In my R2B inhale, I took notes on a documentary about scientists that were trying to find
In the world we live in today, Antarctica has been covered with solid ice, but the world is changing. For the past 100 years, large amounts of carbon emissions have been released by mankind; The temperature on the earth has risen, leading to the polar ice caps to melt. Scientists to this day are researching and using methods to figure out if there was a time when Antarctica didn’t have ice, and how that affected the life in Antarctica 24 million years ago.
In New Zealand, engineers have been developing a giant drill that will collect samples from the ocean floor under the ice sheets. When the Ice was forming 24 million years ago, enormous ice sheets moved slowly across the land, taking samples of rocks with it and dropping the samples into the water and down on the ocean floor. Layer after layer, the ocean floor contained rock samples that were in chronological order. But this was going to be a challenge since there is 400ft of pure ice followed by a lot of water. Only then will they be able to collect samples to discover the true story of Antarctica.
This great drill was later named “ANDRILL” as it was specifically made to drill not only through rock but also a large amount of ice. The drill bit for the drill was made out of diamond, therefore making it easy to drill through big rock piles. The drill would be transported on a big sled, making it easy to move across the terrain. The ANDRILL team would settle at the McMurdo research facility near the south of Antarctica.
The drill was set, and the ANDRILL team collected the first few samples going back from 10 to 1000 years of data. The samples would be collected from the drill, as they are split in two to reveal lots of fossils and rocks dating back many years. Scientists also found moss that was dating back from 500,000 to 600,000 years ago, showing that Antarctica had to be a cold environment for the moss not to fossilize. Scientists also discovered life in Antarctica even when it was icy approximately 12 million years ago.
In summing-up, although the ice caps are melting, there is a way to turn all of this around. In my opinion, there should be a way to reverse this. We may still have time before the ice caps melt. Humanity is destroying the ice caps and there must be a way to reverse it.
For this project I viewed a documentary about scientists trying to see if there was a time that Antarctica was not icy. They would later figure out that there was a time where Antarctica was actually a tropical island. For my exhale I made a article regarding what they have discovered and what they did to discover it.