Colorado has a giant freezer filled with polar ice
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 22. 08. 2017
- Welcome to the US National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, Colorado, where there's a giant freezer filled with 20km of ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic. Here's why.
Thanks to everyone at the US National Ice Core Laboratory! You can find out more about them here: icecores.org/
The Ice Core Laboratory is supported by the National Science Foundation: www.nsf.gov/
Edited by Michelle Martin, / @onthecrux
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This was really cool.
...I'm sorry.
Tom Scott True
It was cool, though. Chilling what we don't know yet.
They must have the best drinks with that amount of ice
heh, chilling
Just go in the corner of the room Tom... Where it's 90 degrees
Damn I hate it when you get caught eating potato chips in the lab by a scientist remotely controlling the devices from home
I'm surprised there isn't a hermetically sealed airlock between the labs and the administrative portion of the building, along with decon procedures to avoid tainting any of the ice.
The way he tells it at 1:15, there is no way he is not the guy who got caught eating the potato chips
Tahgtahv
That would cost money
Peter Siegel you think storing that amount of ice or operating those fine machineries arent expensive? Even some labs in universities have airlocks if im not mistaken
âFrom homeâ
Me: oh itâs a-
*2 years ago*
"Yea sure ... superclean working conditions... whatever..."
* rips open bag of chips *
@00justSomeAccount00 uh..., uh.. drugs
LAY'S get your smile on đ
HAHAHAHHAHAHAH
Richard Nunn looks like a better-composed Jeb from Mojang
i was about to say this lmao
-34C is just called winter in Canada
Or summer in the north of Canada
Summer in Greenland
Or a warm day in russia
It was -61f last winter in Minnesota
Or Siberia.
Accuracy to within 10 years? that's crazy!
Jayashri Venketasubramanian I agree, that's pretty impressive
That's incorrect. The accuracy decreases as the age of the sample increases because the half life of an isotope only allows us to make general predictions we don't really know the decay rate of each sample which increases the uncertainty of the prediction as the age of the sample increases.
And yet Young Earth Creationists believe ice-core dating is inaccurate X|
As someone who was once a young-earth creationist, ice cores are the sort of thing that really made me think. All the seemingly good scientific arguments I had heard to support a 10,000-year-old earth started looking much more circumstantial when I realized we could literally see annual layers going back before then.
Haiku Metzger Good for you! Happy to read that you were able to trust and use your critical thinking abilities and logical reasoning to overcome ideological dogma!
When I was 18 I spent my summer working at a berry processing plant. The warehouse was kept at -40 (Fahrenheit or Celsius, take your pick, that's where the two scales meet). It's not so bad to work in; you just bundle up like Tom. The only issue was that it was at least 35C outside, and I had to go in and out on my forklift loading trucks. No time to change, I could dress for the summer and freeze inside or dress for a blizzard and get heat exhaustion outside. Tom, be glad you were in a consistent temperature :)
Yeah, -40 is not that bad if it is dry, and not windy...
I used to work in a restaurant with a walk-in freezer, set to -30 or lower. With technically a windchill as the air moved around a lot from the coolers. I'd pop in quickly for something wearing only my shirt and trousers. Which for a few seconds does hit you, and will keep your shirt feeling cold for minutes afterwards.
My worst fear at the time was getting stuck in there, as without proper clothing you could die within minutes
Is it okay if I choose Kelvin?
@@TheReligiousAtheists r/beatmetoit
@Paraig Mc Gee without blowing them? What's that mean?
As a geologist I thank you from the bottom of my heart Tom. In a three and half minute video you even touched on oxygen isotope analysis and paleoclimate proxies. Now that's what I call concise!
Why do I feel like if anyone would be allowed inside area 51 to show people it, that it would Tom on a video?
R/ihadastroke
i had three seizures by the time i managed to make sense of this
WHY DID I UNDERSTAND THIS SO EASILY
@@eechenglee1369 Because it's a straight forward sentence with just one misplaced and one missing word and this sentence structure is similar to some other languages.
@@eechenglee1369 Are you a native speaker? Because if you're not, that would make sense. We're used to crappy sentences of fellow non-native speakers and diffferent sentence structures, so it's easier for us to make sense of not-proper English than native speakers :)
What I really like about this channel is that although you clearly know your stuff, you don't editorialise your interviewees more than necessary. You give them the respect they deserve and don't presume to be able to explain it better than they can. Nice
Hendrix Infinity Yeah, I like the "here's a neat thing. Here's an enthusiastic person talking about the thing" format.
