Arrival at the South Pole

Holy crap!!!! I am at the south pole!!! Holy crap!!! How can I convey to you, my dear reader, my excitement when I stepped off the plane and there was the South Pole Telescope, just a kilometer away? Well, hopefully you all know me well enough to how excited I get about the science I do. I have been working on projects at the South Pole for a year and a half, and have seen hundreds of pictures of the SPT, and then all of a sudden, THERE IT IS!!! I couldn't stop smiling and almost started jumping up and down right there on the snow runway.

But I am ahead of myself. This morning, we left McMurdo and boarded the airplane at 8am. The planes that they fly into the South Pole are military propeller planes with skis instead of wheels, C-130's. They hold around 30 people seated around the outside of the plane interior, and when we are dressed up in all of our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear, the quarters are quite tight. The ECW consists of the following: white Mickey Mouse boots, insulated Carhart overalls, massive down coats with huge, fir-lined hoods, gloves, hats, and goggles. In anything above 15 deg F you start sweating in a hurry just standing there! The flight took about 3 hours. There were some breath-taking views of the Antarctic interior. Just incredible vast expanses of snow and rock. The sky blends with the ground in a seamless cocoon of white and blue.

At the South Pole station I was met with many familiar faces - colleagues I have worked with on the BICEP2 experiment (which I worked on for my first year of graduate school) and my current coworkers on SPT. It is a funny feeling to step off of a plane in one of the most remote places in the world, and be immediately surrounded by people you know and buildings and structures you have dreamed of. My friend Justus who works on BICEP 2 and has taken me climbing in CA during my visits to Caltech to work on that project met me when I got off the plane. The first thing he said was, "did you bring your ice axes? Because there is a 20 ft ice face that we could climb if we had gear!" All my climbing stuff is in Christchurch, so I will try to get Chris Sheehy to bring it in when he comes in later in January. The landscape is completely flat snow in all directions. The sun circles around the sky, but always at virtually the same elevation in its slow regress towards the horizon where it will eventually set after this six month day.

After eating lunch, we immediately headed out to the telescope. The first thing I did when I got there was charge the outhouse because I had to go to the bathroom so bad I couldn't think. But then ... WOW! WOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!! They weren't kidding when they said that the primary mirror is 10 meters in diameter! The telescope is huge. The first time I was standing on top of the observation building watching the telescope turn and nod, I just started laughing hysterically with glee! The entire telescope can rotate at several degrees per second and can almost look like it is dancing. It is indescribable, just amazing. I still can't believe that I am here.

In addition to scientists, there were several media people and "Distinguished Guests" (DV's). The media people include Dan, a meteorologist for a tv station in Alabama that partners with CBS, Ann, a science writer for the Washington Monthly, a camera man from CBS, a science writer from the Wall-street Journal, a reporter from NPR and another science magazine, and perhaps a few others. The DV's were top people from the NSF, which is the organization that funds the whole Antarctica program along with the military. It is very important that the DV's have a good trip and return with favorable impressions, and they have certainly been treated as first-class citizens during the entire trip. Both groups were given tours of the science experiments including SPT, BICEP, and Ice Cube. I listened to Carlstrom give the tour three times in all. Even though I know most of what he said, it is always incredible to listen to John talk about his science. He has a crystal clear grasp of what the science is and how our experiment is achieves these goals. He explains his work concisely, clearly, and passionately. Without exception everyone on each of the three tours were visibly excited by the time John finished talking about dark energy, structure formation, and finding new galaxy clusters. I got excited, and I was hearing the exact same thing three times in a row! I came away with the realization that the experiment I work on, SPT, is the best instrument of its kind at virtually the best location on earth directed by one of the best scientists in the field right now. I know I have told many of you this, and I will say it again; there is nowhere I would rather be, nothing I would rather be doing right now than working as a graduate student on the SPT under John Carlstrom. If I were independently wealthy, I would be doing exactly what I am doing now - ok I might have a car to go climbing but ... I love it. I absolutely love it!

May you all be living out your dreams.