But first, Bubah is back! I don't know how we got him back, but if I find out more, I'll let you all know.
Second, a few parting pictures.
Above is a picture of Dan and a tech worker changing the gain on the optical pointing telescopes on the side of the SPT.
Above is a picture of the official South Pole Marker. Each winter the machinest makes a pole marker for the new year. This years was a miniature bronze model of SPT. It is about 3 inches high. The inset in the flat plate is cut out in the shape on Antarctica.Curiously, it doesn't really feel like I am leaving. More so today than yesterday, nonetheless it still feels like another day at the pole when I wake up, eat, and sit down at my computer to work. Work is going great, as usual. I am continuing to work or the C analysis pipeline, which I assume that I will be working on for some time now. I am currently completely re-writing the function that reads data out of fits files and into a C struct which we can then easily manipulate. The previous function is something like 12000 lines long for a SINGLE FUNCTION, hence the reason for re-writing it. It is really fun working with smart people - in this case I am referring to Erik Leitch - who know a lot about a subject. After talking to him I have figured out a much cleaner way of re-writing the function which is actually pretty elegant. It involves writing a nested set of arrays of structures which contain function and memory pointers. Then all I have to do is loop through this pre-defined array and call one general read function for each column of data. Still haven't compiled it yet, but I am working and testing in small steps. It should be awesome! But I digress.
Yesterday I didn't feel like I was leaving at all, and just worked the whole day through on the above programs. Now it is finally settling in that I am indeed leaving in a few hours. So what are my last thoughts while here? Well, I am very glad to have had the opportunity to come here. First and foremost it is incredible to finally be down here and see the telescope that I will eventually be writing a thesis on. I have learned much more about the project than I would have in the equivalent amount of time in Chicago. This is the best part of the trip. I also feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to be somewhere that a small fraction of the population will ever be able to go to. Antarctica is an incredible continent. I have been living on kilometers of ice in all directions, including down. It is like being in the middle of the ocean.
I am nevertheless excited to leave and get back to my life in the "outside world." It is fun to visit here, but it puts the rest of your life on hold for that time. I am quite glad not to be staying for winter for that reason. I am sure that mentally I would be able to handle it and would have a productive and eventful year, but right now I am not willing to miss a year of my life in the outside world.
An interesting observation that one of the people on the Ice Cube neutrino detector project made last night in the sauna is that the South Pole is like living in a nice youth hostel. There are many people in their 20's and early 30's. You can hang out with other young people every evening, get to play sports and watch movies, and have parties and dancing every weekend. The only difference is that you get your own room, the food is much better, and you are surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of ice.
The one thing that I am not sure about the whole endeavor is the consumptive nature of this entire enterprise. Everything we do here relies completely on being flown in on an airplane. All of the energy we use comes from gas that was flown in. As far as I can tell the station does a reasonable job of being frugal with their energy uses - buildings seem well designed, and there aren't too many energy-consumptive extra luxuries (the sauna is an exception). However, thinking about just the flights makes me cringe a bit. There are 4 or 5 flights from McMurdo to Pole and back six days a week, weather depending, all summer. Keeping a population of around 250 people for the summer and 40 people for the winter takes a lot of food and gas.
The only two justifications that I can see are as follows. Geo-politically, the united states would have a station at the pole regardless of the science. I am certainly not convinced that this is a good reason, but right now it is a political reality. The second reason is why I am here, namely that the South Pole is very nearly the best place on earth for doing CMB science. Between the 6 month winter, the extremely cold and stable atmosphere, and the rotation pattern of the earth below the sky, this is pretty much as good as it gets without going to space. And if we are thinking about expense, a satellite is usually at least 100 times as expensive as a ground-based experiment. The science we are going after is as big as it gets - the nature of the universe as a whole. And mark my words, right now we are in a golden age for experimental cosmology. This field will open up our understanding of the universe immensely in the next 10-20 years. I hope that it will eventually lead to ways of testing and finally understanding gravity, which will probably lead to a complete revision of our understanding of the fabric of space-time itself. So is this worth the expense and the consumption that maintaining a science-support station at the south pole entails? Well my feet are saying "yes" by working on this project. I am unambiguously in support of spending lots of money on science, so why not just chalk up the expense to the name of science? I do believe that the pursuit of knowledge is an endeavor worth sacrificing for. It is what I am dedicating my life to. So is it worth it? No answers today. To my readers, think about it. One of the greatest capacities we as humans have is the ability to think. Use it!
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