Ben10

BEN 10 Ultimate Alien – เบ็นเท็น อัลติเ…  ตอนที่ 1
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BEN10:Ultimate Alien เบ็นเท็นอัลติเมทเอ…  ตอนที่4
BEN10:Ultimate Alien เบ็นเท็นอัลติเมทเอ…  ตอนที่5
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BEN10:Ultimate Alien เบ็นเท็นอัลติเมทเอ… ตอนที่7
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่8 : Fused ตอนที่ 8
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่9 : Hero Time ตอนที่9
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่10 : Ultimat… ตอนที่10
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่11 : Map of … ตอนที่11
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่12 : Reflect… ตอนที่12
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่13 : Deep ตอนที่13
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่14 : Where t… ตอนที่14
video.mthai.com/player.php?id=18M1318900813M0 ตอนที่ 15
Ben 10 Ultimate Alien – เบ็นเท็น อัลติเ… ตอนที่ 16
Ben 10 Ultimate Alien – เบ็นเท็น อัลติเ… ตอนที่ 17
Ben 10 Ultimate Ailen – เบ็นเท็น อัลติเ…  ตอนที่ 18
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่19 : Absolut…  ตอนที่ 19
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่20 : Absolut…  ตอนที่20
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่21 : The Tra…  ตอนที่21
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่22 : The Eye…  ตอนที่22
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่23 : Viktor …  ตอนที่ 23
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่24 : The Big… ตอนที่24
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่25 : Girl Tr…  ตอนที่25
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่26 : Revenge… ตอนที่ 26
video.mthai.com/player.php?id=18M1328268062M0ตอนที่ 27
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่28 : The Cr… ตอนที่28
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่29 : Basic T… ตอนที่29
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่30 : It’s No… ตอนที่30
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่31 : Prisoner #775 is Missing …ตอนที่31
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่32 : Moon Struck…ตอนที่32
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่33 : Simian Says…ตอนที่33
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่34 : Greetings From Techadon…ตอนที่34
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่35 : The Purge…ตอนที่35
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่36 : Double or Nothing…ตอนที่36
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่37 : The Perfect Girlfriend…ตอนที่37
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่38 : The Ultimate Sacrifice…ตอนที่38
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่39 : The Widening Gyre…ตอนที่39
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที40 : The Mother of All Vreedles…ตอนที่40
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที41 : A Knight to Remember…ตอนที่41
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที42 : Solitary Alignment…ตอนที่42
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่43 : The Flame Keepers’s Circle…ตอนที่43
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่44 : Inspector 13…ตอนที่44
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่45 : Enemy of My Frenemy…ตอนที่45
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่46 : Couples Retreat…ตอนที่46
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่47 : Catch a Falling Star…ตอนที่47
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่48 : The Eggman Cometh…ตอนที่48
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่49 : Night of the Living Nightmare…ตอนที่49
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่50 : The Beginning of the End…ตอนที่50
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่51 : The Ultimate Enemy Part 1…ตอนที่51
Ben10 Ultimate Alien ตอนที่52 : The Ultimate Enemy Part 2…ตอนที่52 

The Not-So-Simple Life

Everything from food to fuel must be brought to Antarctica

In Antarctica, you learn not to take anything for granted.  Not even things as basic as food, water, or energy. The reason? Everything people depend on has to be shipped or flown into the continent. Why? There are no farms in on the icy continent. The only plants are mosses and lichens. There are certainly no cows, pigs, or chickens. Whether your favorite food is pizza or burritos, all of the ingredients have to come from other continents. As for drinking water, special systems and a great deal of energy are needed to take to salt out of seawater to make it useable.

Then there is the matter of waste. The U.S. Antarctic Program is committed to reducing its impact—or footprint—on the Antarctic environment. That means that every bit of garbage a person might produce in a day has to be transported off the continent. That's true whether it's the wrapper from your candy bar or the green beans you didn't want to eat or the paper towels you used to wipe your hands.

MIKE CASEY—NSF

Three wind turbines produce energy for the U.S.'s McMurdo Station and New Zealand's Scott Base.

McMurdo Station managers remind community members to adopt the values and habits of conservation. The station has put into place technology that helps it reduce its footprint. It starts with energy. The U.S. research base has partnered with its nearby neighbor, New Zealand's Scott Base, to share energy produced from three large wind turbines. Scott Base Kiwis—as the New Zealanders are called—get 100% of their power from wind, says power-plant manager Ron Blevins, while the American base gets about 35% of its energy from wind. The much larger U.S. base uses oil-fired generators to supply the rest of its energy needs. The waste heat produced by the generators is then used to warm many of its buildings.

