Will you follow his example?
IT PAYS TO LOOK AT THE DRY VALLEYS
Antarctica’s dry valleys may hold the key to life among the stars
This morning, while having a late breakfast and recovering from a bout of ‘flu I was listening to Radio 4’s news commentary which focused on climate change. In a nutshell, it seems that the consensus of scientific opinion is that the average temperature of the globe will increase by about three degrees Celsius over the next century.
What that amounts to is that is the lifetime of a newly born child of today’s grandchildren the levels of the oceans are expected to rise dramatically, thereby swamping low-lying countries such as Bangladesh and the Maldives and desertification of places such as southern Europe will be advanced. I am writing of the year 2107 and thereabouts.
Well, add that to the depletion of fossil fuels (the USA alone gobbles about 19 millions barrels of oil every day) and what we will have is a much more difficult planet on which to live.
It does not require a first class brain to work out from the above premises that either humanity will have to make fairly extreme adjustments to sustain a reasonably civilised lifestyle on Earth - or look elsewhere.
People talk of burning hydrogen to fuel cars and all sorts of methods of harnessing the sun’s energy but my hunch is that in the event none of that will deliver adequately, let alone in full, to compensate for what had been lost.
Whither then? There are only two possible directions for mankind to follow - downwards or upwards. The former entails some kind of morlock existence underground away from the weather, conserving scanty resources and eventually, when the atmosphere depletes enough to dry the oceans, hanging on to water supplies. Have you read the Dune science fiction novels?
The other and altogether more exciting option is the upward path; that is what former President Reagan called “the high frontier.” Writers and other thinkers keep telling us that the Earth is mankind’s cradle but the time will come when it leaves its cradle and lives among the stars.
That is all very well, you may say, but where exactly are we looking at? At this time, taking into account that travelling beyond the speed of light is not presently possible there are only two contenders and they are both in our own Solar System. Not exactly living among the stars, but something nevertheless.
They are: Mars and the Moon.
Humans have already stood upon the Moon, or so we are told. There is a school of thought which teaches that the first American manned Moon landing in the 1960s was faked and that it was all filmed in a studio on Earth.
Whatever, the Moon is a dry (very) and resource poor (extremely) place to live on. It is blasted by solar winds all the time. It has tremendous amounts of radiation from the sun and steep fluctuations of temperature depending on whether the spot you are on is sunny-side up or down. Plus no cost-effective agriculture. Ho-hum.
Now Mars is almost as big as the Earth with an atmosphere almost as thick and which could arguably be terraformed and climate-changed by technology which is already partially with us today. So there is a major possibility there.
Fools venture where angels fear to tread, wise men tell us. What that amounts to in this context is that before any kind of colonisation, before the first manned expedition to Mars, even, all sorts of experiments and dry-runs are carried out with all sorts of lee-ways for every kind of disaster and set-back imaginable.
What that amounts to is trying out life in some arid and very (or even extremely) cold environment for long periods of time.
While trawling through the Internet I was interested to discover that this planet possesses a small region which is not utterly dissimilar to Mars in terms of frigidity, aridity and paucity of resources.
As you might already have guessed from the headlines to this article of mine, I am bringing matters round to the dry valleys of Antarctica.
The southern polar region more closely resembles the bleak cold of outer space than the Arctic. The Arctic is dominated by water and the North Pole is on the Arctic Ocean. Owing to global warming during most summers the pack ice melts all the way to that pole nowadays. That is excellent if you are interested in high-latitude wildlife but not good if you are researching a new home for our descendants outside our home planet in the swirling gas and dust of the Milky Way.
I was most fortunate to be counselled by Professor David Walton who is attached to the British Antarctic Survey and who is an expert in Antarctica’s dry valleys which are close to the coast.
He says that that the dry valleys are the longest unglaciated part of Antarctica and remarkably free of fresh water. One locality which is doubtless a contender for the best hell-on-Earth prize is the Don Juan Pond which is far saltier than the Dead Sea in Palestine/Israel.
The USA’s NASA space agency is already highly interested in the dry valleys on account of its various points of similarity to Mars, the professor says. Almost nowhere else on Earth is it so cold with so little ice. Like Mars, whatever little water there may be is likely to be below ground.
Furthermore, although life does indeed exist in the dry valleys it is simple in the extreme and takes the form, he states, of fungi, yeasts, nematodes and tiny creatures embedded in the rocks themselves.
It follows that it a group of men (or women) could manage to survive for long periods in such an inhospitable environment the outlook for migration to Mars is better for the rest of us.
