Boltzmann's Tomb: Travels in Search of Science

213 Pages·2011·2.62 MB·English

by  Bill Green

Table of Contents

ALSO BY BILL GREEN
Title Page

McMurdo Station and the Dry Valleys
West Lafayette and Duino
Blacksburg and Dallas
Los Angeles and Prague
Florence
London and Jupiter
Bern and Washington, D.C.
Pittsburgh and Paris
Juneau
Titusville and Tucson
Vienna
Cambridge
Munich
Oxford, Ohio

Afterword
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright Page
ALSO BY BILL GREEN
Water, Ice and Stone
Improbable Eden:
The Dry Valleys of Antarctica
A man’s work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover
through the detours of art those two or three great and simple
images in whose presence his heart first opened.
—Albert Camus

Randomness rules our lives.
—Leonard Mlodinow
McMurdo Station and the Dry Valleys
It was my ninth trip to McMurdo Station, the largest United
States base in Antarctica. The base crowded down to the edge
of the Ross Sea, and from shore you could see the white
mountains of Victoria Land rising like a vision of heaven. I liked
the small group I had chosen forthis trip and thought we would
be perfect for the two lakes we had come to study. Joe was an
older chemist, a little overweight, perhaps, and not in the best
of health. Through several weeks, I had had to argue with the
National Science Foundation that he would be able to do the
field studies I had mapped out for him. I had never seen anyone
so enthusiastic about an expedition as Joe. At Los Angeles
Airport, wearing a cap that counted down the minutes and
seconds until the new millennium began, I think he told
everyone at the bar and on line for the long flight to Auckland
that he was going to Antarctica. If his listener showed even a
hint of interest, he would try to explain our entire project. The
closer we got to takeoff, the more a smile of expectation lit his
face.
My student, Joseph, was not nearly as expressive, but he had
worked with me for several years in the lab and was immersed
in the research. He was fastidious and had a cheerful alliance
with small motors, batteries, copper wires, and instruments of
all kinds that would make him invaluable in the unpredictable
conditions of the Dry Valleys. Experience had taught me that
nothing ever went according to plan—pumps and generators
broke down, drill bits snapped and the one thing you had not
thought to bring in duplicate fell into the deep waters of the
lake and would never be seen again. But one thing above all
else was true: you could always count on Joseph’s ingenuity
and his data.
Katy, my daughter, who had wanted to go on one of these
journeys since she was barely old enough to miss my long
absences, was the fourth member of our group. On college
breaks, she had lived in huts along the shore of Brazil’s
Salvador, had contracted malaria in the streets of Accra, and
had taken on the winter snows of Colorado and Wyoming in her
small mountain tent. She was a student in my geochemistry
course and so had a broad overview of that science. I had no
doubt she, at twenty-one, was ready for this.
I did, however, have a few questions about myself. Two years
earlier, I had had bypass surgery following a heart attack. The
surgeon, who was tall and confident, a former navy
commander, said, “We’ll have you in better shape than you’ve
been in twenty years.” I wanted to believe it was true; today, I
felt strong and ready for our journey south. The world in its
vastness and beauty seemed open to me once again.

The physical work seemed almost routine by now: dragging
the sleds over the rough, wind-blasted ice on Lake Hoare;
setting up the peristaltic pump and the Tygon tube so we could
collect samples every few centimeters down through the water
column; measuring the dissolved oxygen, the conductivity, and
the pH. At Lake Fryxell, the hole over the deepest water had
already been drilled by another research team so the big rig
with its black, screwlike blades and the fifteen feet of
extensions that we usually needed for the thick permanent ice
was not necessary.
Over the years, the work had become easier. There were
several groups in the Taylor Valley now, and there were a few
semipermanent structures that had been set up for lab work
and for cooking hot meals. As I looked out over the valley from
the glistening lake ice, I remembered the emptiness of earlier
days, when I could imagine there had never been anyone else
here, that we were the first explorers, and the land had
welcomed us in its silence and majesty, its bare stone
mountains rising into cloud. There was, however, a kind of
scientific satisfaction in seeing the growing interest in the
lakes, that they were no longer the mere biological and