Water-plant manager Paul Jones says it takes energy and special technology to remove the salt from seawater to produce drinking water. McMurdo uses about 45,000 gallons of water a day. People are encouraged to conserve water. At the South Pole Station, where snow and ice must be melted for drinking water, people are limited to two-minute showers twice a week!

The McMurdo base also has a wastewater treatment plant that takes care of sewage. Yubecca Bragg, who is an organic farmer in West Virginia during the Antarctic winter, manages the treatment plant. Bragg explains that sewage treatment depends on allowing microorganisms to break down the wastes until the liquid part of the waste can be safely released into the ocean. Between 150,000 and 180,000 pounds a year of the remaining solid waste, called sludge, is packed into containers and sent back to the U.S.

LISA HARDING—NSF

All garbage at McMurdo Station is collected at this waste barn to be shipped off the continent.

What’s on the Cargo Ships?

The people who live and work in McMurdo fly into and out of the continent along with their luggage and scientific equipment. But the food and fuel, machinery and supplies that keep the town running come in by cargo ships. There is one ship that brings fuel and another ship that brings cargo. The cargo ship takes back all of the waste, from construction materials to glass, paper, plastic, and metal that has been carefully recycled. Both ships will be arriving at McMurdo in the next two weeks.  It takes 10 days to unload and reload the cargo ship, and about 40 hours to unload the fuel. All fuel and supplies must be delivered during the short Antarctic summer. Nothing comes in or goes out during the long, dark Antarctic winter.

To live and work at the bottom of the world, whether you are there to study penguins or bake bread, requires very careful planning. And as visitors to Antarctica quickly discover, every plan always requires a backup plan—and a backup plan to the backup plan.

David Bjerklie is filing reports while traveling to Antarctica with the National Science Foundation. Track his progress and learn all about the icy continent at TFK’s Antarctica Mini-Site.

To see a live web broadcast on January 23, teachers and parents can join the TFK community at edweb.net/tfk. All participants will receive printable worksheets with maps, time lines, and more.

Mapping Antarctica

Cartographers help unlock the continent’s secrets

Antarctica was on the map long before anyone ever laid eyes on it. Nearly 2,400 years ago, ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle believed that a great continent must exist at the bottom of the world. They thought it was needed to balance out the continents at the top of the world. In the 1500s, mapmakers often included a fanciful continent they referred to as Terra Incognita (Latin for “unknown land”) at the bottom of their maps. But it was not until the 1800s—after explorers had sighted and set foot on Antarctica—that mapmakers got down to the business of really mapping the continent, which is one-and-a-half times the size of than the U.S.

©COLE KELLEHER—POLAR GEOSPATIAL CENTER

Kelleher carries a Trekker camera as he stands near a glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

While the coastline could be mapped by ships sailing around the continent, it took airplanes—and later, satellites—to chart Antarctica’s vast interior. That job continues today. And it is a job that can still require a mapmaker, or cartographer, to put on boots and head out into the wild.

Cole Kelleher is familiar with that. He is a cartographer with the Polar Geospatial Center (PGC), which is based at the University of Minnesota and has a staff at McMurdo Station. PGC teamed up with Google to use the company’s Trekker technology to capture images of Antarctica for the Internet giant’s popular feature, Street View. A Trekker camera, which is the size of a basketball, is perched about two feet above a backpack. The camera records images in all directions. “It weighs about 50 pounds. I was out for two and a half days, hiking 10 to 12 hours each day,” says Kelleher. It was hard work, but really an incredible experience.” According to Kelleher there are plans to use the technology to create educational apps for museums.

A Mapmaking Service for Scientists

BRIEN BARNETT—NSF

A high-tech balloon used to carry scientific instruments high into the atmosphere is filled with helium near McMurdo Station.

The PGC staff at McMurdo Station provides highly specialized mapmaking services for the U.S. Antarctic Program. For one project, Kelleher used satellite images to map huge cracks in the ice, called crevasses. That helped a team of seal researchers know whether they could safely approach their field camp on snowmobiles. Another recent project was to help recover a giant, high-tech helium balloon used to carry scientific instruments high into the atmosphere. These balloons are launched in Antarctica because there is no danger that they will hurt anyone when they fall back down to Earth. Using satellite images, Kelleher and colleagues created maps of where the balloon could be found.

