Damian Carrington

It's set up so that it can't distribute profits to anybody that's in it.

It's kind of like a not-for-profit company.

It's been funded for this series of field seasons by actually the UK government, the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, which is

I like to think of kind of the UK's long shot agency, you know, kind of funds crazy ideas that might just work out.

So in terms of what they're trying to do, it's a relatively simple idea.

The idea is that they go there in the winter, like in February, January, drill holes in the ice.

At that time, it's minus 40.

They pump up seawater.

Seawater is not frozen below the ice, out on top of the ice, and it freezes really quickly.

So they added this season about 50 centimetres to the ice, which was already going to be about one and a half metres.

And the idea is that because it's thicker, it lasts longer in the summer and reflects more sun.

Yeah, and that's a good question.

So their goal is to use renewable energy.

But in the short term, it's actually surprisingly little energy.

So they pumped 50,000 tonnes of water onto the ice over the winter.

And I think that was using six or eight pumps.

Each of these pumps has less power than a toaster.

Right.

It's not a powerful pump.

It's not using a lot of energy.