ice.

Some largest lakes on our planet

are under this ice, and we just have to get there.

It's gonna take a lot of effort to do it.

Yeah. A lot of gray hair.

Some of us have to get gray hair and lose it to-- to do it.

Yeah.

[pensive music playing]

[man on radio] Hello, ladies and gentlemen

out there at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

You're listening to 104.5, uh, Ice Radio,

an affiliation of the American Forces Network.

This is the Hot Cup of Joe Radio Show.

[chill guitar music]

[Amy] It's-- it's not that it's just another day,

but in some ways, it's a day we've been planning for,

for so long that, you know, you are ready for it.

You think of someone like John Preskill,

33 years straight that he's been coming here.

My first year was 1983.

So we have our whole lives that we've been working here,

often for many months per year.

And to me, when I got off the plane,

I felt like I was coming home,

which I feel bad saying to my kids, it's my second home.

But I do feel that way.

I'm worried that she suspects us.

One day I'm going to go to Antarctica, be a polar explorer.

Nobody's here. Isn't that incredible?

Happy birthday!

[laughter]

♪ Happy birthday, dear Amy ♪

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

-[applause] -All right.

All I want for my birthday is,

I don't know, an eight meter core.

-Yay! -[laughter]

That's easy to do.

-[laughter] -[man] Will you take seven?

I'll take seven.

[wind rushing]

Man, it's cold today, isn't it?

-All right, see you later. -Okay.

This is one of those walking scenes, isn't it?

[woman laughs]

[indistinct chatter]

[woman] All right, everyone.

Thank you for coming out on a snowy Sunday evening

to, uh, our science lecture.

15 years ago, people didn't believe

there was much water under the ice sheet,

and nobody really thought there was life.

Okay. How do we know there's lakes under there?

[woman] We find subglacial lakes in Antarctica

by shooting lasers from space at the Antarctica ice sheet.

ICESat orbit surrounds Antarctica

and we observe changes in surface elevation.

We find these pockets that change,

and we infer that they are lakes.

So it-- I-- it probably plays a pretty

big role in the Earth system.

Biochemistry, fertilization of the ocean.

This is something that hasn't been studied.

SALSA, which stands for Subglacial Antarctic

Lakes Scientific Access,

is a pretty unique and interdisciplinary project.

SALSA is a, uh, a project looking

at subglacial lakes in Antarctica.

I've called it, uh, the world's largest wetland.

It's got, I think it's got, I mean,

I'm propos-- proposing this, it's got life.

It's just under a mile of ice.

[woman] We're going to be going out

to a lake called Subglacial Lake Mercer.

A lot of subglacial lakes fill and drain,

and they drain to the ocean.

So what's happening under Antarctic ice really affects

the rest of the planet as well through this ocean connection.

There's the basic science curiosity aspect too,

of knowing how and where life exists on Earth.

[man] Lakes anywhere on Earth are reservoirs of history.

We will learn a lot about the history of Antarctica

in terms of when the ice cover was here, when it was not here.

See how old things are to see if the ocean was up there.

And that tells us about past climates.

And that's really important.

When you have a continent that's almost

completely covered by ice, and all that ice

has the potential to melt and raise sea level,

you certainly wanna understand its history.

And some of those clues are held in the lake sediments.

[car engines rumbling]

[coffee dripping]

[man] This is a rough continent.

You ever heard of the acronym HEKTMOTFOTE?

It's an old one.

A lot of people down here haven't heard that.

That was, like, late '70s, early '80s.

Harshest Environment Known To Man On The Face Of The Earth.

I mean, if something broke, that's why.

[chuckles]

[man] You never heard that one?

[Chris] I haven't heard that one, no.

-[man] Now you have, Chris. -[Chris] Yeah.

[woman] Brent, you wanna take it away?

[Brent] All right.

I'm just showing you some data here on the microbiology,

as well as some of the physical and chemical parameters.

[Brent's voice fades]

We're bringing biologists, geochemists,

geologists together to try to tap into

this unique environment of a subglacial lake.

And when we go inland, onto the continent,

this is gonna be very different than just about

any research that I've ever done.

The only way to do these investigations

is to work together,

and it's a dream team of polar scientists.

[woman] What kind of scientist am I?

I'm a microbial ecologist, um, and biogeochemist.

I study microorganisms mostly that live in water.

I use the fossils of polar marine diatoms to reconstruct

the history of oceanography and climate in Antarctica.

I would say that I'm a geochemist

who specializes in questions of past

climate change and carbon cycling on Earth.

And I do radiocarbon dating of the sediment.

I'm an ecosystem scientist.

I need to know what's going on in the lake

and in the sediments and see how they work

and how they fit into the world, right?

The whole Earth system.

Everyone out here's smarter than I am.

I just kinda, like, take bits of it and put it all together.

[Brent] We're all doing something different,

but we all need the same thing.

We all need the water,

we all need the sediments,

and we all need to get through a lot of ice.

I'm an ice driller by trade, one of the few people

that make their living by drilling holes in ice

in Antarctica for science projects.

I've drilled more depth and done more hot water drilling

than any other person on the planet.

So... for what that's worth.

So, I'm sorry I missed the meeting,

John, just for you, because, you know, this really,

the racked in is kind of your domain.

I got this sign made just for you.

[laughter, applause]

There you go, John, for you.

It's-- I-- it's-- I can't carry it.

My weight's already in.

[laughter]

[man] I think there's just something

about going to the unknown.

It's nothing like what you really think it is,

but when you get to the field camp,

that's when you really find out

what it's like to work in Antarctica.

[woman] Over six feet or under six feet.

All right, so what do I need, I need a water bottle.

[man] Uh, that's a pee bottle.

[man] Yeah. That's--

[laughter]

No one will stop you to drink from that.