Antarctica may no longer be Terra Incognita, but it still holds countless mysteries. Cartographers and the maps they make will continue to be essential in helping scientists unlock those secrets.

David Bjerklie is filing reports while traveling to Antarctica with the National Science Foundation. Tomorrow, he'll report on his visit to the South Pole! Track his progress and learn all about the icy continent at TFK’s Antarctica Mini-Site.

At the South Pole

Getting there is a trip, but the work being done there is remarkable

We were headed to the South Pole! Travelers were told to report to the passenger pick up in McMurdo at 6:45 am. But passenger-service staffer Kristy Queen informed us that because of a mechanical issue, our flight would be delayed. Nearly 12 hours later we would finally take off from McMurdo and head south. Because of weather and the complications of flying in Antarctica, our experience wasn't unusual, explained Queen. This is her fourth season at McMurdo. She is considering “wintering over” this year, which means she will stay to work during the dark Antarctic winter. Queen grew up in Granville, Michigan, and read TFK in school. She says she was inspired to seek adventure and look for a job in Antarctica after talking to a friend who served in the Peace Corps.

DAVID BJERKLIE FOR TIME FOR KIDS

The view from the cockpit: On its way to the Pole, the plane soars over mountains.

Pilot Dave LaFrance of the New York Air National Guard has been flying to and from the Pole since 1997. He piloted the plane that took us to the Pole and back. I was lucky to sit next to him in the cockpit. As we fly over the spectacular Transantarctic Mountains, LaFrance points down to the extraordinary view. “This is our milk run,” he says. “I’ve flown this hundreds of times.” As remarkable as the view is, LaFrance says he prefers the views he sees on flights to the “deep camps” way out in the middle of nowhere. He has taken research teams that look for meteorites and others that look for dinosaur bones to these deep camps. Flights to deep camps are not routine.

From the window, I observe large "wrinkles" far below the plane in the snow. LaFrance explains that the wrinkles are large cracks in the ice called crevasses. They are one reason flights to deep camps are not routine. Glaciers move fast—some move more than three feet in a day. When they rub and push against each other or against mountains, the result can be cracks and tears in the ice. “Back in 1998, one of our planes landed on a crevasse that was covered by snow,” says LaFrance. “It was big enough for the plane to get stuck in it and we lost an engine. But it was actually lucky we ran into it. Two hundred yards further, there was a crevasse that would have swallowed the plane.”

Scientists at Work

While I was waiting for the flight to take off, I had the opportunity to talk to Jason Gallichio. He is a physicist who worked for nearly a year at the South Pole Telescope. The telescope is used to look at the universe far beyond what can be seen with the naked eye.  Visible light is just a narrow portion of the electromagnetic energy that fills the universe. Electromagnetic energy of different wavelengths can tell astronomers things about the universe that visible light can't.

ELAINE HOOD—NSF

Scientists use the South Pole Telescope (seen here) to explore the universe.

The South Pole Telescope isn't the only large science experiment at the Pole. There is a project called Ice Cube that consists of a large grid of detectors buried deep into the ice. The detectors are designed to “catch” particles called neutrinos that constantly bombard the Earth from space. Neutrinos are produced by nuclear reactions in space, including those that take place in the Sun. These particles are much smaller than even atoms. They are so unimaginably tiny that they pass right through the Earth. That’s what makes them so incredibly hard to detect.

A third major project at the South Pole Station is the Atmospheric Research Observatory, which is run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It is referred to as the "Clean Air" Observatory and is responsible for collecting information on changes in the global atmosphere, particularly the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. (Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas produced by human activity that scientists believe is responsible for climate change.) Antarctica is a perfect place on the planet to sample air and detect changes in the atmosphere. That's because the continent's air is so clean and not affected by the pollution from the rest of the world.

An Epic Journey

What’s more difficult than getting to the South Pole? Building a research station there! The current research station was completed in 2008. LaFrance said it took five years to build it. “Crews were making five flights a day to the pole,” he says. The planes carried construction materials, equipment, and workers.

