For their safety, meteorites like to travel in herds and try to blend in with their surroundings (each flag is where we found a meteorite). Like all expert big game hunters, we were not fooled.
Yesterday was a tent day, and the worst kind of tent day; it was a marginal tent day. That may seem counterintuitive, since very bad weather would seem to make a worse day. See the thing is, inside your tent the weather outside is largely immaterial, thus on a horrible tent day, you can just settle in and give your full attention to doing nothing (heh, if you’re going to do nothing, you should at least do nothing the right way). On a marginal tent day you have to keep getting ready to get ready to go out. We were on for 9 AM, 11 AM, 1:15 PM, and each time the small amount of sunlight out there was swallowed up by a sea of clouds (I believe Johnny refers to these small windows of sun as “sucker holes”). Eventually we just gave up. That flat light and falling snow that had started two days ago (when we were Awesome) both got worse, so that the sastrugi became stealth sastrugi and every rock and meteorite looked the same until you were two inches away.
I’m sure this was covered in yesterday’s blog (it is surprisingly hard to read the blog while we are in the field), so why am I rehashing old news? If you said that because it only counts as official news if I give it to you, you are only partly right. The other part (a small part to be sure) is that being cooped up yesterday helped explain today’s Hardcore Awesomeness (or as I like to call it, Harcawesomeness [Trademark Pending]).
Today dawned (sic) clear, “cool”, and windy. And by cool I mean -9 F, which was a full 25 degrees colder than the previous day. Now add ~10 mph of wind in camp to that, and we had a marginal weather day to stay out and work a full day, even if conditions didn’t worsen. But this is Antarctica, and of course things got worse. As we drove over to the moraines we had searched the previous day, the wind really started to kick up, moving to >15 mph sustained wind, and gusts to 25 mph and higher. My weather station must not have been working properly, because it wouldn’t give a wind chill factor, it simply kept saying “Hoth”, and “Seek Shelter inside a Tonton” (for those of you reading this blog who didn’t understand those references, please stop reading and don’t come back till you have completed the requisite background work).
Note: I just told the Hoth joke to Jim, and he went “huh?”. On an unrelated note, I am planning a coup and interviewing new tent mates immediately.
In any case, despite the marginal weather, we soldiered on and initiated another moraine search, cause that’s how we roll! We found ~15 meteorites in 1.5 hours, at which point the wind was blowing people off balance and despite our extreme harcawesomeness, most of us were ready to run for the warmth of our tents. Some idiot (whose name sort of rhymes with lion) suggested we collect the meteorites despite the crappy weather conditions, then take a nice long hot lunch break (like an 18 hour lunch break). The author of this idea should probably be shot; I can hear the others talking about the retribution now. Still, for another two hours we managed to collect the 16 meteorites, bringing our total for the day to 26, in just over 4 hours of working, and our total for the year to over 315 (with 25 more found and waiting to be collected)! Thus our Hard Core Awesomeness is demonstrated (I’m actually pretty sure by the time I have left Antarctica, harcawesomeness will be the new hip term)! I mean, what kind of team doesn’t find more than 300 meteorites in a season?!
As we fled from the moraine, sorry, not fled, ran away from the moraine back to the warmth of our tents, mother nature decided to give us a bit of a parting shot, and make sure we stayed good and gone. She upped the wind speed to gusts of nearly 30 mph, so as we careened across the blue ice, homeward bound, we were chased (and passed) by eddies of snow blowing across the blue ice. In one place you could see the streamers of snow running in parallel lines down the hill of blue ice we were on, and up the facing hill, disappearing over our horizon on its long march to the ocean. Despite the chill, it was among the most beautiful sites I have seen in my time in Antarctica!
An example of the type of massive meteorites that using the metal detector allows us to find with ease. Hopefully we will have several hundred of these to bring home with us by the end of the season!
Now, for you math freaks in the audience, you’ll notice a discrepancy between the number we found in our first search of the day, and our final total. That’s because I skipped a part. I could go back and rewrite this to make it a more linear story, but frankly that’s more work than it is worth.
The part I skipped was our using the metal detector yesterday to pretty good effect yesterday. Most meteorites (~90%) have a significant amount of metallic iron (and nickel) in them, thus they are easily detected by a standard metal detector. Now, we don’t normally search this way for a couple of reasons. The 10% of meteorites that a metal detector won’t detect include nearly all of the most interesting meteorites to scientists, e.g., lunar meteorites, HEDs, other achondrites, even martian meteorites (these last are more of a novelty than anything really useful). Also, a metal detector, at least the one we have, can only cover a relatively small area at a time, and a trained eye is probably better at detecting meteorites.
Still, in yesterday’s weather conditions, it was worth a trip to the nearby moraine (where all of the rocks were buried in snow) for a trial run. I was able to find 10 meteorites in about an hour of searching (including a suspected carbonaceous chondrite), and we collected these first thing this morning. Keep in mind this moraine has previously been searched multiple times over the years.
Note: Ralph, you’d have been so proud this morning. We were using the metal detector, the drill and the small flags all at the same time. I tried to work in the new shower as well, but it wasn’t to be!
A large suspected carbonaceous chondrite found today.
A second trial this morning with the metal detector yielded less good results; just one meteorite in about 45 minutes in a previously searched moraine that had more abundant rock than yesterday. The main issue (in addition to the weather) was that the main local rock (the Ferrar Dolerite) sets off the metal detector. While the meteorites can be distinguished from the rock, it requires you to be basically right on top of the meteorite with the detector.
Note: One upside to using the metal detector is that it seems to be really good at finding the really small ordinary chondrites (we call these Cecilia specials). We’re all very excited to send as many of these back to JSC as possible!
So a quick note (sorry, “essay”) on the weather here. When I was here 4 years ago, the weather was largely invariable. With the exception of a single snowy day, nearly every day was clear, cold (0 F +/- 2 degrees), and windy (typically 5-15 mph always from the South). This year we’ve had 25 degrees of temperature variation (in a day and a half no less). We’ve had wind from literally every direction on the compass, nearly a week of snow, and super strong (25 mph sustained) katabatic winds, two consecutive days of essentially zero wind, and more clouds than you can shake a stick at. In other words, the weather has gone bat crazy down here.
Tonight we’re ramping up for our “fancy” seafood dinner party. I was disappointed that this was not my normal see-food diet, but in fact a formal affair in the science/party tent where each tent brings their best seafood dish to share! And by formal, of course I mean that pants must be worn (easier without Shaun here this season), and all long johns must not have been worn for more than 3 consecutive weeks! Jim and I are bringing bacon-wrapped “seared” scallops (mine rarely come out seared, though they are usually tasty) and prosciutto wrapped asparagus (with ham substituted for prosciutto).
Tomorrow we’ll go back to hoping that our resupply flight gets here, and of course, we’ll go back to collecting more meteorites!
Let’s go, Cowboys!
– written by Ryan Zeigler, Davis-Ward, Sunday January 11, 2015
P.S. Hello to my mom in upstate NY! I hear it’s actually been colder there than here. I was going to call and rub that in, but somehow that call seems like it would be more obnoxious coming from me, than from Grandma in Florida…er…not that I’m calling my Grandma obnoxious (but I’m pretty sure my mom has several times)!