[man] How do you tell the difference?

[chuckles] Well, it looks slightly yellow.

Oh, and it says pee.

[man] Don't answer that question.

[woman] A female urinary funnel.

I don't want one of those.

-[woman] You don't? -No.

Well, there's a pole coming out of my head.

Where's this going? Oh, here's where it's going.

-This should be it. -I can't wait to do this

-in 40 below air. -I was gonna say..

can't wait to do this in the wind.

[forklift engine roaring, beeping]

[footsteps crunching]

Do you have some cool shades to wear out there,

so you look badass?

[man] I got my ski goggles, so.

They work fine.

Yeah. I look like I'm an old guy heading to a buffet.

[chuckles]

-[man] You are. -Kinda.

Gone.

[wheels squeaking]

Yeah.

[woman] Have fun, guys.

[woman] My neon bag.

[man] For SALSA, we've been preparing for three years.

Yes, I'm worried about a lot of things.

Uh, we could not get in the lake.

We could have weather that keeps us sitting in McMurdo

till mid-January.

We could have mechanical failure.

We could stick something in the borehole,

and that would end it.

We don't have the resources or the opportunity

to do another hole, so...

A three-year project

all boils down to our success during one week.

That's worrying.

Let's all remember while we're down here,

folks, that, uh, we're all in this together.

[upbeat music]

[laughter]

[man] Next week, we're gonna be drilling a hole

through a thousand meters of ice,

and we don't even know what's under there.

We don't even know how deep it is.

Isn't that exciting?

Might not even be water there. Holy crap.

You know, I mean, we're going--

we're going in totally the unknown.

[indistinct chatter]

-[woman] Earplugs? -[man] Yes, please.

[woman] Yeah. Keep 'em coming.

[indistinct chatter]

[plane engine roaring]

[man] Ice, you can't get away from it.

Ice and ice and ice.

90% of the world's ice is right here. Ice.

[pensive music playing]

[man] One of the most perspective changing aspects

of Antarctica is just seeing how small we are compared to

the vastness of this continent.

And you look around, you see nothing but snow

and mountains all around you.

And it's just this wonderful

but awe-inspiring feeling that, you know,

you're almost all alone down here.

As scientists, as natural skeptics,

we're also explorers at heart.

[man] Anybody wanna sit up front?

[man] And the chance to do difficult and challenging

research in an environment like this that's rarely touched

and rarely observed is-- is truly exciting.

[man] So you must be right up the base

of the transient Arctics then, right?

[man] We're a little bit out there.

We're actually in the ice stream,

uh, this is the Mercer Ice Stream.

But of course those ice streams are coming off of the transient.

[woman] Mercer 0332. Destination next.

[indistinct voices over the radio]

[man] Try and make this landing like we fly.

-[indistinct]. -It's cold.

[airplane engine roars]

[pensive music continues]

[woman] The exploration that we're doing,

it's because there's a goal beyond ourselves.

And that's what distinguishes us from pure adventure.

So we do have an adventure when we're out there, but...

always above that adventure is the mission,

which is the science.

And I don't know that I could do the adventure

without the mission.

♪

[hammering]

[scraping]

[woman] Oh, my gosh, Molly, we're neighbors.

[laughs]

I think it's the, uh, field camp rookie jitters, though.

It's probably fine.

Looks like I got some shoveling to do.

That's what you get when you're last.

[Ryan] Do you have bamboo?

No, I don't have bamboo yet.

-[Ryan] I will go get you. -Thank you.

That was my student, Ryan.

She arrived yesterday. She's an old pro now at the camp.

-[Ryan] I wanna do it. -Oh, you wanna do it?

-Okay. A nice angle. -[chuckles]

A nice angle.

[hammering]

Now this is what my dad used to yell at me for

when I used the hammer like that.

You're not getting a mechanical advantage.

I don't care. It's going in.

[laughter]

Antarctica is a harsh continent.

[Ryan] It's a harsh continent.

[hammering continues]

A lot of the water sampling people will go to sleep

when the sediment sample people are going.

And I'm right next door to water samplers.

But I guess we'll figure it out.

I don't think any of us are gonna sleep that much.

Oh, look at that, home sweet home.

There we go.

♪

[engine rumbling]

[man] So it's clearly, uh, tilted and that's

not gonna be good inside working.

That looks pretty good.

Science is improvisational art.

You're always improving. Coming up with an idea

and getting other people to play the music with you.

[metal clunking]

[man] It's a hot water drill

and the hole we're gonna drill

will be about a thousand meters,

but nobody knows quite for sure.

Perfect fit.

[man] In principle,

we're drilling using a kilometer of garden hose.

In practice, it's a complicated mechanical system that,

if it breaks, you're in the middle of nowhere to fix.

Well, this is a new problem.

We had a bunch of other problems

that we kind of fought through yesterday.

We had four fuel solenoids that went bad

and it's unclear if they went bad...

over winter.

And now one of the-- one of the two that we actually have

with all of its safeties and stuff in place,

um, isn't starting.

[machine whirring]

So he's melting snow and it's to fill this.

And that's our start water for the drill.

That's gonna start the whole drill system.

So this is made by farmers.

They probably had milk in here at one time.

Well, he calls it milk but I think it's cottage cheese.

Cottage cheese? Was that it? Curds?

-Yeah. -Huh?

The curd came.

So this is all dairy farm stuff, hey?

When you hire farmers to build your drill,

that's what you get.

I can take over on this too, you know, later.

[footsteps crunching]

[laughs]

You're easy to startle.

[man] Oh, that'll be it.

[machine whirring]

This is one of the starter relays rattled loose.

-Okay. -I pushed it back down

-and it clicked and it came on. -Great.

Great. Not a problem.

I just ripped them out and reseated them.

