Dr. Robert Smalley has had offices in some interesting places. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked in a linear accelerator of a nuclear reactor. At Cornell University he was in the basement of the physics department. He’s spent months at a time in the wilds of South America.
But for the associate research professor at The University of Memphis’ Center for Earthquake Research and Information, this past month was extreme — even for him.
For January and part of February, Dr. Smalley’s office was the South Pole.
He and five colleagues from the University of Hawaii and the University of Texas at Austin traveled to Antarctica to conduct research on movement of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
The project, called The West Antarctic GPS Network (WAGN), is concerned about the movement of the WAIS for several reasons.
Most importantly is the possibility of the WAIS melting due to tectonic movement. Much of the WAIS lies well above sea level. If the sheet were to become unstable and flow out to sea, it could float northward into navigational shipping routes and warmer climates. This warmer water and air would melt the ice sheet, which many believe would raise the ocean levels a significant amount. This could eventually have serious social and economic consequences for low-lying coastal areas of the world.
“Nobody’s sure why it hasn’t melted yet,” Smalley said.
Also, as far as movement of Antarctica goes, the numbers have never added up.
“Measurements are just a little off in Antarctica,” Smalley said. “What we’re going to do is figure out where the error is.”
Smalley and his team plan to use a global positioning system, a precise satellite-based navigational system, to track the WAIS and find out if it’s moving — and if so, how fast.
The team’s work in Antarctica was mainly devoted to setting out GPS receptors across the WAIS. Finding accessible spots suitable for the receptors was a full time job. Working against the Antarctic weather was exhausting for the scientists.
Smalley said the team would have breakfast at 7 a.m. and then wait for a good time to fly out. Sometimes it would be as late as 7 p.m. before the pilot would say whether it was good enough to go.
“We’d get back at 12 midnight and get up at 6 and do it all over again.”
The team intends to eventually set out 16 receptors. This trip they managed to set out only four.
The team was stationed in McMurdo, which is the largest base in Antarctica.
More than 100 structures can be found there, including a harbor, an outlying airport with landing strips on ice and a helicopter pad. There are about 1,000 people stationed there. Roughly 10 percent of them are scientists, while the rest are support staff.
Despite these amenities, Smalley said Antarctica took some getting used to. He was there in the summer, which meant it was daylight around the clock. Also, to the human body Antarctica feels like an altitude of 12,000 feet.
“First couple of days, we were dragging our butts around,” Smalley said. “We weren’t very animated.”
Smalley said even though the team’s small twin otter plane could only carry five hours worth of fuel, flying through the Antarctic didn’t scare him. He loves planes, and has a pilot’s license of his own.
One time the team was almost stranded in a storm. They were working far from base when fog and ice blew in. Visibility was lost completely.
“When it’s like that, it’s like having your head in a white bucket,” Smalley said.
They sat in the plane for hours before the pilot and their guide finally got out and laid a path of rocks to guide them enough to take off.
“That’s the closest we ever got to stuck,” Smalley said.
The WAGN project, which is fully funded by the National Science Foundation, is just one of many research projects Smalley has his hands in.
His specialty is the tectonic processes involved in the development of the Andes Mountains and the cycle of earthquakes that occur on the boundary between those plates.
