Dr. DuVernois Blog

For a while this will be focused on my trips to the South Pole to work on ARA and IceCube experiments as a physicist and instrumentation scientist from the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center at the University of Wisconsin. Here Dr. DuVernois will ponder the world, the web, and all things in the middle. If that isn't a noble enough project, I'll also post interesting links. This web journal is held in lieu of a writing journal and continues my UMN, MySpace, and Facebook blogs.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

The icebreaker Oden

The US Antarctic Program contracts with the Swedish Polar Programs to have an icebreaker clear the McMurdo Sound and bring the tanker and cargo ship into port. (The dock is a floating mass of layers of ice and dirt, the near one is the current floating dock and the farther one is a ten year old dock.) The Swedish icebreaker Oden has been doing this duty for a number of years. Previously I had seen it out in the Sound, but this year (thanks to Mark Krasberg!) we got a tour of the ship.

It's a big, blocky ship, about 350 feet long and probably a good 120 feet or so wide. Quite pretty in a serious way. It's also beautifully kept up with nary a spot of rust, even after a hundred day cruise down from Scandinavia to the Southern Ocean.