When your deep freezer breaks down , you might lose some leftovers or a box of your favorite ice lolly . But when a scientist ’s deep-freeze malfunction , the mankind resist to lose 1000 of geezerhood ’ worth of store story . That ’s what hap last week , when anequipment failureat the University of Alberta ( UAB ) melted ancient samples of Arctic methamphetamine .
Anice coreis kind of like the erect equivalent of a tree diagram ’s ring . The gas bubbles , deposit , and chemical substance trapped in each of its many layers tell a story about the world at that particular moment in time .
UAB’sCanadian Ice Core Archiveholds 12 cores — well-nigh 1 mile of frosting — representing roughly 80,000 yr of our planet ’s story . Some of the samples have been in storage since the seventies . Many of them are now considerably smaller than they were a few hebdomad ago .
Each long , cylindric core is stored in segments , a space - save measure that may have been the collection ’s salvation . The segments were divided between two freezers , one of which close down over the weekend when the temperature - control organization failed . In trying to set the issue , the arrangement made thing bad , blowing hot air over the samples , grow the ancient ice back into water for the first time in millennia .
Glaciologist Martin Sharp rushed into the archive to regain steaming pool all over the level . “ It was more like a change room in a swimming pond than a freezer , ” hetoldThe Guardian . “ I ’ve had better Clarence Shepard Day Jr. . Let ’s say that . ”
The archive lost 12.8 percent of its full sample mass , including about 22,000 long time ’ worth from the Penny Ice Cap on Baffin Island . Some of the sample distribution are “ clear pledge , ” Sharp toldThe Guardian , while others were barely affected .
The samples have been moved into more secure store , and Sharp and his team contrive to drill new sample to supplant what they ’ve lost . But the ice cover some of the original sample sites is melting , too .
“ Some of these ice caps are evaporate , ” SharptoldThe New York Times , “ and we ’re going to miss this record , in some cases sooner rather than later on . ”
