Discover magazine offers an online photo-gallery overview of six of the “coolest science experiments” underway in Antarctica. Shown with brief explanations are:

--ice core drilling in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide camp. Some 20 projects are being carried out to study climate changes of the past, ice sheet history, and the effect of low temperature on living things.

–penguin populations studies on Cape Royds, Ross Island, and along the Antarctic Peninsula

–an under-ice telescope, called IceCube, which is hunting for neutrinos from cosmic events

–research stations for planetary scientists in McMurdo Dry Valleys, where conditions are similar to those on the Mars surface 

–weather balloons to measure temperature, wind speed, and the concentration of gases at the South Pole

–an above-ice telescope at the Pole to measure microwave background radiation from the Big Bang.

Two of these cool science experiments are the subject of articles in the upcoming issue of Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears. The theme of the April issue is Science at the Poles. The featured researcher is geophysicist Charles Bentley, who has played an active part in ice core drilling in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet project and was among the first to investigate the properties of the massive ice sheet. (A map of Antarctica shows a mountain and a subglacial trench, both his discoveries, named for him.)

The science content knowledge article is written by a member of the Ice Core Paleoclimatology Group of the Byrd Polar Research Center. The unique under-ice telescope, called IceCube, is the subject of an original story for young readers, available in versions for grades K-2 and 3-5.