Very Cold Facts

Penguins, flights over the South Pole, Admiral Byrd and other now tedious topics aside, the most recent U.S. Antarctic Expedition was essentially a scientific project designed to turn up a lot of useful scientific facts. Last week, six months back from their last trip, members of the 1939-41 expedition summarized the scientific results of their work at the fall meeting of Philadelphia's venerable, learned American Philosophical Society (one of their sponsors). Highlights of the reports:

Mapping the Unseen. Land never seen by human eyes is now being mapped by its photographed reflection on the moisture-filled sky above, said Geographer Paul Siple. Flying over an unexplored coast, the scientists' plane reached the limit of its range, was forced to turn back from an inviting horizon. Distant bays and points, they noticed, were reflected in the sky. And because the reflecting moisture layers were higher than the plane, they clearly outlined the coastal pattern well below the flyers' horizon. Though observed before in polar regions, this phenomenon has never until now been trusted by map makers in sketching unseen lands.

Icy Life. Astonished were the biologists upon finding a small green valley amid the icy wastes of Palmer Land (straight south of Cape Horn). Surrounded by high cliffs which concentrated the wan Antarctic sunlight, mosses, lichens and even grasses grow for one or two months each year, even though for the rest of the year they must endure 100-mile blizzards and -- 60DEG cold. And there lives the largest land animal yet found on the Antarctic Continent: a kind of springtail, or primitive wingless insect, which is one-half inch long.

Getting Used to It. Men can adjust themselves to Antarctic living, but their bodies acquire a new balance, reported Physiologist Ernest E. Lockhart. The repeated stimulus of low temperatures makes blood pressure increase by 25 to 35% and makes the rates of respiration and heart-beat decrease somewhat. Basal metabolism is about 10 to 15% lower than in temperate climates. These reactions were unexpected, for they do not occur among Eskimos.

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