It’s possible to drive to the South Pole. But vehicles only make the trip a two to three times a year. The trip is done for one very special reason: to bring fuel to the Pole. In Antarctica, all equipment —from power plant generators to bulldozers that travel at a speed of four miles per hour—use jet fuel. It doesn’t freeze or thicken at low temperatures like other fuels do. A plane can bring only a relatively small amount of fuel. This is why a few times a year, a special expedition called the South Pole Traverse is mounted from McMurdo to the Pole. Heavy tractor-like vehicles drag large thick bladders of fuel that sit on thick plastic sheets. The bladders look like huge, super-tough balloons. One traverse can drag 120,000 gallons of jet fuel to the Pole.

DAVID BJERKLIE FOR TIME FOR KIDS

While it's possible to drive to the South Pole, most visitors get there by plane.

The South Pole Traverse is an epic journey. It takes four weeks to drive to the Pole. That's about 45 miles each day, driving 12 hours a day. A special vehicle goes ahead with a radar instrument on a long boom, which is used to detect crevasses. “The first traverses were done back in the 1950s. It was very dangerous and there were accidents,” says McMurdo Station Area Manager Steve Dunbar. “Aerial images helped map out a route.” He explains that the jet fuel that Antarctica runs on is a special blend that not many refineries make. This year’s supply comes from a refinery in Athens, Greece. It will be delivered by ship to McMurdo in the next two weeks.

More than a 100 years ago, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the South Pole. Just a month later, the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott also reached the Pole, but tragically died on the return trip. Reaching the South Pole was an extraordinary achievement. Traveling to the Pole today, as well as living and working there, may have become more routine, but it is every bit as remarkable.

Dry Valleys and Seal Mummies

Scientists find tiny life forms and ancient animal remains in a cold desert

The largest ice-free region in Antarctica is a barren but beautiful area known as the McMurdo Dry Valleys. When the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott first came across the valleys more than 100 years ago, he described them as lifeless: "... we have seen no living thing, not even a moss or a lichen; all that we did find... was the skeleton of a Weddell seal, and how that came there is beyond guessing. It is certainly a valley of the dead..."

Scientists have since found that Scott was wrong. The Dry Valleys are one of the driest deserts in the world—they average less than half an inch of precipitation a year. But they are not lifeless. In that dry habitat of sand and rocks, there are entire ecosystems of microscopic organisms that spring to life when water is added. For a few weeks each summer, the temperatures are warm enough—and the sun strong enough—to melt glacial ice, which can create streams. Colorful mats of bacteria grow along the streambeds and tiny organisms live in the damp soils surrounding the streams. But the streams dry out completely, so the organisms must be able to withstand freeze-drying, often for many years.

Survival of the Fittest

LYNN REED FOR TIME FOR KIDS

Scientist Byron Adams (right) explains the research he is conducting in Antarctica to TFK's David Bjerklie.

The organisms that survive—and thrive—in such harsh conditions can withstand freeze-drying. Most are microscopic, but a few are visible (barely) to the naked eye. The largest organisms in the Dry Valleys are the collembola, commonly known as springtails. (In the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula, there is an insect called a midge that is larger.) But what about penguins? Like sea birds and seals, penguins aren't considered truly terrestrial, even though they spend time on the ice and land. Researchers joke that springtails are the "elephants" of the continent (30 springtails lined up would be about an inch long). Other common, but uncommonly tough, organisms include tiny worms called nematodes. There are also rotifers, mites, and tardigrades (also called water bears, which look like potatoes with eight bear-like claws).

Byron Adams of Brigham Young University and Eric Sokol of Virginia Tech are two researchers in the group of scientists who call themselves "The Wormherders." They study the relationships between the organisms and the soils they live in. Many teams of scientists study the Dry Valleys as part of a worldwide project called LTER, for Long Term Ecological Research. As Sokol explains it, "a common thread among all of us is our effort to understand how the biota [living organisms] and the environment are connected, and how they will change as the climate changes. Some scientists focus on nutrients in the soil or water, others study glaciers. Many study the biota that live in the soils, streams, and lakes, others study geology."

Preserved Pieces of the Past

EMILY STONE—NSF

A mummified seal sits on the ground in an area of Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys.

