So what's the deal with Antarctica?

So, I've got to ask the question.

The webbot guys [oh no!] stated in an interview a few months back on C2Cam that language surrounding Antarctica kept showing up.

They also mentioned, maybe unrelatedly, that there was a lot of language they interpreted as being about the uncovering, or digging up of something really important/big.

I didn't think twice about this until someone posted some survey links in the "CrAzY earthquake warning!!" thread showing several small earthquakes in Antarctica all registering withing the same few tenths of a mag.

A few days later, Russia came out and said they know we're detonating nuclear devices down there.

And a few days after that, someone from these boards reported that a military man he knew got orders to leave Iraq and head to Antarctica by the 15th of December.

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So, what's the deal?
Are we trying to procure some oil?
Did we find a goofy stargate?
Did we unearth a UFO?
Are we building some sort of base?

Please don't turn this into a webbot bashing thread ... I only mention it because of the 'coincidence'

I found a few interesting things going on down there. Only real military thing I could find was "Operation Deepfreeze"

www.globalsecurity.org...

There are a few other interesting items below as well.

At the present time, research at the US South Pole station consists majoritively of astronomy and astrophysics, including a huge 10 meter telescope deployed in 2006, and the Ice Cube neutrino sub-particle detector, still in its multiyear deployment phase.

Consisting of nearly 5,000 optical neutrino detectors buried in strings into the Antarctic ice sheet between 1,450 to 2,450 metres under the snow surface, Ice Cube is one of the largest scientific instruments on Earth. It is also by far the most costly research programme currently deployed in Antarctica: A powerful window to the universe and fine example of "blue sky" science, it will enable researchers to learn more about supernovas, the Big Bang, and hopefully other, as yet undiscovered phenomena.

Finally, in addition to astronomy and astrophysics, the new South Pole station also supports important atmospheric, meteorological, geological and glaciological research, including the study of recently discovered sub-glacial lakes lying beneath the ice sheet not far from the South Pole

www.sciencepoles.org.../articles_interviews/grand_designs_new_antarctic_stations_around_the_ipy_200708/&uid=1248&fuid=1244


I am here to work on the IceCube project. The primary goal of IceCube is to detect neutrinos of high energy and to look for interesting sources that produce them. Because neutrinos are weakly interacting they are very hard to detect. For this reason, IceCube is very large so that it can measure a reasonably large sample of the elusive neutrinos. IceCube uses the two mile deep, clear Antarctic ice sheet as a target to convert a small fraction of the passing neutrinos into charged particles that produce light as they move through the ice. To detect the light and reconstruct the trajectory of the neutrinos, IceCube uses an array of thousands of detectors buried in more than a mile down in the ice. There are 60 optical modules on each cable with 50 feet between nearest neighbors. The distance between neighboring cables is about 400 feet. www.expeditions.udel.edu...

www.globalsecurity.org...