World’s Oldest Ice

On July 17th, a piece of the world’s oldest piece of ice arrived at the research station in the UK and will be tested and melted to examine more information about the Earth. This piece of ice was extracted from the ocean in East Antarctica, and it’s thought to be around 2.1 million years old!

The ice can help scientists study Earth’s environmental history, historic temperature, greenhouse gas levels, and can help them predict future climate change. A team of scientists based in Cambridge, UK, will melt the ice for 7 weeks after it was found.

The reason the scientists melt the ice is that the inside of the ice could be interesting. The substances trapped inside the ice can release ancient dust, volcanic ash, and even tiny marine algae that were locked inside when water turned to ice. These things can help scientists understand what the temperature, sea level, and more were like long ago.

Dr Liz Thoms, head of ice core research at the British Antarctic Survey, explained: “This is a completely unknown period of our Earth’s history. Our climate system has been through so many different changes that we really need to be able to go back in time to understand these different processes and different tipping points,” In other words, the history of Earth has changed a lot, and many aspects have changed, such as our climate system along with other changes.

The ice was extracted by a team of international scientists who were led by the Italian Institute of Polar Sciences. They were working in temperatures -35C while drilling up a 1.7-mile-long ice deep in Antarctica. The ice was then broken up and transported to many different scientific labs such as the UK, Germany and Switzerland.

Melting the old ice can tell us more about how our lives were different before and how it was changed.