Encounters at the End of the World Page #7

He analyzes gas emissions

from volcanoes all over the world

If this were one of those active

volcanoes in Indonesia,

I'd be far more circumspect

about standing on the crater rim

This is a very benign form of volcanism,

and even the eruptions we've seen in the

historic period are relatively minor affairs

If we go back into the geological record,

we see that there are huge

volcanic eruptions,

massive, explosive eruptions that produced

thousands of cubic miles of pumice,

showering large parts of the Earth

with fine ash,

and these have been demonstrated

to have had a strong impact on climate,

and one of the biggest of these events,

has been argued even to have affected

our human ancestors

and may have played an important role in

the origins and dispersal of early humans

So these events will recur, and I think

the more we understand about them,

the better we can prepare for

their eventuality

HERZOG For this and many other reasons,

our presence on this planet

does not seem to be sustainable

Our technological civilization makes us

particularly vulnerable

There is talk all over the scientific

community about climate change

Many of them agree the end of human life

on this Earth is assured

Human life is part of

an endless chain of catastrophes,

the demise of the dinosaurs being just

one of these events

We seem to be next

And when we are gone, what will happen

thousands of years from now in the future?

Will there be alien archeologists

from another planet

trying to find out what we were doing

at the South Pole?

They will descend into the tunnels

that we had dug deep under the pole

It is still minus 70 degrees here,

and that's why this place has outlived

all the large cities in the world

They walk on and on

And then this

As if we had wanted to leave one remnant

of our presence on this planet,

they would find a frozen sturgeon,

mysteriously hidden away

beneath the mathematically precise

true South Pole

They stash it back away

into its frozen shrine for another eternity

And then they find more,

memories of a world once green

As if the human race wanted to preserve

at least some lost beauty of this Earth,

they left this,

framed in a garland of frozen popcorn

Back at the base camp of Mount Erebus,

due to the considerable altitude,

once in a while the volcanologists

need medical care

But soon we find them back at work

My face is frozen

Quite cold up here today

Just by having that fantastic lava lake

down there with all that energy,

we still have to bring old petrol generators

up to the crater rim

Man versus Machine, Chapter 53

Professor Clive Oppenheimer on Erebus

Hands in pockets,

waiting for it to start spontaneously

He could be waiting a long time

Have you ever seen two men kiss

on the top of Erebus before?

(BOTH LAUGHING)

OPPENHEIMER:
Pushing back the frontiers

It's R-18, okay?

I like working with Harry

HERZOG Along the slopes of the volcano

there are vents where steam creates

so-called fumaroles, bizarre chimneys of ice,

sometimes reaching two stories in height

It is possible to descend into some of them

You only have to be careful

to avoid the ones containing toxic gasses

At the foot of Erebus, out on the sea ice,

the two tallest buildings on this continent

are located

In these hangars,

scientific payloads are being readied

for their balloon launch

into the stratosphere

We were interested in

the neutrino detection project

Scientists are planning

to lift an observation instrument

in search of almost

undetectable subatomic particles

(ALL CHEERING)

As it rises, this small-Iooking bubble

of helium will expand

to fill the entire skin,

which here still looks like a white rope

It will eventually form a gigantic globe

more than 300 feet in diameter

When it reaches the stratosphere,

the detector will scan

thousands of square miles of ice

without encountering electrical

disturbances from the inhabited world

Prior to the launch,

we were inside the hangar

The neutrino project is led by

Dr Gorham of the University of Hawaii

So, what we're trying to do

with this instrument is to be the first

scientific group to detect the highest

energy neutrinos in the universe, we hope

HERZOG:
Yeah, but, Dr Gorham,

what exactly is a neutrino?

The neutrino is It's the most ridiculous

particle you could imagine

A billion neutrinos went through my nose

as we were talking

A trillion, a trillion of them

went through my nose just now,

and they did nothing to me

They pass through all of the matter

around us continuously,

in a huge, huge blast of particles

that does nothing at all

They're like

They almost exist in a separate universe,

but we know, as physicists,

we can measure them,

we can make precision predictions

and measurements They exist,

but we can't get our hands on them,

because they seem to just exist

in another place,

and yet without neutrinos, the beginning

of the universe would not have worked

We would not have the matter

that we have today,

because you couldn't create

the elements without the neutrinos

In the very, very earliest few seconds

of the big bang,

the neutrinos were the dominant particle,

and they actually determined

much of the kinetics of the production

of the elements we know

So, the universe can't exist the way it is

without the neutrinos,

but they seem

to be in their own separate universe,

and we're trying to actually

make contact with that

otherworldly universe of neutrinos

And as a physicist, even though

I understand it mathematically

and I understand it intellectually,

it still hits me in the gut

that there is something here around

surrounding me almost like

some kind of spirit or god

that I can't touch,

but I can measure it

I can make a measurement

It's like measuring the spirit world

or something like that

You can go out and touch these things

HERZOG Not surprisingly, we found

this incantation in Hawaiian language

on the side of his detector

It was as if spirits had to be invoked

What would we see if we could film

the impact of a neutrino?

What you would see is, you would see

a lightning bolt about 10 meters long,

about that thick,

and it would blast at the speed of light

over this 10 meter distance,

and you would see the most beautiful

blue light your eyes have ever seen

It happens in about

The entire impulse of radio waves

is up and down in probably

one one-hundred billionth of a second

It just goes bang and it's gone,

and that's what we're looking for

There is a beautiful saying by an American,

a philosopher, Alan Watts,

and he used to say that through our eyes,

the universe is perceiving itself,

and through our ears, the universe

is listening to its cosmic harmonies,

and we are the witness

through which the universe

becomes conscious of its glory,

of its magnificence

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