Science breakthrough as Antarctic mystery unlocked after melting of rare 1.5 million-year-old ice

British scientists are set to melt a very rare 1.5million year old ice cylinder from the Antarctic ice sheet.

Researchers at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge received the extraordinary cylinder with it being brought to the UK for analysis.

“This is a completely unknown period of our Earth’s history,” explained Dr Liz Thomas, who leads ice core research at the institution.

The pristine samples arrived in specially refrigerated containers following an extensive international operation costing millions of pounds.

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The ice essentially serves as a time capsule

Engineers drilled 2.8kilometres (1.7miles) into the Antarctic ice near Concordia base in the eastern region of the continent.

The glassy core contains millennia of frozen evidence, including dust particles, ash from ancient volcanoes, and microscopic ocean organisms called diatoms that became trapped as water transformed into ice.

These materials serve as time capsules, preserving information about atmospheric conditions, wind circulation, and ocean levels from over a million years ago.

Samples are being stored in a freezing chamber maintained at -23C.

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The ice is stored in a freezing chamber

Researches are only limited to 15-minute intervals inside the facility while wearing protective thermal clothing.

The team will gradually thaw the precious samples over a seven-week period and insert the resulting liquid through tubes into adjacent laboratory equipment.

Scientists will use an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer to identify chemical isotopes and measure more than 20 elements within the melted ice.

The analysis will detect trace metals, rare earth elements, marine salts, and evidence of volcanic activity from the distant past.

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The research with the ice aims to uncover information on the Mid-Pleistocene Transition

These chemical signatures will help reconstruct wind patterns, temperature variations, and precipitation levels from the period spanning 800,000 to potentially 1.5 million years ago.

The research aims to shed light on the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, a climatic event occurring between 800,000 and 1.2 million years ago when Earth’s glacial patterns underwent significant transformation.

Dr Thomas suggests the team might discover evidence from periods when carbon dioxide levels naturally matched or exceeded current concentrations.

Such findings could prove crucial for understanding how our planet might respond to contemporary greenhouse gas accumulation.

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