[footsteps crunching]

[man] I'm hoping to turn everything

over to him for Christmas day.

And I hope somebody brought a ribbon.

Justin, we oughta be filling our tank like crazy.

[man indistinct over the radio]

[man] Melting snow in Antarctica is kind of like

watching grass grow in Antarctica.

Very slow.

[man] In performing this project, we are certainly

tampering with a pristine environment.

Nobody's ever accessed this lake before.

[woman] So the question comes up,

can we do the work that we wanna do in a clean way

without contaminating where we're going?

[man] Careful through here.

[man] It's also a scientific requirement.

If we drilled into a lake and contaminated it

with material from the surface and then

collected those samples, our science would be garbage.

So this is the filtration building.

But this is really what makes us a clean access drill.

We have two sets of filters.

It comes out, we go through UV lights.

And what this does is it breaks down anything

that's organic into base material.

And at that point, this, we send it on over to the rest

of the drill and do standard, uh,

pressure pumping and heating,

and then down to the drill heads.

[man] Oh my gosh, here we go. Pulling the hose out.

[metal clunking]

[man] All right, pan out.

[man] That's all good.

We're drilling.

[drill whirring]

[indistinct chatter]

Attention, everybody.

All right. Just a little short--

-Got an announcement. -A short thing.

Hey, we've been here a little over a week,

but finally today after

overcoming many obstacles, we're are drilling.

It started at 17:45 to drill down,

and it's going for about four days,

but I have a little high five award for all the drillers.

Woo!

[applause, cheers]

Thank you, guys.

You can-- you can be the--

Thanks Dar, thanks Graham.

Yeah. Thank us in a few days, maybe.

[drill whirring]

[wind rushing]

Whoo!

Where is the wind sock? Ooh, the wind sock

is all the way out.

[wind rushing]

[man] This is the biggest sled I've ever seen.

Would be an amazing toboggan.

[man] It makes you-- it reminds you

how much of lunatic Scott and those guys were.

[wind rushing]

[speaking indistinctly]

[tent flapping]

[metal clunking, machine whirring]

How deep are we, John?

[man] Uh, a bit over a hundred.

Yeah, a hundred [indistinct].

[indistinct chatter]

[man] This lake was named after John Mercer,

as was the Mercer Ice stream, which comes into it.

John Mercer was a glaciologist that worked out here,

and he was one of the first people to--

to say that if CO2 in the atmosphere keeps rising

these-- these ice sheets are gonna go away.

And that was in '79. He was a pretty amazing guy.

My God, what foresight.

You know? And now it's all come to fruition.

We know that's happening.

[ice crunching]

This little bit of snow we melted,

it filled that big tank.

What do you think will happen if this ice sheet melts?

Where's the big tank?

The ocean.

[song playing on radio]

[pots clunking]

[tap water running]

I don't want to get my last clean shirt dirty,

so I'm wearing my apron.

[man] Your working clothes.

[man] Oh, you have your working clothes on.

[man] Yeah.

[man] I have my Sunday clothes on.

[woman] Is it Sunday?

Shit if I know. Uh, no, it's Friday.

[indistinct chatter]

[man] It's coming.

[song playing on radio]

[man] It's a Christmas tradition in the deep field

to turn on the HF radio and listen to Christmas carols

the other field camps sing to each other.

If it's your desire to put together a song

and sing to the rest of Antarctica without shame,

let me know.

[laughs]

This is the saddest Christmas tree.

[machine engine roars]

[man] The hole's about 170 meters.

So if everything goes well,

it should be around, um,

around the 27th, 28th of December.

Okay. About th-- four days. Three, four days.

Are you really gonna sing this SALSA Navidad?

[woman] We're really gonna sing. Music at noon.

Okay. Oh, he's got the words.

[laughter]

And play ukulele for the first time ever in my life.

To a whole continent.

To an entire continent.

[laughter]

[indistinct chatter]

[static on radio]

Mac ops, mac ops,

SALSA would love to take the mic.

-[laughter] -[static on radio]

[woman over the radio] SALSA we hear you

loud and clear, go ahead.

[instruments playing]

♪ SALSA Navidad ♪

♪ SALSA Navidad ♪

♪ SALSA Navidad ♪

♪ SALSA Ano y SALSAdad ♪

♪ We wanna wish you a SALSA Christmas ♪

♪ We wanna wish you a SALSA Christmas ♪

♪ We wanna wish you a SALSA Christmas ♪

♪ From subglacial Mercer Lake ♪

♪ We wanna wish you a SALSA Christmas ♪

♪ We wanna wish you a SALSA Christmas ♪

♪ We wanna wish you a SALSA Christmas ♪

♪ From subglacial Mercer Lake ♪

[cheering, applause]

[man] Merry Christmas from subglacial lake Mercer.

[woman on radio] Thank you, guys. That was lovely.

["Winter Wonderland" plays on radio]

[grunting]

[laughter]

That's the pencil [indistinct].

[man] Hey, drill crew.

Do you have a current depth for me?

[man on radio] 902.73.

902. We-- we're getting around.

[indistinct chatter]

[man] Now I go to sleep. [laughs]

I'll knock on wood.

Hopefully we break through tomorrow.

-Same. -And then you get to get--

-go to work. -Yeah.

Then I get to have sleep.

-Yeah. Yeah, we'll trade off. -[laughter]

[man] Most parts of the world,

a sundial doesn't work 24 hours a day,

but here, since we cast a shadow all night, it works.

Um, I haven't done the wee hours of the morning yet.

I have my shower.

Here's the shower.

The more-- you know.

Um, water.

Well, I have a-- a sleep mask.

This helps because it's daylight all the time.

Um, I've got my water bottle.

I bring my own pillowcase with me wherever I go.

So no matter what, I have something from home.

Look, a pillow.

Stinky clothes everywhere.