Now, the McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of valleys in Antarctica located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The region includes many interesting geological features including Lake Vida and the Onyx River, Antarctica's longest river. It is also one of the world's most extreme deserts. From north to south, the three main valleys are Victoria Valley, Wright Valley and Taylor Valley.
IT PAYS TO LOOK AT THE DRY VALLEYS
Antarctica’s dry valleys may hold the key to life among the stars
This morning, while having a late breakfast and recovering from a bout of ‘flu I was listening to Radio 4’s news commentary which focused on climate change. In a nutshell, it seems that the consensus of scientific opinion is that the average temperature of the globe will increase by about three degrees Celsius over the next century.
What that amounts to is that is the lifetime of a newly born child of today’s grandchildren the levels of the oceans are expected to rise dramatically, thereby swamping low-lying countries such as Bangladesh and the Maldives and desertification of places such as southern Europe will be advanced. I am writing of the year 2107 and thereabouts.
Well, add that to the depletion of fossil fuels (the USA alone gobbles about 19 millions barrels of oil every day) and what we will have is a much more difficult planet on which to live.
It does not require a first class brain to work out from the above premises that either humanity will have to make fairly extreme adjustments to sustain a reasonably civilised lifestyle on Earth - or look elsewhere.
People talk of burning hydrogen to fuel cars and all sorts of methods of harnessing the sun’s energy but my hunch is that in the event none of that will deliver adequately, let alone in full, to compensate for what had been lost.
Whither then? There are only two possible directions for mankind to follow - downwards or upwards. The former entails some kind of morlock existence underground away from the weather, conserving scanty resources and eventually, when the atmosphere depletes enough to dry the oceans, hanging on to water supplies. Have you read the Dune science fiction novels?
The other and altogether more exciting option is the upward path; that is what former President Reagan called “the high frontier.” Writers and other thinkers keep telling us that the Earth is mankind’s cradle but the time will come when it leaves its cradle and lives among the stars.
That is all very well, you may say, but where exactly are we looking at? At this time, taking into account that travelling beyond the speed of light is not presently possible there are only two contenders and they are both in our own Solar System. Not exactly living among the stars, but something nevertheless.
They are: Mars and the Moon.
Humans have already stood upon the Moon, or so we are told. There is a school of thought which teaches that the first American manned Moon landing in the 1960s was faked and that it was all filmed in a studio on Earth.
Whatever, the Moon is a dry (very) and resource poor (extremely) place to live on. It is blasted by solar winds all the time. It has tremendous amounts of radiation from the sun and steep fluctuations of temperature depending on whether the spot you are on is sunny-side up or down. Plus no cost-effective agriculture. Ho-hum.
Now Mars is almost as big as the Earth with an atmosphere almost as thick and which could arguably be terraformed and climate-changed by technology which is already partially with us today. So there is a major possibility there.
Fools venture where angels fear to tread, wise men tell us. What that amounts to in this context is that before any kind of colonisation, before the first manned expedition to Mars, even, all sorts of experiments and dry-runs are carried out with all sorts of lee-ways for every kind of disaster and set-back imaginable.
What that amounts to is trying out life in some arid and very (or even extremely) cold environment for long periods of time.
While trawling through the Internet I was interested to discover that this planet possesses a small region which is not utterly dissimilar to Mars in terms of frigidity, aridity and paucity of resources.
As you might already have guessed from the headlines to this article of mine, I am bringing matters round to the dry valleys of Antarctica.
The southern polar region more closely resembles the bleak cold of outer space than the Arctic. The Arctic is dominated by water and the North Pole is on the Arctic Ocean. Owing to global warming during most summers the pack ice melts all the way to that pole nowadays. That is excellent if you are interested in high-latitude wildlife but not good if you are researching a new home for our descendants outside our home planet in the swirling gas and dust of the Milky Way.
I was most fortunate to be counselled by Professor David Walton who is attached to the British Antarctic Survey and who is an expert in Antarctica’s dry valleys which are close to the coast.
He says that that the dry valleys are the longest unglaciated part of Antarctica and remarkably free of fresh water. One locality which is doubtless a contender for the best hell-on-Earth prize is the Don Juan Pond which is far saltier than the Dead Sea in Palestine/Israel.
The USA’s NASA space agency is already highly interested in the dry valleys on account of its various points of similarity to Mars, the professor says. Almost nowhere else on Earth is it so cold with so little ice. Like Mars, whatever little water there may be is likely to be below ground.
Furthermore, although life does indeed exist in the dry valleys it is simple in the extreme and takes the form, he states, of fungi, yeasts, nematodes and tiny creatures embedded in the rocks themselves.
