1
00:00:00,010 --> 00:00:04,020
It's an incredible place to be.

2
00:00:04,040 --> 00:00:08,050
It's desolate and yet it's compelling in a lot of ways.

3
00:00:08,070 --> 00:00:12,080
There's a sense that humans have never been in these areas much before.

4
00:00:12,100 --> 00:00:16,130
There's a strong sense that really humans

5
00:00:16,150 --> 00:00:20,160
don't have any place there. 

6
00:00:20,180 --> 00:00:24,180
It's not a comfortable continent. But at the same time it's stark and beautiful

7
00:00:24,200 --> 00:00:28,200
and amazing. Way up at the top of the ice sheet

8
00:00:28,220 --> 00:00:32,230
about 13,000 to 14,000 feet, it's actually a very flat plain,

9
00:00:32,250 --> 00:00:36,270
but it's slightly higher than all the area around it.

10
00:00:36,290 --> 00:00:40,330
That's the area we started looking at. There's a 

11
00:00:40,350 --> 00:00:44,400
lot of atmospheric science and climate science

12
00:00:44,420 --> 00:00:48,450
that's behind what produces the coldest termperatures in Antarctica.

13
00:00:48,470 --> 00:00:52,480
The home of all of that is this area along the ridge, the highest part

14
00:00:52,500 --> 00:00:56,520
of the ridge in East Antarctica, where

15
00:00:56,540 --> 00:01:00,550
if conditions are right, temperatures plummet to

16
00:01:00,570 --> 00:01:04,570
extremely low levels, past the previous record low temperatures

17
00:01:04,590 --> 00:01:08,620
recorded by the Russians at 

18
00:01:08,640 --> 00:01:12,640
a base called Vostok. What we found was that the coldest

19
00:01:12,660 --> 00:01:16,700
temperatures are actually just off of the crest.

20
00:01:16,720 --> 00:01:20,750
The crest is an area where the air, as soon as it gets to a low temperature, starts to drain away

21
00:01:20,770 --> 00:01:24,800
What you need is a place where that air is actually caught and held

22
00:01:24,820 --> 00:01:28,850
for a while, so that it can cool down still more

23
00:01:28,870 --> 00:01:32,880
by radiating away into space, and those are

24
00:01:32,900 --> 00:01:36,930
the places where we're finding these very very low temperatures.

25
00:01:36,950 --> 00:01:40,950
You might say, let's go there, and maybe in summer that's

26
00:01:40,970 --> 00:01:44,980
a reasonable thing to try and do.... It's really cold.

27
00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:49,000
And so things like your ordinary thermometers, a mercury thermometer won't work

28
00:01:49,020 --> 00:01:53,050
and alchohol thermometer will have a lot of trouble.

29
00:01:53,070 --> 00:01:57,080
Were talking temperatures that are 50°C colder than anything that has ever been seen

30
00:01:57,100 --> 00:02:01,120
in Alaska, or in Siberia, or certainly in North Dakota or Montana

31
00:02:01,140 --> 00:02:20,954