This is, uh, clothes that don't smell so bad.

[chuckles] And these are clothes that smell really bad

so that-- that-- that one stays shut.

[woman] So that's all I have.

I don't really have almost anything.

I don't like having stuff.

[man] I am the onsite electrician here at SALSA Camp.

My deal, I've always wanted to see the world and,

you know, 99% of the people on the planet Earth

will never be able to come down here and see what I got to see.

And especially here at camp, I mean there's, you know,

40 some people here.

And we're the-- about the only 40 people

that'll ever be in part-- this part of Antarctica ever.

[machine whirring]

[man] So when we break through, all of a sudden,

lake water's gonna rush into the borehole

and we're gonna see 20 meters of head pressure rise

on our pressure sensor.

That's what tells us we broke through. Everything else is--

there's otherwise no indication.

There's no, like, loud noises.

There's no confetti, there's no, you know, it's just, like,

we watch-- we watch the pressure sensor spike,

and then we know we're in,

and then we start hauling ass out and--

Should be literally a vertical line on a--

on a graph and you'll know it instantly when we--

-insta-- I mean, instantly. -[man] Yeah.

It shows up in a second.

It's-- it's 20 meters of water goes instantaneous.

[machine whirring]

[woman] What's going on, Graham?

We saw a rise in our down hole pressure sensor.

So it looks like-- I mean, that's what we're looking for

when we break into the lake. So, looks like we're in.

[indistinct chatter]

[man] Looks to me like a breakthrough.

-Congratulations. -[man] Yeah.

-You drove into a lake. -[man] I sure did.

-[whistles] -[man] That's a change

in head pressure on our down hole pump.

We were at 58 and then it went up to 72

pretty much instantaneous.

[man] Yeah. That's pretty significant.

Did we make it?

[man] Feels like it.

Doesn't that look pretty textbook?

-[indistinct chatter] -Yeah, good job.

You did a great job.

-[man] We should mark the hose. -[man] Yeah.

-Mark it right at the depth? -[man] Yeah.

That mark represents subglacial lake Mercer

right there.

[wind rushing]

[man] The Niskin bottle will be down for nine hours, roughly.

We think we're gonna get three casts of that.

Uh, and we move on to the multicore.

And here we are about dinnertime on the 29th.

[man] That's sort of our first cycle.

Then it's rinse and repeat, right?

[man] So as soon as that borehole is generated,

there's essentially a stopwatch that starts

because it begins to freeze back.

We will be operating around the clock

such that there's no dead air.

Something like the sediment core.

Seems like you want two marine techs on that, right?

[man] Yeah. We'll-- we'll always have

the appropriate coverage.

[woman] I mean, we have a whole series of instruments

that need to go down that hole,

and we have a very limited amount of time

in which to do that.

You only get one chance.

So we're on, you know, we're down to the countdown, huh?

Okay, great.

You know, if you ever need anything,

Brent is a walking, uh, like office over there.

-I mean, look at this shit. -[laughter]

[man] Tony, you should have a fanny pack.

[indistinct chatter]

It's about 3:45 AM.

Perfectly relaxed, stable, nerves of steel.

[man] Are we at risk of running out of peroxide

in this project, John?

Okay. We're gonna use a lot.

It's showtime.

[machine whirring]

[man] We'll know in about an hour.

We'll see the water.

[man] [indistinct] is completely in the ice.

All right, Chuck, you can go ahead and start down at 5%.

[Chuck] Roger that, 5%.

[man speaking indistinctly on radio]

[man] Let's wait until they bury the-- the feelers.

[man] And I wanna make sure I feel-- see that.

-[man] Yeah, that's water. -[man] Okay. Full stop.

[Chuck] Stopped.

[man] Well, I want to know where to bring the pump to.

[crosstalk] That's 101 meters below the ice surface.

[man] Okay. Should we proceed down?

[man] Yeah, go slow until you--

-I wanna see-- -[man] Chuck,

let's proceed down at 3%, please. 3%.

[Chuck] Roger that, 3%.

[water burbling, machine beeps]

[man] Boy, that does look total sci-fi right?

-Yeah. -[chuckles] It's perfect.

[man] It's a pretty tough place to live, huh?

No light, under a thousand meters of ice.

You know, life's pretty tenacious, microbial life.

You know, the microbial world's everywhere

and it just doesn't make sense

that a continent this big has no life.

[pensive music playing]

[man] Every ecosystem on the surface,

directly or indirectly, gets its energy from the sun.

That is obviously not a possibility in

these subglacial lakes.

[woman] If you are a microbe living in

subglacial lake Mercer, you would--

you would never see the sun, it's always dark down there.

And the temperature is probably just below

what we would consider freezing at the surface.

And so it's very dark, very cold.

Um, very isolated.

Ah, there's no more room in here.

[indistinct chatter]

I think we'll get a--

we'll get a breakthrough in the bottom of the lake.

-[man] That's cool. -Wait, what do you got there?

[crosstalk]

[man] Full stop.

[Chuck] Full stop.

I think that's ice for sure.

So that's the bottom of the ice.

[man] Yeah, that's the ice.

[indistinct man on radio]

[man] Beautiful ice, huh?

[man] Yeah. It's really awesome.

[cheering]

[man] That's basal ice for you.

[Chuck] Wow. That's frozen on.

[man] Yeah, that is. That's-- yeah.

[man] That's the basal ice?

Yeah. We're right at the lake interface. Yeah.

[man] That is way different than I pictured it.

[man] Just another ecosystem down there.

Different kind that we're used to.

It's like a big wetland down there.

There's microbes and they're transforming nutrients.

So picture it as a wetland with,

uh, no typha, no cattails, no black--

red-winged blackbirds,

but water with ponds and lakes

and streams running through them.

That's what's under us here.

