South Pole physics is not for wimps

Photo courtesy of Ed Wu

South Pole physics is not for wimps

Ed Wu has never been to space, but he probably has a better idea of what it's like than the rest of us.

Working at the South Pole on the now-retired QUaD instrument, the experimental cosmology graduate student from Stanford University lived in close quarters with a small group of people, surrounded by extreme weather, and all but cut off from home.

The dry, rarified air suited the instruments Wu used to study high-resolution readings of the cosmic microwave background – microwaves emitted just 300,000 years after the big bang, more than 13 billion years ago.

Before he could go to "Pole," as the locals call it, he had to undergo a thorough medical and dental exam–think less a yearly physical, and more the initial screening the European Space Agency gives prospective astronauts.

Twenty-four-hour sunshine and the exhausting scarcity of oxygen at 10,000 feet make life at Pole surreal. The summer population hovers around 200, and satellites provide contact with the outside world only seven or eight hours a day. After the sun goes down in May, Pole's 50 "winter-overs" won't see it again until August. In the meantime, there are no visitors, cargo drop-offs, or rides home.

Psychologists have studied the experiences of winter-overs to predict the behavioral effects of long space missions. QUaD's winter-over, a support scientist and amateur paraglider named Robert Schwartz, passed up a seventh year of Antarctic wintering in 2008 to enter the race to be an ESA astronaut. Although he wasn't selected, he was one of only 192 out of the 10,000 candidates who passed the initial medical exam, to make it to the fourth round of physical and psychological screening.

But according to Wu, good health is not enough to keep people sane despite oxygen deprivation, cabin fever, and extreme cold.

"People skills really do matter," he says. "You have to be comfortable working with people regardless of how you feel personally, because nothing gets done at Pole without everyone. You also have to be able to derive pleasure from what you can." For Pole dwellers, that can mean anything from making a short film for the South Pole International Film Festival to taking a very hot sauna and running naked to the South Pole marker and back. "It's as normal as you make it," Wu says.

Lauren Schenkman