It follows that it a group of men (or women) could manage to survive for long periods in such an inhospitable environment the outlook for migration to Mars is better for the rest of us.
Now, the McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of valleys in Antarctica located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The region includes many interesting geological features including Lake Vida and the Onyx River, Antarctica's longest river. It is also one of the world's most extreme deserts. From north to south, the three main valleys are Victoria Valley, Wright Valley and Taylor Valley.
The dry valleys are so named because of their extremely low humidity and their lack of snow or ice cover. Together, at 4,800 square kilometers, they form the largest relatively ice-free region in all Antarctica. The valley floors are covered by a loose gravelly material, in which ice-wedge polygons may be seen.
The gravel is often derived from two sources. The first is the terminal moraines which have formed at the ends of glaciers which descend into the dry valleys but then mostly sublime directly to air. Thus, very little liquid water is added. The second source of terminal moraines comes from a rather unusual source. It is believed that during some glacial periods, the quantity of ice in the nearby Ross Sea was so great that it forced its way inland into some of the dry valleys, in a kind of reverse glacier and deposited its own terminal moraine.
Endolithic plants have been found living in the dry valleys, sheltered from the dry air in the relatively moist interior of rocks. Summer meltwaters from the valleys' overhanging glaciers provide the primary source of soil nutrients.
Therefore, scientists consider the dry valleys to be perhaps the closest of any terrestrial environment to Mars and threby an important source of insights into possible extraterrestrial life.
A part of the valleys was designated an environmentally protected area in 2004.
To the end that humanity’s time on Earth may well be limited and that after a sojourn of two and a half million years or so at the top of the zoological food chain, there may well be less that a few centuries to go.
I am submitting that every reasonable step be taken to decide who migrates where from here.
Owing to the monopoly which Mars presently has as the only alternative to slumming it on Earth it follows almost logically that only people who can stand and adapt to the peculiar environment of the Antarctic’s dry valleys are fit to be the progenitors of the future Martian settlers.
Despite the name, the lakes there are the most interesting and diverse habitats in the dry valleys. Organisms are found growing on and in the ice cover, in the water, and on the bottoms of the lakes.
Explorations of lake bottoms by scuba equipped divers, including core sampling of bottom sediments, have disclosed the existence of algal mats on lake floors; in certain respects these are analogous to some of the Earth's earliest life forms. The mats produce gases which render them buoyant in marginal zones of the lake. There they form columns, which detach from the bottom, rise, and then work their way upward through the surface ice layers - as much as five meters thick-after which they dry out and blow away, sometimes to colonize in other locations.
And what of the others, the people who cannot adjust to such a strange place? That must perforce include many or most of the south Asians.
All that I can suggest is a tight birth control regime enforced by law with penalties for non-compliance to conserve this planet’s resources. A limit of two live births per woman will end population rise and ease the source of human caused climate change as publicised on my breakfast radio broadcast.
To the end that humanity’s time on Earth may well be limited and that after a sojourn of two and a half million years or so at the top of the zoological food chain, there may well be less that a few centuries to go.
I am submitting that every reasonable step be taken to decide who migrates where from here.
Owing to the monopoly which Mars presently has as the only alternative to slumming it on Earth it follows almost logically that only people who can stand and adapt to the peculiar environment of the Antarctic’s dry valleys are fit to be the progenitors of the future Martian settlers.
Despite the name, the lakes there are the most interesting and diverse habitats in the dry valleys. Organisms are found growing on and in the ice cover, in the water, and on the bottoms of the lakes.
Explorations of lake bottoms by scuba equipped divers, including core sampling of bottom sediments, have disclosed the existence of algal mats on lake floors; in certain respects these are analogous to some of the Earth's earliest life forms. The mats produce gases which render them buoyant in marginal zones of the lake. There they form columns, which detach from the bottom, rise, and then work their way upward through the surface ice layers - as much as five meters thick-after which they dry out and blow away, sometimes to colonize in other locations.
And what of the others, the people who cannot adjust to such a strange place? That must perforce include many or most of the south Asians.
All that I can suggest is a tight birth control regime enforced by law with penalties for non-compliance to conserve this planet’s resources. A limit of two live births per woman will end population rise and ease the source of human caused climate change as publicised on my breakfast radio broadcast.
THE END
This article was published in the 1st February 2007 issue of the Bangla Mirror, the first English language weekly for the United Kingdom's Bangladeshis - read everywhere from the Arctic Circle to the sub-Antarctic.