[man] Damn, I'm glad we're in this lake.

-Yeah [laughter] -I'm glad it's in the lake.

[Chuck speaking indistinctly on radio]

Yeah, we're definitely tensioning up.

We're apparently stuck on something.

[man] Look, we're coming back up in the ice. Look.

[man] Do we wanna stop and look or just keep moving?

[man] No, no, we're getting outta here.

[man] We gotta get this out of the hole.

We can't use the hole at all.

[man] We're gonna keep moving--

[man] There it is. It's trapped in the ice.

We're out, so.

[man] That was odd.

[song playing on radio]

This allows us to capture water from a discreet depth.

And when we get to the depth that we want to sample,

this is connected to a wire

and we send...

one of these messengers down the wire

and when it hits,

it triggers a release.

[machine whirring]

[man] Tell us when you're ready.

Christina, Amy, standby. We're gonna start lowering.

[woman] Copy.

Only a thousand more to go.

[whirring continues]

[man] Oh, I'm good. I'm-- I'm just cold.

I've-- I've been up since 2:00 this morning.

I know I'm gonna have to-- as soon as this bottle comes up

and then see what happens.

And I'm going to bed one way or another.

Probably, I think they're going slow.

[man on radio] 1075.

-Oh. -1075.

[man] Christina, a messenger just went down... now.

[Christina] Copy.

Bring it up.

[whirring]

[whistling]

[rock music playing on radio]

[man] Just more tune. Nice, easy listening.

[woman on radio] What is your feed?

33 meters per minute.

[woman on radio] Thank you.

[man] Yeah. Let's bring it all the way up.

[rock song continues]

Time's up.

It's a boy. [man] All right.

Thanks, John.

-Seven liters. -Seven?

[man] Oh, there we go. There we go.

Rock and roll.

We have lake water.

With all of that water,

there's lots and lots of microbial habitat.

It is surprising that that life exists down there,

but it turns out that life exists

almost anywhere that we look.

If there's water and nutrients, there's life.

In order to survive in a lake like subglacial lake Mercer,

a microbe would have to be good at extracting

nutrients and energy, basically from rocks

or from organic material

that's been preserved underneath the ice.

[man] Microbes make everything.

They make all the atmosphere,

they transform all the nutrients.

And you could take all the humans and animals

away from this earth

and the microbes would just be fine

and the atmosphere would be good and it'd be good air.

But if you take the microbes, everything dies.

In extreme environments, you'll never just see a pure strain.

You always see two that work together.

One organisms turning over nitrogen,

cycling it around to ammonia.

And there's organisms eating that.

[woman] And that's one of my favorite things about ecology.

It's always about how things on Earth are connected.

Um, and none of these things can exist in a vacuum.

Like, we all need each other from person to person

down to the microbes.

-I'm going to bed. -[man] Huh?

-Good luck you guys. -Goodnight.

It's 2:00 in the morning.

I got up at 2:00 in the morning.

It's been a 24-hour day.

[man] Extra right now, right?

-[man] Yeah. Yeah. -[man] They're going.

The team's going.

[man] Well, it's-- we'll-- we'll need it.

[man] They're gonna figure it out.

Do I have to leave? Okay.

Just make sure I got all my stuff here.

I know I brought other stuff in here,

but I guess it doesn't matter.

Oh, well.

[man] I think I'm amazed by the organism.

They're small.

Lots of cells, lots of bacteria cells.

[man] The ecological and evolutionary

history of the Earth is essentially a microbial story.

In general, understanding microbes,

their diversity, their evolutionary history

helps us understand ourselves because

we are walking microbes,

we are walking microbial communities.

Our cells are chimeras of organisms

that were microbes that joined forces together.

So that we detach ourself from the microbial world

is irrational.

We are microbes.

[man] Like the single cells, they can do a lot.

Yeah. Some of them have all the functions

of a basically an animal or a human being.

So it's just amazing how their biochemistry is.

They're just fascinating me all the time.

Oh, here.

Looks like getting into another galaxy.

[indistinct]

[man] Work in Antarctica has shown us

that deep below the surface there are oases for life.

And that could also be the case on other worlds.

There are a dozen places in the solar system

where below thick ice covers, there's water

and conditions that are plausible for life to exist.

Understanding how life exists somewhere else tells us

a lot about how we came to be.

-[woman] Okay. -[man] I can't tell

-whether it's rolling or not. -[woman] It is.

-See 11, 12 seconds. -[man] That's fine.

[woman] 13, 14.

[man] You can tell and I can't.

[man] And the approaches that we take to try to enter

those extreme environments in the lakes down here,

you know, in a clean way,

also will bear on whatever our future generations do

when we go and visit other planetary bodies

to see what those worlds are like.

[water gurgling]

To see what life could endure.

[static noise]

[woman] That's a lot of good sediment on that camera.

-[man] That looks dry. -Two hours and 32 minutes.

-[man] Hey.

[woman] Sorry it blocked the view on the way up.

[woman] Wow, Tim, check out that rock.

-Hey, Tony. -Oh.

-Hook me up, man. -It doesn't fit you.

-You have a big head. -Yeah. Perfect.

[wind rushing]

[indistinct chatter]

You'll hit the bottom at around 1084 to 1085.

Okay? And 1068 to 72 is the ice water interface.

So when you're coming back up, crawl through there.

-[woman] Yeah. -[man] Okay?

[man] Six meters.

[woman] I still don't see it.

[man] No, it's coming up.

[speaking indistinctly]

[woman] So we have to have our gloves on

and hands warm and ready to go.

[woman] They're not on tight, though.

[man] They're terribly loose.

[indistinct chatter]

...Push with all hands, [indistinct].

[man] Can you bring it up again, John?

Bring it up again.

[man] Why don't we trans--

try to transfer the load right here?

