APOD: Searching for Meteorites in Antarctica (2011 Dec 11)

[APOD Robot]

Searching for Meteorites in Antarctica

Explanation: Where is the best place on Earth to find meteorites? Although meteors fall all over the world, they usually just sink to the bottom of an ocean, are buried by shifting terrain, or are easily confused with terrestrial rocks. At the bottom of the Earth, however, in East Antarctica, huge sheets of blue ice remain pure and barren. When traversing such a sheet, a dark rock will stick out. These rocks have a high probability of being true meteorites -- likely pieces of another world. An explosion or impact might have catapulted these meteorites from the Moon, Mars, or even an asteroid, yielding valuable information about these distant worlds and our early Solar System. Small teams of snowmobiling explorers so far have found thousands. Pictured above, ice-trekkers search a field 25-kilometers in front of Otway Massif in the Transantarctic Mountain Range during the Antarctic summer of 1995-1996. The week marks the 100th anniversary of humans first reaching the Earth's South Pole.

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[Beyond]

Meteorites are cool , but datsa toooooo cold for me BRRR......

[Ann]

It certainly makes sense to look for meteorites in Antarctica, because Antarctica is one of the most "unchanging" parts of the world. Yes, it is changing now due to global warming, but there is no vegetation there there that can cover the meteorites with moss or bury them slowly under grass or thickets of shrubs. There is not even any sand that can cover them. Interestingly, Antarctica is the closest thing we've got on the Earth to one of those icy moons of Saturn. The landscape may be melting, but it is still mostly frozen.

And there really is such a thing as "blue ice". Check out this picture. The weather is cloudy and grey, but the blue ice is very blue.

Ann

[biddie67]

What an awesome vastness!! I'd love to pop in for a brief visit ~~ and find a meterorite.

[orin stepanek]

What an awesome vastness!! I'd love to pop in for a brief visit ~~ and find a meterorite.

I'll pass! I'm not a cold weather person!

[Yana]

A boring image. Yes, Antarctica is a good place to look for meteorites, but there are so many beautiful images of Antarctica.

[nebosite]

This is an exact repeat of a previous APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080907.html

C'mon APOD! Could you least find a *different* picture of an antarctic meteorite hunting expedition?

-e

[Zarathoostra]

Along with the contrast being a major role in searching for meteorites in Antarctica, the glacial congregation of sediment and the lack of humidity makes it an ideal location as well.

[geckzilla]

This is an exact repeat of a previous APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080907.html

C'mon APOD! Could you least find a *different* picture of an antarctic meteorite hunting expedition?

-e

Saturday and Sunday are the editors' days off. Sometimes they throw in the occasional new picture but you should expect mostly repeats, unfortunately.

[henrystar]

A boring image. Yes, Antarctica is a good place to look for meteorites, but there are so many beautiful images of Antarctica.

A glorious, extremely exciting image! Shows that everything is mental, does it not? I see people in the search for new knowledge! Glory, glory, HALLELUJAH!

[saturn2]

Antarctica is the best place on Earth to find meteorites.
Antarctica is the best place on Earth " to find "neutrinos, too.
In Antarctica is a big observatory of neutrinos of high energy.

[TNT]

What an awesome vastness!! I'd love to pop in for a brief visit ~~ and find a meterorite.

I'll pass! I'm not a cold weather person!

I'd like to travel to Antarctica to find meteorites!

[bronxred]

Does anyone know what is going on in that mountain range behind the ice sheet? Is that cloud on top of the mountains simply a large, somewhat vertically oriented cloud above the lower cloud sheet, or is it circling a mountain peak that is actually about the same height? It looks like a gigantic, volcano-like peak is poking up through the clouds in the middle there.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1112/me ... y_3000.jpg

To the peeps in charge of APOD: Thanks for all the great images & descriptions!

Best, Newbie Jake

[Chris Peterson]

Does anyone know what is going on in that mountain range behind the ice sheet? Is that cloud on top of the mountains simply a large, somewhat vertically oriented cloud above the lower cloud sheet, or is it circling a mountain peak that is actually about the same height? It looks like a gigantic, volcano-like peak is poking up through the clouds in the middle there.

I think this is just an orographic cloud structure- clouds formed when air is pushed up into a condensation zone by mountains.

[Sean Alsante]

It certainly makes sense to look for meteorites in Antarctica, because Antarctica is one of the most "unchanging" parts of the world. Yes, it is changing now due to global warming, but there is no vegetation there there that can cover the meteorites with moss or bury them slowly under grass or thickets of shrubs. There is not even any sand that can cover them. Interestingly, Antarctica is the closest thing we've got on the Earth to one of those icy moons of Saturn. The landscape may be melting, but it is still mostly frozen.

And there really is such a thing as "blue ice". Check out this picture. The weather is cloudy and grey, but the blue ice is very blue.

Ann

~
Good point and indeed Beautiful.
But we had better hurry! We will likely lose that as well in perhaps as little as 200 Years. Then all those nuggets of Information fall to the bottom of the Ocean as well...

[Chris Peterson]

But we had better hurry! We will likely lose that as well in perhaps as little as 200 Years. Then all those nuggets of Information fall to the bottom of the Ocean as well...

I think most are likely to end up on the underlying land, not to be washed into the ocean. But either way, we'll lose most of them.