Front runner for best day

Why hello Mr. Polar Bear

Ok. You can ignore the last post. It was pretty cool seeing a polar bear 500 feet away and all. However, how about 3 polar bears. 30 feet from your truck. Right after you saw the most incredible northern lights display. The evening you successfully extracted a multi-meter core while maintaining its temperature profile for the first time in science. Now that's what I call a good day (and makes me somewhat forget about all of my friends skiing knee deep powder back east).

We had all been feeling pretty tired after a long day in the field (I promise, at some point I will blog more about the science. However, the “other” stuff is just so incredible that it is momentarily taking precedence). Although it was getting pretty late, I wanted to head back to our storage area to check on the ICE-MITTs and make sure nothing had melted. As I got into the truck and started driving over, I thought I saw a flickering light overhead. I knew I was pretty tired so I tried to ignore it. Perhaps the light was just fog. The fogginess was growing though and somehow the stars behind it were still visible. Then I realized, oh damn, that's the Aurora Borealis. I quickly turned around, woke Rachel and Ellyn up, and we all drove out to the very point of Barrow and away from any light pollution.

Note: This aurora photo is from my trip in 2011

If you haven't seen the aurora before, there really is no way to describe it. It's a mystical movement of lights, usually green but occasionally other colors as well, dancing across the sky. Tonight we had long circular waves of green that transformed into green brush strokes morphing into dark green linear curtains. Every so often a wisp of pinkish red would swirl into the painting and vanish moments later. The details of the science takes away from the beauty. Very briefly though, the aurora results from electrons and protons entering our atmosphere and hitting atomic oxygen (as well as occasionally nitrogen). This results in oxygen being excited and then releasing that energy in the form of light, usually in the green spectrum, with the colors dependent upon the height of collision. All of these interactions are related to the solar wind and the magnetosphere, but essentially mean that the aurora is found in moving rings around both the north and south magnetic poles.

What yummy garbage we have here

Oh right, the polar bears. As we were driving back to the hut, we saw 6 trucks in a semi-circle with their headlights on. After wondering why they would be watching the aurora with their headlights on, I realized that they were all focused on 3 polar bears who were raiding the local whale bone dump. Locals drag the discarded whale carcass out to Point Barrow after harvesting nearly all parts of the whale, and this is naturally a favorite hang out spot for local polar bears. We sat and watched as these polar bears had a feast just 30 feet from the safety of our truck. Although I think we could have driven away fast enough, I was feeling slightly concerned every time one of the bears would try to stare down and intimidate the truck to our right. It was a very surreal man vs nature encounter that I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. The bears were quite visibly agitated by the trucks, but they were encroaching upon human dumpsters. I think the only part that truly bothered me was when the bears tried to leave, two of the trucks continued to follow them. Note that this was not the first time in my life that I have stared at an animal that would like to devour me if I were to step outside the safety of my vehicle. This also reminds me to ask how fast the snowmobiles can go before we head out onto the ice tomorrow.