But what about that mummified seal that Scott and his team of explorers found so many miles from the sea? Good question! It turns out that a lot of seals end up in the Dry Valleys, but not on purpose. It's clear the seals got lost, but not clear why. Once a seal ends up there, its body can be preserved by the dry cold for a thousand years, which is why there are so many seal mummies scattered around the valleys. Paul Koch of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Brenda Hall of the University of Maine, are two researchers who have been studying the seal mummies to find clues about the conditions in which the seals once lived hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. Their findings help scientists know what questions to ask about how animals lived, their diets, and how they responded to changing climate. According to John Nye, a researcher on the team, more than 300 seal mummies were found this season.

Koch and Hall have also found mummified elephant seals in areas where the animals are very rare today. They believe that a warmer climate thousands of years ago enabled animals such as the elephant seals to live along the Ross Sea coast. By studying the mummified remains of seals, researchers might be able to anticipate the effects of climate change on wildlife.

A Night at the Penguin Rodeo

Scientists research penguin chicks to learn about their colonies

"We call it the penguin rodeo," says Jean Pennycook. It's only a 20-minute helicopter ride away from McMurdo Station, but the place we are flying to, Cape Royds, is also a doorway into two other worlds. The first is the world of penguins. The second is the historic world of the first explorers to Antarctica.

There are eight of us flying above the snow and ice and rocky peaks. The volcano Mt. Erebus looms above us. Our crew consists of the penguin research team, which includes Pennycook, Scott Jennings, and Annie Schmidt. There is Peter West of the National Science Foundation (NSF), teacher and NSF Einstein Fellow Lynn Reed and myself. And there is also helicopter pilot Keith Cox, crew member Taylor Smith, and mechanic Seth McCallister.

When we reach Cape Royds, we all climb out, and head down the rocky hill to where the penguins nest.  As we walk, we all marvel at the beautiful landscape, the ice, the water, and most of all the penguins.

PETER WEST—NSF

Researchers use a small fence to surround penguin chicks that they want to study.

Banding Penguins

The purpose of our trip is to band penguin chicks. This means we will put a small metal band with an identifying number on the chick's left wing. We will then weigh the chick and measure the length of its wing. Being able to identify individual chicks will help researchers answer important questions. Why does the size of penguin colonies vary so much? Why would one colony have 4,000 breeding pairs of penguins, when nearby colonies have 36,000 and 130,000 pairs? What are the benefits to the penguins of living in a small or large colony?

We use low movable fences to quietly corral, or surround, a group of penguin chicks. The chicks are about a month old and still stay pretty close to the nests in which they hatched. Pennycook invites everyone to help out, including the helicopter crew, explaining to us how to make sure we don't hurt the penguins. Pennycook loves to share her excitement about all things penguin! We get started around 8:00 pm (remember it's light 24 hours a day here this time of year). For more than three hours we carefully move the corral and gently band, measure, and weigh fuzzy gray penguin chicks.

After we are done banding, Pennycook collects samples of penguin waste she will later analyze. She is looking for the tiny disk-shaped earbones (called otoliths) of the fish the penguins eat. A penguin's diet is a combination of krill, the tiny shrimp-like crustacean that is food for so many other animals in the Antarctic, particularly whales. Sometimes penguins eat mostly fish and sometimes they eat mostly krill. It was a puzzle, says Pennycook. Why would they change their diet? It turns out that penguins eat mostly fish when groups of Minke whales are feeding on krill in the same area.  Those whales don't eat penguins, but penguins still like to give them plenty of room!

It is the last day of Pennycook's field season and so she also lowers the flag that flies above the camp. Pennycook invites classrooms to send her homemade flags that she flies over the camp and then returns to the class. She also posts photos and stories each day during the research season that students can read at the penguin science website.

PETER WEST—NSF

These grey penguin chicks are about a month old.

Early Explorers

It was after midnight when we finished banding the chicks. But the evening was beautiful and we weren't ready to go home yet. We all visited the nearby historic hut of the British explorer Ernest Shackleton, who first explored Cape Royds in 1908. The hut has very carefully restored with the help of the Antarctic Heritage Trust. Pennycook has seen the hut many times, but says "it still takes my breath away." In the hut you can see socks hanging out to dry, shoes by the stove, clothes laid out on the bed, and cans of food neatly lined up on pantry shelves.

After we are done, we board the helicopter. But we still aren't quite ready to go home. We have one more stop, at Cape Evans, the home of another historic hut. This hut, built in 1911, was from the expedition of Robert Falcon Scott, the British explorer who made it to the South Pole in January, 1912, just a month after the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached it first. Scott's hut at Cape Evans was larger than Shackelton's and even had a stable for the Siberian ponies that he brought on the expedition.

