Ariel Waldman

And so that sort of helps keep everything in check down there.

But China and Russia have been blocking making new protected areas because they're interested in krill fishing.

You know, long, long time ago, it was like seals and whales and blubber.

Today, it's krill.

No, no, we have not, except for subglacial lakes for science.

And trying to discover the oldest ice on the continent, which also involves drilling.

But there's a couple of different ways to go about it.

One way is drill as deep as you can, get down there.

But that's really difficult.

So I know the American effort to do that called CODEX goes to this really unusual part of Antarctica known as the Allen Hills.

But you can drill kind of sideways into the ice and get really old ice because it's getting pushed out instead of down.

You know, a lot of what you can do is when you drill ice cores, what you see in them are all these tiny little bubbles.

And those bubbles are little bubbles of old atmosphere.

And so they can actually analyze the old atmosphere in those bubbles and tell you how old the ice is.

Yeah, I mean, so Antarctica is part of the Earth.

And so it's privy to the same sort of geologic forces as anywhere else.

So McMurdo Station is right there.

practically at the base of Mount Erebus, which is the southernmost active volcano.

And it has an active caldera that's constantly smoking down there.

And it's a bit intimidating, but it's there and it's just kind of checking away.