Unique ice, 1.5m year old, to be melted to unlock mystery

An ice seed came to England, where scientists will melt it to unlock vital information about the climate of the Earth.

The glassy cylinder is the oldest ice of the planet and is drilled from the depths of the antarctica ice layer.

There are thousands of years of information that frozen, scientists say that we can “revolutionize” what we know about climate change.

BBC News entered the -23C freezer room in the British Antarctica Study in Cambridge to see valuable ice boxes.

British Antarctica Research Head of Ice Core Research “This is a purely unknown period in our world history,” Liz Thomas says.

The red warning lights flash on the door and if something goes wrong, an emergency escape cover enters a tunnel.

Rules, padded overalls, boots, hats and gloves, wearing only 15 minutes at a time, he says.

The electronic shutter of our camera froze and our hair started to crack as we turned ice.

Dr Thomas draws attention to the oldest nuclei that may be 1.5 million years old in a working structure next to stacked ice boxes. They shine and it is very clear that we can see our hands from them.

For seven weeks, the team will slowly melt the ice -wins, ancient dust, volcanic ash and even the water will release small seaweeds called the datums locked inside.

These materials can give scientists information about wind patterns, temperature and sea levels a million years ago.

The tubes will feed the liquid to the machines in a laboratory, one of the only places in the world to do this science.

It was a great national effort to remove the ice seeds in Antarctica at millions of costs. The ice was chopped into 1m blocks and moved to Cambridge with a boat and then with a cold minibus.

Engineer James Veal helped to remove ice near the Concordia base in Eastern Antarctica.

“Keeping this carefully in my hands and paying attention not to leave the sections – this was an incredible feeling, or he says.

Two institutions in Germany and Switzerland took the cross -sections of the 2.8 km of seed.

According to Dr Thomas, teams may find evidence that carbon dioxide concentrations may be high or higher than 800,000 years ago.

This can help them understand what will happen in our future when reacting to trapped heating gases in our planet atmosphere.

“Our climatic system has gone through so many different changes that we really need to go back to understand these different processes and different overturning points.”

The difference between today and previous periods is that with high greenhouse gases, people have now caused a rapid increase in heating gases in the last 150 years.

This takes us to the seat -free area, but scientists hope that our planet’s registration of the locked environmental history on ice can give us some guidance.

The team will define the chemical isotopes that can tell us wind patterns, temperatures and rainfall for a period of 800,000 and 1.5 million years ago in the liquid or for a while.

They will use a tool called dual plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) inductive to measure more than 20 elements and work metals.

This includes rare soil elements, sea salts and sea elements as well as indicators of past volcanic explosions.

The study will help scientists understand a mysterious change called Pleistocene Middle Transition 800,000 to 1.2 million years ago, when the planet’s glacial cycles suddenly change.

When ICE covered much more of the Earth, the transition from warmer to cold glacial ages had been every 41,000 years, but suddenly it went into 100,000 years.

According to Dr Thomas, the reason for this change is one of the “most exciting questions” in climatic science.

Nuclei can be proof of a time when sea levels are much higher than now and large antarctic ice layers are smaller.

The presence of dust in ice will help them understand how the ice layers shrink and contribute to the rise of the sea level – a great concern of this century.