Wednesday, January 24. 1979
5
Prof seeks polar deposits
Staff Renorter
By LYNN BYCZYNSKI
again should past and equal been key thus verness for opening
A quest for mineral riches has drawn a professor to the end of the earth for the paladin.
The professor, Edward Zeller, has made a yearly trek to the South Pole in an attempt to find minerals and to forecast the continent's climate.
"Our long-range prediction, based on what little evidence we have, is that the climate will continue to change," he said.
Zeller based that prediction on his research, funded by Virginia Polytechnic Institute, correlating past warm weather patterns with the occurrence of sunspots, areas of low temperature on the sun's surface.
Antarctica is now the only continent that can claim to be rich in resources—resources whose numbers have never been tallied. And the polar ice cap of Antarctica contains the clues to what will happen to the earth's ice sheets. Dr. Zeller, professor of geology, said yesterday.
SUNSPOT ACTIVITY seems to be decreasing, Zeller said, which could indicate a planetary cooling trend. Zeller noted that the sunspots in the pounds formed by sunspots, present in the ice on the South Pole. His work has confirmed historical records of sunspots act-
Europe's "Little Ice Age," from 1645 and 1715, occurred at the same time astronomers were reporting the disappearance of sunspot activity.
"The Thames River froze solid then,
which was impossible, unheard of." Zeller
labeled it.
Ice deposited in that period contained almost no nitrates, indicating that sunspot activity was low, Zeller said. The age of the ice can be determined because snowfall at the South Pole is very constant, only a few inches each year.
**BUT THE WARMER of Galilee** "the activity of nitrates and high sunactivity"
Zeller returned Jan. 7 from his sixth trip to the Antarctica since 1958. He said he expected to return there every winter for the next four years, in connection with a mineral resource project the National Science Foundation has funded.
Zeller is part of an international team exploring Antarctica for mineral resources. In a search for the radioactive elements uranium and thorium needed to fuel nuclear power plants, the team's most recent exploration was a success, Zeller said.
"We found a large thorium deposit, but it's not commercially significant because the transportation problems are horrendous," Zeller said.
A RAILROAD COULD be built across the bare-rock mountains that contain the thorium in a 200-mile ice shelf that covers the ocean. The see would be difficult to cross, he said.
'It's my view it's going to be generations before we can exploit the resources of our country.'
But he also said the resource explorations were necessary, so that an international agreement could be made about exploiting its resources, which now belong to no nation.
"The Antarctic treaty is a crucial factor here. It will be subject to renegotiation and reconfirmation in 1991, but the reconfirm a treaty in a climate of ignorance would be a mistake. We've got to know if there are resources, because we've got to write things up for the environment. We've got to keep Antarctica from being ruined." Zeller said.
ZELLER, WHO conducted the resource search by helicopter, said, "I was some of the most exciting flying I we've done. We were flying at low speeds and low altitudes, about 400 feet from the ground, on extremely high mountains—12,000 feet—and steep topography. It was hazardous."
Zeller carried radiation detection equipment worth $25,000 aboard the helicopter. Two sodium iodide crystals were placed radioactive rocks below the helicopter.
If the helicopter passed over a radioactive element, the crystals would emit a light flash, which was recorded by a photo cell. An on-board computer determined if the radioactivity was from uranium, thorium or potassium, a common radioactive element.
Zeller said that he had not yet found much uranium, but that he expected it to be there because all continents have uranium deposits.
LAST WINTER'S trip to Antarctica was exciting for another reason, Zeller said.
"I got to see the glacier that was named after me. When I went in 1958, there weren't many people there and it was sort of an adventurous thing to do. When the area was mapped, many features were named after people who had been there," he said.
Four other KU professors have features in Antarctica named for them. They are Ernest Angelo and Wakefield Dort, professors of geology, and Kenneth Armitage, professor of biology, and Rufus Thompson, professor of botany.
"I guess I'm the first at KU to see what was named after him," Zeller said.
Zeller's trips to Antarctica were from two and one-half to three and one-half months during our winters, which are summers in the southern hemisphere.
IN DECEMBER, the warmest month, temperatures can creep above freezing at McMurdo Base, the U.S. scientific station in Antarctica. The average population at McMurdo is sometimes as large as 900. In Antarctica's winter, the temperatures to 100 degrees below freezing.
The coldest temperature Zeller said he faced while working outside was 54 degrees.
"I was comfortable, even though we were
tired one-half hours in that. You got it
to it. I felt."
Zeller said he thought the Soviet Union so was conducting resource explorations, and this led him to believe that
"We have a very cordial relationship with them. We've visited them at their Vostok station," he said. "The woman working on this project with me, Gisela Dreschoff, from the National Science Foundation, was the woman to ever set up in the Soviet station."
Vostok, Zeller said, is the coldest place on
"YOU DON'T GO out there," Zeller said. "Last year, a few people died when they went out in the mines 128-degree weather and inhaled the air. It froze their lungs."
earth, with temperatures sometimes dropping to 128 below zero.
One problem Zeller said Antarctic expedition faced was lost in immunities to disease.
"Even some of us who spent only four months there lost our immunity—it goes in about one and one-half to two months," he said.
As a result, Zeller said, he often got sick after returning to the base and seeing people with cancer.
Another adjustment Zeller had to make when leaving was to darkness because the sun's rays were strong.
"I doesn't even get a little darker. But I like it. When I got back to New Zealand and the sun set, I felt uncomfortable," Zeller said.
He said that Antarctica was like another name to him and that he worried about the ice in the Arctic.
"It is a land of complete and pristine
dirt. I don't want to see my favorite
country river."
Edward Zeller
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