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Antarctica's vast (5,300,000 sq. mi.) expanse, comprising 93% of the world's ice, offers an unsurpassed observatory for study of the oceans, which would rise 200 ft. if, as some predict, the icecap should melt in some far distant age. Scientists have already learned a great deal about its climate and its far-reaching effect on the world's weather. Oceanographers are studying Antarctica's seas, which are among the world's most fertile areas.
During the International Quiet Sun Year (1964-65), U.S. physicists will concentrate 40% of Antarctica's $7,000,000 scientific budget on studies of the upper atmosphere to learn more about cosmic rays and magnetic phenomena that interrupt radio communications. In the past year, other experts have slogged thousands of miles to map the uncharted wasteland, dived deep below the ice to study the metabolism of seals. They have located the world's southernmost volcano, analyzed bacteria left by explorers 50 years ago (the tinned food and biscuits left by Captain Robert Scott's men in 1902 are still there today, perfectly edible), mined coal—proving that Antarctica once had a tropical climate.
Over at Mirny. The region was transformed into a high-pressure laboratory by the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year, when researchers found out more about the world's largest unexplored land mass than had been learned since scientists first became interested in the area in the early 19th century. Most participating nations plan to maintain their scientific programs in Antarctica. In an effort to catch up with the U.S., which since World War II has worked longer and harder in Antarctica than any other nation, Russia has mounted the second most in tensive effort on the continent, with headquarters on the other side of the Pole at Mirny, named for a Russian sloop that, under Mikhail Lazarev's command, first charted Antarctic lands in 1821.
Under terms of a twelve-nation, 30-year treaty dedicating the Antarctic as a "continent of peace" in 1959, the U.S. last week dispatched a nine-man inspection team to ensure that the Soviet bases are not being used for nuclear tests. In practice, Russia and the U.S. are generally friendly competitors in Antarctica, freely lend each other equipment and food, pool weather information, even regularly exchange scientists. If Antarctica's scientists no longer undergo the fearful ordeals of earlier generations of explorers, they still pursue the same high ideal that impelled such heroes as Amundsen, Byrd and Scott. That quest, in the lines from Tennyson's Ulysses, was defined on the cross that stands in memory of Scott and his men, who died returning from the South Pole in 1912:
To strive, to seek,
To find, And not to
yield.
*Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa.