Word: antarctica
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...episode 2 of “Veritas: The Quest,” the members of the Veritas Foundation venture to Antarctica in search of a “mysterious power source” that legend suggests possesses the power...
...Harvard, students venture to Antarctica-on-the-Charles in search of “world renowned professors” who believe themselves to possess the power...
What changed? The answer, many scientists believe, lies in the breakup of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland, to which Antarctica once belonged. For tens of millions of years, Antarctica was the centerpiece of Gondwanaland, and its winds, like those of then contiguous Australia and South America, were warmed by currents flowing down from the equator. But around 25 million years ago, after the other continents had pulled away, a new current was created--one that circled endlessly round the Southern Ocean, sealing Antarctica off from tropical influence...
That is the bare-bones version of the story. Many scientists think more than that was needed to put Antarctica in its present deep freeze. Among their favorite candidates: a reduction of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide. Supporting this idea are the provocative data scientists pulled from an ice core taken near the Russian station at Vostok. That ice, notes Marchant, contained bubbles of air that spanned the past 420,000 years, and the carbon dioxide in those bubbles tracked the temperature swings that mark the beginning and end of glacial cycles...
...understood interval of time. First, of course, Marchant will have to convince skeptical colleagues that his ice really is that old, that it has not been reworked by geological processes--and this is likely to take some doing. But if that effort proves successful, scientists will have wrested from Antarctica's frozen fortress yet another fiercely guarded secret--in this case, an ancient secret of urgent import to the 21st century...