We fly from Cape Evans and get back to the helicopter pad at McMurdo at 2 a.m. It is definitely late! But everyone agrees that it has been an extraordinary journey into the world of penguins as well as the heroic age of early Antarctic explorers.

Camping With the Stream Team

At work with scientists in Antarctica

If there is one thing that people who live and work in Antarctica say they miss, it is fresh fruits and vegetables. "Freshies," as they are called here, are hard to come by and always a treat. That's especially true for the people who live and work in field camps, which are often far from major research stations. This is why, when we learn our helicopter flight to a field camp is approved, an old hand in the group suggests we bring fresh apples as a present.

PETER REJCEK—NSF

At Lake Hoare base camp, scientists study the way water moves through the environment. TFK's David Bjerklie, second from right, looks on.

The camp we are visiting is Lake Hoare, named for the lake that it overlooks. We are in an unusual area known as the Dry Valleys. The camp sits in front of a towering wall of ice called Canada glacier. The rest of the valley is completely ice-free and at first seems barren. When we land and climb down from the helicopter, we are greeted by Rae Spain, who manages the day-to-day activity at the camp. That includes coordinating helicopter flights and cargo drop offs, opening and closing the camp each season, and cooking and baking, too. Spain has been at Lake Hoare for 16 seasons and has worked in the U.S. Antarctic Program for 32 years.

Mike Gooseff is a researcher at Lake Hoare who has spent nine seasons on the ice. Gooseff is a hydrologist, which means he studies the way water moves through an environment. For several weeks in the Antarctic summer, the 24-hour sunshine and warmer temperatures are enough to melt a tiny amount of ice from the surrounding glaciers. The runoff is enough to create small temporary steams that feed nearby lakes. Adam Wlostowski, a student of Gooseff's, explains how the glacial stream flow is measured. In recent years, the flow has increased, which is causing Lake Hoare to rise. There are many things affecting this system that scientists want to understand better, says Gooseff.

We eat a delicious carrot cake and researchers talk about their favorite camp foods.  It starts to lightly snow and each of the nine people at the camp heads to his or her tent to sleep. There is a main building which houses the kitchen, communication center and work desks, plus smaller buildings for labs, bathrooms, and storage areas. Tents for sleeping are arranged in a large area around the camp.

The next morning Spain is on the radio confirming our helicopter ride to another location and updating weather conditions at the camp. "Winds are calm, view is unrestricted," she reports. We get ready to head out to meet researchers in a nearby valley. Gooseff and his student, along with another researcher and a mountaineer, will take measurements on Canada glacier. They strap on special climbing harnesses. "Today we will be roped in for safety," explains Gooseff, "because we are going higher up on the glacier." We can hear a helicopter from far away. Gooseff identifies the model even before we see it because of the deep and distinctive thump-thump-thump it makes.

Sampling a Stream

After 15 minutes in the air, the helicopter pilot spots three figures in the distance. Diane McKnight and two of her students are waiting for us. The researchers are part of the group known as the "stream team." One of the students, Aneliya Sakaeva, will be taking samples of the water that flows in the temporary streams. She will also take samples of the orange and black mats of microorganisms that live on the bottom of these shallow streams. The organisms that live in the streams survive being freeze-dried most of the year. And yet they spring back to life within 15 minutes when water enters the stream again.

DAVID BJERKLIE FOR TIME FOR KIDS

The Lake Hoare base camp is named for the lake that it overlooks. It sits in front of a towering wall of ice called Canada glacier.

Sakaeva is studying a group of organisms called diatoms. The water is freezing cold but she is patient and careful, taking samples and recording measurements at certain points along the stream. Another group of researchers called the "wormherders" sample the organisms that live in the soils surrounding the streams. And still other research teams study the lakes into which the streams flow. The research being conducted in the Dry Valleys is part of a much larger project called Long Term Ecological Research (LTER), which has 25 sites worldwide.

We hike with McKnight and her students to a small nearby field camp next to another lake. We have tea and coffee, and some of the researchers eat lunch. The Lake Hoare camp will be open for another couple of weeks, but this camp is closing for the season today. Life in the field camps is clearly a challenge, but one that researchers and the people who make their work possible also love. "You don't really think you'll never come back," says Spain. "There may come a time when I'm not coming down here. But his place will never leave me."