It seems like one thing out of science fiction: Within the late Fifties, the US Military carved a tiny “metropolis” into the Greenland ice sheet, 800 miles from the North Pole. It had dwelling services, and scientific labs, and dealing showers, all powered by one small nuclear reactor.
The analysis base was known as “Camp Century,” a Chilly Struggle scientific venture that helped researchers deepen their understanding of ice. As a part of their efforts, they wound up drilling near a mile down by way of the ice sheet to drag up an ice core: a collection of lengthy cylinders of ice that function a document of Earth’s historical past, with all the pieces from atmospheric gases to volcanic fallout preserved of their tightly packed layers.
The ice from Camp Century has been completely sampled and studied because it first got here out of the ice sheet. It, together with the ice from many different ice cores, has taught us loads about Earth’s local weather going again tens of 1000’s of years — about how abruptly local weather can change and the function that greenhouse gases play in warming.
However the drillers at Camp Century introduced up extra than simply ice. Additionally they introduced up a number of ft of sediment from beneath it. Besides, as a geoscientist named Paul Bierman, who wrote a complete e book concerning the ice and sediment from Camp Century, explains, these samples went largely understudied for many years, with only a handful of papers written about them.
“ I believe the main focus of the group was nearly laser on the ice and never on the stuff beneath it,” he says.
These sediments from beneath the ice had been so undervalued, in reality, that they disappeared into some freezers in Denmark for years. Till, in 2017, some researchers discovered them once more. And when scientists lastly began to review these sediments in earnest, they found a bonanza of former lifeforms and a trove of data.
On the newest episode of Vox’s Unexplainable podcast, we discover these long-ignored sediments, and be taught what they will train us about our local weather previous — and future.
