Ballooning in the Antarctic? And for physics experiments? The more I read, the more surprises were in store for me. I’d imagined something the size of weather balloons, which in turn I’d always assumed were like children’s coloured balloons, with a simple thermometer and rotating wind vane hanging on underneath (are they??). Well my imagination did not rise to the task, since the balloon program being run from McMurdo Station carries payloads of 2 tons or more, and so the balloons have to be truly gigantic.

Antarctica BESS balloon just before launch, with payload in foreground, Dec 2004

The second major surprise was that the physics experiments weren’t about something abstruse, like the rate of ion decay in polar latitudes, or ozone depletion rates, but were bent on the finding antimatter. The Antarctic is an unworldly place where everything is quite out of the ordinary and fundamentally surprising, but to be using it as a base for locating antimatter seemed to be strecthing incredulity way beyond snapping point.

I was reading Anil Ananthaswamy’s excellent book ‘The Edge of Physics’ where he visits observatories around the world and describes the people there, the path-breaking research they are doing, and explains the theoretical background in layman’s terms. All are at the cosmological front of the envelope. And NASA’s Long Duration Balloon facility at McMurdo Station is part of this.

Final inflation of the BESS balloon before launch

Antarctica’s totally inhospitable conditions are at least ideal for something – cosmology. The South Pole’s dry atmosphere and high altitude are perfect for telescopes and optical observation; and the winds in the upper stratosphere are ideal for balloons in summer, since they settle into a stable circumpolar pattern which allows balloons above 36 kms to circle endlessly until the plug is pulled (so to speak).

At McMurdo NASA has run balloon experiments on cosmic background radiation (the remnant of the big bang), antimatter particles, and cosmic rays. The BESS program has the remit to try and give an answer to, of all things, why the universe is made of matter and not anti-matter. Current theory suggests that both should have been produced in virtually equal amounts at the big bang, and therefore there should be zones, and even galaxies out there, made purely of anti-matter. (Anti-matter is, as far as a layman like me understands, the same as matter, with identical behaviour, except that each particle has the opposite charge to the same particle in matter.) The BESS balloons lifted huge superconducting magnets to above 120,000 ft where, with the help of scintillators and other detectors, all the particles smashing into it are recorded to detect antimatter. And the first BESS balloon in 1993 identified 6 antiprotons.

Captain Scott was the first aloft in a balloon in Antarctica, February 4, 1902

These are not the first balloons in the Antarctic though. Captain Scott was actually the first ever to go up in a balloon, from a bay he called ‘Balloon Bight’ at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. Two balloons and 50 cylinders of hydrogen gas were taken along by the Discovery expedition of 1901-4, and Scott, understandably, took the first honour, rising to about 800 ft. Shackleton took the next flight up. But as pointed out by Ananthaswamy in his book, both men would have been simply open-mouthed at the size of the NASA helium-filled balloons. On the ground these rise to about 1000 ft, in other words higher than Scott and Shackleton reached in the air! And the NASA balloons have a volume of 37 million cubic feet, compared with 8,000 cubic feet of the Discovery expedition balloons.

It is fascinating to know that, whilst it is not the only location worldwide (and in space) exploring the frontiers of science and human knowledge, the Antarctica’s extreme climate and location is playing a leading role in this endeavour. And ballooning in the Antarctic remains even more exciting than ever!

Panorama of South Georgia taken by Frank Hurley in 1915

We’ve set up various blogs for countries in Latin America. Each demands a deep and fascinated interest in the country. But when it comes to the Antarctica, the pen almost freezes. This is a continent of extremes, whether of heroes or of nature, and anything remotely mediocre strikes a dissonant note. Facts need to be correct, opinions well-supported. There is little room for anything less.

Record cover for Sinfonia Antarctica by Vaughan Williams

This is daunting. But I’ve long nurtured unfulfilled dreams about the Antarctic. I’ve read many of the classic explorer accounts, re-read Shackleton’s crossing to South Georgia many times, listened raptly to Vaughan Williams’  Symphonia Antarctica, and dreamt of hunting for Emperor’s eggs in the true style of Cherry-Garrard. So my enthusiasm should give some right to express opinions.

And twice  I’ve tried to join Antarctic missions. The first, while at university, was with British Antarctic Survey . After an initial exploratory interview and a brief meeting with one of the gods (Sir Vivian Fuchs, leader of the Commonwealth Trans Antarctic Exxpedition),  it became obvious my chances were zero without further preparation. So I signed up for a special survey course, along with a friend. To cut a long story short, the friend re-applied to BAS and was accepted, whilst I, impatiently, headed off to South Africa well before. A year later I applied for the South African program; was invited to Johannesburg for a battery of interviews and psychology tests; and then returned to the bush, waiting, waiting waiting. Nothing ever came, and so ended the dream. Or did it?

Emperor Penguin & chick

In both cases I had been applying for a 2 year stint on a base camp. Could I have stood it? To this day I’m really not sure. But it was probably crystal clear to the interviewers, looking for social animals able to get on perfectly at all times despite frostbite and colleagues stealing the last of the whisky. I’m a perfect introvert, quite unable to shout with the lads (one of Shackleton’s interview questions) and left-handed to boot, so the interviewers must have quickly consigned my application to the scrapheap.

In recent years it has become much easier to take a cruise to the Antarctic, and I’ve jumped at these. They are truly spectacular. A 10 day cruise is of course much easier to handle than 2 years. Is the dream spoilt? No, not all. It is simply a different one, more intense in the speed of events,  more superficial in the depth of experience. And much safer. One simply just can’t get enough of the experience of visiting such a forbidding but fascinating continent, so alien it really can’t be part of the same planet!