So we think we are cold?

I received this e mail from an associate: Some people will find it and it's links interesting. Sort of makes the neutron monitor in Nain small stuff, but it does link into the larger scheme of things.

Hi Everyone, I've been at the South Pole Station now for about a week, and went to work almost immediately. This may be my best trip yet in terms of very few of high altitude symptoms. The South Pole is over 10,000 feet high on the worlds largest icecap. Dr. Martin Pomerantz, late long time director of the Bartol Research Institute, and pioneer of Astronomy at the South Pole, would always tell me that as he got older, the altitude acclimation got easier. I am finding out that this is true on my 20th trip. When I arrived, I helped James Roth finish up the installation of a record 38 IceTop tanks which will function as part of the 160 tank surface cosmic ray air shower detector array when finished. To date we have installed 118 tanks. These are 700 gallon tanks of pure water that our freeze control process will make into perfect cylinders of optically clear ice over the next six weeks. This ice will then produce the light trails of cosmic ray particles as they pass through the tanks, and optical detectors will record their presence. This IceTop array forms the surface component of the IceCube cubic kilometer detector. My job over the next three weeks is to monitor the operation of our IceTop freeze control system, finish details of the installation, and prepare the inventory for next season. I also have a few side jobs consisting of air shower muon runs and IceCube DOM (Digital Optical Module) deployments after the new year. IceCube is the ambitious project to build a cubic kilometer detector within the two mile deep South Pole icecap. The cubic kilometer array will consist of 80 strings of 60 DOMs each for a total of 4800 detectors lowered into hot water drilled holes nearly two miles deep. These detectors will freeze in place and will be searching for the illusive neutrino particle. The scientists hope to shed light on the origin of cosmic rays and possibly contribute to our understanding of "dark matter", that invisible substance which makes up most of our universe. The University of Delaware is interested in our project, and has established a website to which we contribute in our spare time. Here is my first blog which is basically a bio:
http://www.expeditions.udel.edu/antarctica/leonard-shulman.html And here are my contributions about this season's adventure:http://www.expeditions.udel.edu/antarctica/blog-dec-14-2008.htmlhttp://www.expeditions.udel.edu/antarctica/blog-dec-16-2008.htmlhttp://www.expeditions.udel.edu/antarctica/blog-dec-17-2008.html Surf around the site, there's lots more about our project:http://www.expeditions.udel.edu/antarctica/index.html Happy Holidays,
Len