-[man] Okay. -[woman] Well,

we have to stay here.

[man] So this is dangerous, right?

[man] The only one I'm worried about is Amy's.

[man] Okay. So mine is unfrozen now.

And if I move the ball, it's gonna fall. All right?

-[woman] Yeah. Mine is too. -[woman] Mine is too.

[man] You might be able to flip that.

[man] We gonna lose this if we're not careful.

-Yeah. -[woman] I'm worr-- I just--

I think I'm gonna need somebody else to put the bung in

'cause I feel like my hands are frozen.

-[man] Yeah. Mine as well. -[man] Yeah. Mine are too.

[man] And lower a little bit. They still have inches here.

-Can we do that later? -[man] Done.

Okay, let's get it up.

[woman] I think I got it. I'm okay.

[indistinct chatter]

-[man] Say when you're ready. -[man] Ready.

[man] Okay. Go for it.

Nice job.

[man] Got it? Yeah. There you go, Amy.

Oh.

[woman] Three cap cores.

[cheering, laughs]

[woman] They're still watching.

[distant whirring]

[man] The tapes are ready for you guys. Okay?

I'm gonna [indistinct] right on here.

Yeah, Molly, can I pass it to you?

[Molly] Yeah.

Oh, bubbles coming out.

It's been three years of prep to get

three perfect sediment cores.

I'm very stoked.

We did it. [laughs]

Oh, well. Dirty hair, dirty face. Great cores.

I'm happy.

-[indistinct chatter] -[song playing on radio]

[man] Taking some of the sediments

that we recovered from one of the cores.

This one comes from 32 to 38 centimeters below the surface.

If I don't label the hell out of these,

I will not know what they are in four months.

I'm keeping it cold in here because

these guys don't like it when it's warm.

And a pain in the ass to grow.

[man] The sediment looks great too.

Just wait you see it.

All right. Sed lab.

Don't you feel happy, you guys?

-Yeah. -I'm so happy. [laughs]

Happy as a pig in mud, right?

Just happy as happy. [man] Good.

Happy, happy.

Well, we just see little fragments of diatom,

so we're really happy 'cause that's what we're looking for.

That'll tell us [indistinct] environments

and also ages.

Oh, why do I like diatoms?

I think like is probably too mild of a word.

So there are some of us, we love diatoms

because they are capturing

a history that nobody else can see.

Every slide is telling you what happened

at a certain time in history.

So I don't do anything different than a historian.

I just have a different alphabet.

It's like reading a book that nobody else read

and the diatoms are the language.

A diatom is a single-celled algae.

They're very sensitive indicators

of the conditions in which they live.

So they tell us things about how much sea ice there is,

they tell us how warm and cold it was,

sunlight, stratification, windiness,

nutrient content of the waters.

And so each one has

a very specific environmental requirement.

Just like trees on land, like maples.

You would know that you were in, say, upstate New York.

And if you found palm trees,

you could say, oh, I'm in Florida.

We can do the same thing with diatoms.

And then the second thing

is that they tell us when they lived.

So we can reconstruct the time in which

there were marine waters in this area

that's now covered by ice.

So it allows us to reconstruct climate

and that's what we're interested in.

How does the world deglaciation?

How quickly, when did it happen before?

When I was in college, I tried a lot of different

kinds of research, but they never resonated with me.

And then as a senior in college,

I started working with a climate group.

It didn't matter how tiny your project was,

it fit into the giant climate puzzle.

And so, even though what I was doing

wasn't really big, it fit into something big.

And so I never looked back after that.

And so I became an expert.

It was challenging.

But now we have a really strong polar diatom community.

-Rhizosolenia. -[man] Yeah.

And there's a, uh, [indistinct] on the side view.

[indistinct], something like that.

I always call that Grammatophora.

[man] That's okay too. [laughs]

I tell my students, just say it with authority

and people will believe you.

It can be quantitative,

but there's just a qualitative... role.

You know, what does it look like?

How fragmented is it?

What's present? What's absent?

What do you think you would've seen

that you don't see, that tells you something too.

And our goal is to help the grad students and postdocs

and make sure that the skills that we learned

over the course of 35 years, mostly alone, don't get lost.

[man] Take a look.

Wow...

[woman] Studying subglacial lakes

gives us a window into the past.

We're able to see the way that Earth's climate system

has responded to changes throughout earth's history

and project how the earth will respond to future warming.

[man] It was thought that these ice sheets were so large

that even small amounts of climate change

wouldn't affect them.

And that really changed in 2002

when one of the first ice shelfs collapsed

on the peninsula.

From then, it became quite clear that

these large ice sheets

are actually quite vulnerable to change.

[man] West Antarctica has been anticipated

to be the least stable part of the Antarctic ice sheet.

[man] It's viewed by many as sort of a time bomb.

It would raise the sea level approximately ten feet.

How soon that would happen is probably one of

the largest questions out there.

[pensive music continues]

[woman] The environmental refugee question

eats at me a lot.

And I think we need to have an idea of especially rates

if we're gonna think about protecting people.

It's really in the end about people.

[waves crashing]

I think it matters that we know because

it matters that we take responsibility

and it matters that we change the things

that are within our control, which are many.

And, um, yeah, it--

this is outside the realm of normal

and it certainly has the human fingerprint.

So we-- we can do something.

We can choose to do something.

[machine whirring]

[man] As these sediments are deposited,

they would be deposited as if you could imagine a layer cake,

one layer built on top of another.

And as you move up in those layers,

you're getting into younger and younger sediment.

What more length does is it gives us more context

and helps us understand what's going on in the sediment

a little bit better. So length is important

for, uh, what we're trying to do.

That's what we're gonna hit at 50 meters a minute.

[man on radio] 1075, preparing for impact.

