Astrobiologist Shares Pictures Of Him Cooking In Antarctica At -94ºF (-70ºC)

79
Astrobiologist Shares Pictures Of Him Cooking In Antarctica At -94ºF (-70ºC)
Astrobiologist Shares Pictures Of Him Cooking In Antarctica At -94ºF (-70ºC)
Astrobiologist Shares Pictures Of Him Cooking In Antarctica At -94ºF (-70ºC)

This astrobiologist decided to share his day to day life in the real “land down under”, aka Antarctica. Cyprien Verseux, a glaciologist and astrobiologist, is currently working in Antarctica, and like any other human on Earth, he still needs to eat.

In this case, eat and cook, because specialised chefs are hard to come by down there. The Antarctica base is the most remote scientific base in the world (actually in the Universe) if you consider that the Concordia Station in America is not as remote as the International Space Station which is 400 km above the Earth, making it closer to civilisation.

RELATED STORIES:

“Nine months a year, during the winter, it cannot be left or reached,” Cyprien told Bored Panda. “It is so cold that vehicles can’t come and go. We are currently 13 people: technicians, scientists, a cook and a medical doctor.”

“It is the coldest area on Earth, with temperatures reaching below -80°C in winter,” he explained. “We saw the Sun again in August after 3 months without it ever passing the horizon. The air is extremely dry and poor in oxygen,” shares Cyprien Verseux on his blog.

“In spite of being in an inhospitable desert, Concordia is highly attractive to researchers from different fields such as astronomy, human physiology (The European Space Agency is using it to study human adaptation to what is very similar to future conditions of a Moon or Mars base), glaciology, atmospheric sciences, and geophysics.”

Cyprien and his fellow scientists work is vitally important, as it sheds light on how the climate has changed in the past, and gives an insight onto possible changes in the future. “Research done here yields invaluable information on climate change,” he added.

“It is thanks to the EPICA project conducted here that we know that greenhouse gas levels, specifically carbon dioxide and methane, have never been so high in at least the past 800 000 years.”

“We run out of fresh food early in the winter (as we have no resupply from early February to early November), so we eat mostl