anthony: the airport shuttle ivan the terra bus a road warrior -looking behemoth that takes us slowly towards our destination. bus driver: we re driving ivan. 40-feet long 67,000 pounds, 23 years old, made out of good canadian steel. sometimes the heat actually works. this year it does. anthony: it s no short hop to antarctica, and no easy thing to see it the way it should be seen. the last un-[ bleep ] up place on earth. bus driver: here we are. try to get plenty of rest and enjoy the antarctic. anthony: mcmurdo station, the largest u.s. base on the continent. the hub, supply and support center for everything we do here
snowmobile. people climb around on those things? ryan: the mountaineers here you know have drills to practice extricating somebody. anthony: there s a steep learning curve to flying down here, skillfully handle gale force winds, reduced control at high altitudes and the unpredictability of extreme turbulence around mountains and active volcanoes. ryan: slowly but surely climbing and it s minus 20 outside. anthony: erebus and that s ryan: mount terror. anthony: vo this is unt erebus, e southernmost active volcano on earth. antarctica was a great mystery for most of human history. only a theory, a great white space at the bottom of the world.
doug: it s fresh water ice and the ice itself varies from the snow, like today. and then down at the bottom, ice that might have fallen as snow 35,000 years ago. it s the part of the antarctic ice sheet we call the buttress, because it fringes the entire continent. it might take 50,000 years for the ice itself to get into the raw sea and bust off as an iceberg. but it would take only 20,000 years or even 10,000 years if the ice shelf wasn t there. this is the biggest pile of free ice in the solar system. anthony: mcmurdo is at the tip of ross island, surrounded by miles of frozen sea. there are a lot of different types of ice down here. doug: glaciology started about 50 years ago. our entire science is driven by the fact that we re still trying to figure out what antarctica is doing in terms of sea level. how the ice sheet is expanding
or contracting, how it s flowing, whether it melts in some places, how it bust off icebergs that float away in the ocean. and we re trying to come up with some kind of a solid, reliable statement about what cities like san francisco and new york and shanghai have to plan for. anthony: antarctica, for all too obvious reasons, remained free of any sustained human contact until the mid-20th century when the u.s. navy launched operation deep freeze an enormous logistical enterprise that established the first permanent base here at mcmurdo in 1955. man: deep down in the ice, caves were cut, and here the supplies were packed away in a natural fridge. frozen meat, perfectly preserved, but where s that axe? let s have a bit of 15-year-old ham. anthony: since the national science foundation took over from the navy, things have gotten a lot less wild west around here. it feels like dorm life at college.
whatever we could completely jack up the soils organisms that live below there. anthony: oh like that guy? byron: yeah, like that dude he s totally he s going to get wipped out. michael: when scientist came and first started studying they thought that these soils were sterile, but we ve dispelled that myth when the glaciers melt and the streams flow, that s where you find life. anthony: so why is this area look like this? where s the ice? how come the ground is sort of soft and spongy? byron: the polar plateau where most of the ice accumulates starts to spread out toward the edges of the continent, but the transantarctic mountains form a barrier. so the ice sheet hits the mountains and can t get through. the other thing is there are these really knarly winds that come off, and drop down into the plateau and then rush towards the edges of the continent gushing through these valleys. anthony: so it s a fluky micro climate here? michael: we cl it the banana belt i of antar