Okay, you're up. Now pull it. All stop.

[woman on radio] So you guys know,

you have cheering squad outside of the large tent?

[man] I don't know that we want to know that.

[laughs]

Wait till we get mud up.

[man] There always has been climate change.

That's a-- a well-known fact and we--

we geologists are the ones who've unmasked that.

But we're also interested at looking at the human timescale

and how the changes that we're observing now

in the instrumental record of sea level, of temperature,

of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere relates

to what we can pull out of ice cores and sediment cores.

These are the extents that we want to go to,

to make sure that we understand how our planet

is going to change as a result of our actions

and how it has changed in the past before,

it was sort of at the-- the whims of human actions.

So do you know, TR, that since you're a kid

you watch movies about time machines

and you thought it was some fancy, fancy thing.

This is a time machine.

It allows us to go back in time.

It's not just gunk.

[man] There's no water in there.

I'm if wondering it [indistinct] itself.

Might have been too soft

and then might have come out of the catcher.

[woman] I think sediment that came in

got pulled out and everything came out with it.

So I don't think we have a core.

But, that's happened before.

But it won't happen again.

You know, each time you learn something new,

we'll just try it again.

[indistinct chatter]

We can't get it perfect

the way we would like to do it in our backyard.

And we're-- if we do the best we can,

we're advancing science, I guarantee you.

So just keep that in mind. Um, so yeah.

We took two multi-cores back to back

and then we tried to take a big core,

but it took us four hours to get the big core mounted

and then three more hours to core.

And then we lost our core when we were pulling it up.

But we get to try again tomorrow.

So we live to core another day.

[man] Oh, not another day.

Do I have to come out? It's comfortable.

Kinda trying to stretch my back a little bit.

This, uh, but anyway.

No, I'm-- I get up and get outta here, fast as I can.

[man] These are-- these are the values

from the accelerometers in one of the cameras.

This one actually is not running right.

These two are working.

There must be something wrong with the, uh,

with the sensor here.

It helps that I'm extremely tired.

-[laughs] -[woman] Really?

No, it's terrible.

[laughs]

[whirring]

[man] It's gotten colder.

[man] Ten degrees lower.

It's amazing what a difference that makes.

[man] It's almost New Year's Eve.

It's-- it is New Year's Eve.

We have-- we have less than an hour.

We started the hour countdown.

Look at that.

We know exactly what time it is thanks to this clock.

[laughter]

[man] It had to clock into the wall right there.

[man] Okay. You should see that bottom any second. Any second.

[man] Oh, whoa, whoa.

-Rock. -[man] Wow.

[man] Rock reading with a--

[man] Here, fishy fishy.

I'm pretty tired.

I've had, like, two hours of sleep

in the last 40 hours, but it's okay.

Look at the rock. We found a rock.

[laughs] Science.

[man] Here we go.

[all] Happy New Year!

[cheering]

It's not New Year's here, though.

[laughter]

[man] It is in this room.

It's ten hours away. We're 22 hours away still.

[man] I don't-- I don't agree.

-Disagree. -He's wrong.

We still are on a longitude.

We're not at the pole. We still have a longitude.

[man] It's 5:30.

[man] No, 6:30.

[man] 5:30.

Okay.

Is there a daylight savings time in Antarctica?

I think we've saved a lot of daylight.

Well, do they move their clocks?

No. Who's they?

The US Antarctic program.

Look how much it's moved since 1:00.

[woman] Wow.

-[man] It's moving. -[Ryan] Time.

[man] It just doesn't stop.

[laughs]

[woman] It's always moving.

It looks like it's not, but the ice is always moving.

[man] The ice is moving at just about a little bit

less than a-- a meter a day towards the ocean.

[British man] If you want to understand how ice flow

might change under changing climates,

you've gotta factor in what's going on at the bed of the ice.

[man] Ice sometimes flows like honey,

but if you add water to the bottom, like the--

the rivers and the lakes that are here,

it's like you're pouring honey on a--

on a greased cookie sheet. Right?

And it slips.

[man] That's part of the reason

why our drilling will work so well.

If the ice was static, you'd be drilling

into the same sediment all the time.

But, you know, you drill into the sediment,

get a sediment core, the ice moves along, you know,

and then we could drill into new sediment

and then the ice moves along

and then we drill into new sediment.

["I Wanna Dance With Somebody" by Whitney Houston ]

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

♪ Whoo ♪

[Ryan] You have to dance or it won't work.

We're bringing good energy to this project,

bringing good energy to this coring device right here.

Chasing away any ill things that might be here

to, uh, surprise us.

-[man] Come on [indistinct]. -Yep.

-[man] Whoo! -[woman] Yeah!

["I'm So Excited" by The Pointer Sisters]

♪ Let's get excited, we just can't hide it ♪

Ooh, Molly!

♪ I'm about to lose control and I think I like it ♪

[crosstalk]

♪ I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I want you ♪

[man] Core approaching the borehole.

Lot of cold on that line.

[whirring]

[man] No pops yet? Oh, there's one.

[sighs]

[man] That's a scary coring system, man.

[chuckles]

And our whole fate is tied to a string.

We're gonna send something that we call a messenger down

and the messenger just clips onto the rope

and we just let it drop.

Oh, man. It's a fucking heavy weight.

That's called the Go Devil.

And it will go like a devil down the hole,

but it also bends the mechanism that cuts the rope.

So we're a little concerned that it might hit

it so hard that it could bend the metal and deform stuff.

God damn, I hope this works.

-[man] Me too. -All right, man.

[man] Here we go.

Get away.

[man] It goes zooming down the rope

and it's going to smash into something

at the bottom of the rope, which is attached to the core.

And it's gonna release a weight, which then cuts another rope

and allows the core to free fall

about 40 feet to the bottom to get maximum velocity

so that we can really punch into the sediments.

