And so it was that Herbold and I came to be discussing the funky archaea.“They’re so strange,” Herbold says. One of the early explorers described how he left his tent in clothes merely damp from sweat and the humidity of his own breathing: “Once outside, I raised my head to look round and found I could not move it back. It’s easier to drink from when you’re lying in the sleeping bag. It began to form about 1.3 million years ago and now stands 12,448 feet above sea level. I’m wearing a thermal shirt, thermal leggings, wool leg warmers, fleece trousers, heavy overalls, a down vest, a fleece jacket, two down jackets, two pairs of socks, heavy boots, three pairs of gloves, a balaclava, a hat, a snowmobile mask, a neck gaiter, ski goggles, and two hoods.

Moore is outside fixing one of the snowmobiles. How do I mount an LVM volume/partition in Linux to access my data? But we can enter the biggest of the nearby ice towers—the one that looks like an astronaut—and drill an ice core from inside.Inside, the air is moist and warm. Microbes can travel hundreds of miles on the wind. It’s an eerie sight, like looking at a conduit to the center of the Earth.Up here the air is thin and walking is slow. The only way to keep something warm is to heat it with your own body heat. Mount Terror is a mountain in Antarctica and has an elevation of 3278 meters. I hope he finds it soon; I want to start moving again.

It’s enormous—three feet long—and bright yellow, with a thread of lurid orange. For the next 15 hours the wind hurls ice crystals at the tent and makes the walls rattle and flap. As we move away from the entrance, the light fades, and we have to use flashlights.

The floor is rocky, with a dusting of ice. Strange how refreshing the impending darkness is—how starved for darkness we have been. Next an inflatable air mattress. He’s come to one of the coldest places on Earth to look for beings that thrive in heat.Mount Erebus is the most southerly active volcano on the planet. Which is how I came to share my sleeping bag with lip balm, moisturizer, toothpaste, baby wipes, a camera, a watch, several pens, one pair of tent slippers, two pairs of gloves, two water bottles, three batteries, and three pee bottles.Pee bottles? However, to go to the toilet tent you must get completely dressed; when it’s 40 below outside, you don’t sally forth in pajamas. Instead, they get energy from other sources, such as iron or hydrogen. This suggests, perhaps, that they have indeed long been charting their own evolutionary course. When these are full, you go to the toilet tent and empty them. The evening we were due to fly up the mountain, a big cloud was sitting on top of it. For convenience, therefore, you stay in your tent and pee into bottles. Also at McMurdo, a tattooed motorbike enthusiast called Toby taught us to “he-man” snowmobiles and explained how to change the spark plugs.

For example, if you don’t eat your food within a few minutes of its being cooked, it will freeze. So it’s not surprising that they should be lurking in the hot soils of Mount Erebus.But these archaea are particularly mysterious. 2020 National Geographic Partners, LLC. The floor is moist, soft soil and rocks; the walls are ice. He’s found the probe.Two, we’re standing on the rim of Mount Erebus.
Strange too the lush, saturated colors of the New Zealand spring. Mount Cotopaxi is a Composite or Strato volcano. This deep, dark ecosystem might also be among the Earth’s most primeval and could be home to life-forms that have long been charting a separate evolutionary course.Thus outfitted, we flew on a U.S. military transport plane—along with a few other passengers and some huge crates labeled “Do not freeze”—to Ross Island. It takes two men to operate, one to cradle it in position, the other to push it into the side of the tower. Or are the microbes on Erebus unique, and—this would be tremendously exciting—are they beings that have come up from deep within the Earth? Shackleton’s party hiked up Erebus.


Moreover, move a couple of feet away from the hot spot, and the soil temperature drops sharply. Whereas our eventual base of operations, Lower Erebus Hut, has two small buildings (the eponymous hut and a shed) with electricity, heat, chairs, tables, and a stove with an oven, Fang consists of nothing but a row of tents pitched on snow.Camping in this environment presents certain difficulties. Arnold is making a radio call to Scott Base. Drinking so much has obvious consequences. (The others are bacteria, and eukaryotes—organisms with nuclei in their cells, like plants, fungi, and animals.) My clothing had frozen hard as I stood—perhaps fifteen seconds.” Yikes.And so we tested thermoses and water bottles. Here’s a typical evening. Jehle is cooking. So at Fang there is a toilet tent. And the volcano is quiet.

The hope is that such cores will contain microbes that have been lofted from inside the volcano and then frozen into the ice, giving a window into the microbial life in the vent below.We are landing at sunset. Mount Erebus is the most southerly active volcano on the planet. It began to form about 1.3 million years ago and now stands 12,448 feet above sea level. And I’m washing up and thinking about the immensity of the landscape.One, we’re wearing harnesses and hard hats and descending on ropes and ladders into an ice cave known as Warren Cave, which has been hollowed out by steam from the volcano.

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