[man] We wanna see a click on that.

Uh, you can cut all the footage of this part.

[man] No, they need it.

You need-- you need to develop the suspense in the audience.

[man] My freakin' heart's jumping out of my chest.

[man] I can see it.

If people knew how to do this they would've done it before.

[sighs]

Go, Devil.

Oh, there we go. That worked, baby.

That worked.

[man] That was, uh, that was too many--

[laughter]

[man] All right, so can we start coming up easy?

There it is.

Oh yeah, baby, I'm freeing them now.

It was cold down there for a while.

[man] You're talking to the rope or me?

[laughs] You're not my baby.

[laughs]

[loud whirring]

This thing could pick anything up.

God, Amy, I hope this is what it says it is.

And the catchers are closed.

Please be core. Please be core. Please be core. Oh.

-Yes! -It's a perfect core.

Filled to the top, Amy.

Filled to the top.

Everybody else was super happy about their own success,

but there was this twinge of,

well, I'm not gonna be completely happy

unless the rest of the group is successful.

Has anybody got a tape measure?

Tape measure?

[all] Woo!

-[cheering] -Longest core.

[British man] Longest core.

1.7 meters.

This is the longest, the longest core from a subglacial lake.

We were the last group to really reach success.

So when we were successful,

I think it just completed everybody's mission.

So I-- I think I like the sense of a shared mission.

That really matters to me.

Let me put it on your nose. Let me put it on your nose. Please.

[laughter]

-[man] Good job. -[woman] Thanks. You too.

[woman] I'm just a girl from the Midwestern US.

I never would've thought that I would be on a project like this,

pulling up samples from a thousand meters below ice.

[man] I can take it if you're good.

3:00 AM, playing with mud, living the absolute dream.

I think I would tell someone who

looks up to the kind of work that I do,

that there's space for them

and there's always space for more people in work like this.

Science and Antarctic research can only be improved

with more perspectives looking at it.

No tripping. You don't wanna lose your samples.

[laughs]

[man] I can't see it going much longer.

This won't last forever. That water's cooling 'em.

And when it starts, it'll freeze in rather quickly,

I'm afraid.

And I guess it depends how, if you're adverse to risk,

I'd quit. And if not, take another one.

You never know. It's Antarctica, could always bite you.

[wind blowing]

[woman] Yeah, that's no good.

Okay.

[indistinct]

[wind blowing]

[man] Our instrument is really heavy so the ice won't stop it.

But we didn't realize that the ice could fill up in it.

So we have tens of centimeters of ice

in our core barrel that just stopped any sediment

from entering, um, last night's longer coring attempt.

[man] Quite the ice.

[man] Uh, and which one's this?

That's-- [indistinct] up on the water interfacing.

We're just looking to see if there's any ice in it or not.

Doesn't look to me like it is thin ice.

It looks to me like it's more than

a millimeter or two or three or four.

Or even a centimeter thick.

And you're not gonna break it with that four pound--

Four pound weight.

[man] It's laying down. Yeah, that's frozen. Shit.

[whirring]

[indistinct chatter]

[whirring]

[man] We'll go back and no one will even ask what you've done.

Yeah. We write the papers and we--

we're scientists and that's what you do.

Yeah. But-- but we did have our, uh,

our high five moment, didn't we?

Yeah. And that's pretty cool.

So this little town was pretty, pretty happy.

-[producer] What are they doing? -Okay.

What are they doing? They're taking it all down.

No more samples. The borehole's closed.

It froze shut it went back to Antarctica.

Well, I'm kind of an adrenaline junkie

and this is pretty high level. Huh?

Do you have a tear in your eye about all this?

Of course, I have a tear in my eye.

This was, uh, it's bittersweet, John.

Hopefully, we'll-- if we don't do this again,

-we'll do something-- -See you at [indistinct].

[laughs] Oh, man. My next life.

I-- I'm only on my second life now.

All right. But it is-- it is good.

Yeah. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

[man] Yeah. I think this could be my last

big deep field subglacial expedition.

They take four, five years to plan.

The younger scientists,

hopefully they'll take it and run,

you know, and discover more stuff.

Yeah. It's not legacy, just passing on the knowledge.

So you make a discovery, pass it on, build someone else.

I'm not saying I'm passing it on yet, either.

I'm-- I'm still on the right side of the dirt, kiddo.

[laughs]

Or-- or-- or the ice, maybe I should say.

It's great, but I wanna do it all over.

I'm pretty greedy.

You know, it's-- it's like going to the United States

and looking at one lake or pond

and then using that to describe all of the United States.

That's a hard thing.

[indistinct chatter]

Yeah. I think it goes this way.

[ice crunching]

["Dusty Old Dust" by Woody Guthrie]

♪ So long, it's been good to know yuh ♪

♪ So long, it's been good to know yuh ♪

♪ So long, it's been good to know yuh ♪

♪ This dusty old dust is a-gettin' my home ♪

♪ And I've got to be driftin' along ♪

[airplane engine roaring]

[woman] And then, then comes the hard work. Right?

You know, the weeks, months, years

at the microscope in the lab, doing the analyses.

What next?

I don't know. Go home first.

Go home. Say hi to your family.

Yeah. Hard to believe.

-Yeah. Yeah. -Sad?

Sad. Happy. Both.

Yeah, me too.

I think we did a good job.

I think-- and I also think we're a good team.

[man] 800 pounds of samples are going out today.

800 pounds.

And we're gonna turn all that water and sediment into numbers.

Well, I'm gonna go outside, get some fresh air

and look at the big airplane.

Everyone became a team.

It's a team.

Truly altruistic group.

And I hope the data that we get outta here will, uh,

change the way they think about this continent.

And, uh, set a precedence for future research.

[pensive music playing]

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