Mike Barett sounds like we got a mild climate simpleton here, imagine having the same season year round đ
I think he doesn't edit what they're saying more so for the sake of his sanity more than anything else, you have to remember he's doing at least a video a week for about 6 years at the point of this video's release, so it isn't really an option that he has because he needs to get the videos out every week
Experiment on some ice with the right hand. With the left, i'll take a potato chip... and EAT IT!
Artur_Cunha I don't think most people watchin this video will get the reference...
*suspense music*
*gasp*
All according to keikaku
just a bit of sodium chloride
I visited this lab. The same building also stores rock cores. Enough rock cores that if all lined up would amount to about 2 mill feet. The sheer scope of it is crazy. The ice lab is in the middle of the cores. It is not at all separated from the rock cores, and only 2 doors keep the cold air in. We were allowed to go in without any special equipment and never had to go through any decontamination. Considering how long it is planned to be there it doesn't really matter that it is perfectly sterile, all that matters is the ice is properly stored and kept cold.
đ€©
Tom your eyelashes look fabulous.
And his face is really white. He's lost all the colour from his cheeks.
Truly, he has never looked so fierce.
MindMaster107 his eyelashes look cool
This look is known as "Canadian mascara"
Vivian Williams
That's hilarious! I've never heard that before
Back in my day we used to take polar ice all the way to equator without stopping
mrscorpion1829 citation needeed
Pioneers used to ride those babies for miles.
mrscorpion1829 I bet you did so walking uphill all the way too, And you Liked it!
Well I mean, there was that one stop to have dinner with the President - sorry, Mayor.
@@SkyCloudSilence
Uphill, both ways, without shoes!
2:49 did someone play tic-tac-toe on one of the containers?
Lmao yes
they didn't even finish their game!
They are researching this because they're trying to revive the lich king
Lich King is dope.
The markings on the core lids at 2:49 are gold. There's even an incomplete tic tac toe game.
I love the stuff that just naturally emerges when you get a roomful of massive nerds.
Rakesh Pai that isn't an unfinished tic tac toe game, the outcome is already decided. It's a tie unless 1 person is stupid, which hopefully isn't the case considering the line of work they're in.
Rakesh Pai I think they figured it'd end in a draw if either player simply avoided the other player winning in their next turn.
xD They even put Ï = pie
"no shirt no shoes no ice core" I love that sign
Date: "So what do you do for work?"
Me: "I maintain prehistoric meteoric ice cores"
Date: "Oh."
Would probably propose then and there
*removes pants*
ICE LIBRARIAN
Panties through the floor.
Date: đ„” you just thawed my prehistoric đŠ« đ€Ł
The Ohio state university has a freezer that also contains ice cores. I got an opportunity to go see it in person during a global climate change class. Very cool experience. There were ice cores from Antarctica that contained ash from a volcanic eruption thousands of miles away, which they can use to date samples based on when the volcano erupted. They can also identify types of pollens in the ice cores to determine what the temperature of the earth was at that point based upon what species produce that kind of pollen and their survivable environment. Itâs kind of interesting to learn about.
That's really cool!
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
Only in ohio
Only in Ohio
Bro said ohio? Only in ohio
0:24 Jeb_?
toypuppet OMG WE FOUND HIS TWIN! XD
Exact Look Alike
American Jeb_
Whoa
more like a distant cousin of CodysLab :D
Micha el hehe :D
So with the world losing as much glacial ice and ice shelves as it is currently, how would scientists reconcile this potential gap with the actual historic record? Like if there was a prolonged period in the past where the top layers of snow didn't stay long enough to compact into the cores, is there a way we could tell?
I'm not a sceptic, btw, just something I'm not knowledgeable enough to answer and I'm curious.
This is actually a *really* great question.
It is ok to be a skeptic! science encourages that! however, you might receive an answer in the language of science. an expert in the field might answer that maybe try Quora?
They'd probably find varying rate of ice accumulation between two dating points and try to correlate this with other measure of environmental conditions to see what might have caused this. Also there might be some distinction between compacted snow that turned into ice and snow that melted and refroze, such information could be a great clue.
As he said, probably radiometric dating would help.
"Unfortunately, annual layers become harder to see deeper in the ice core. Other ways of dating ice cores include geochemisty, layers of ash (tephra), electrical conductivity, and using numerical flow models to understand age-depth relationships. Although radiometric dating of ice cores has been difficult, Uranium has been used to date the Dome C ice core from Antarctica. Dust is present in ice cores, and it contains Uranium. The decay of 238U to 234U from dust in the ice matrix can be used to provide an additional core chronology[7]."
www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-core-basics/
1:15 it was prolly him from the look of his face
Wonderful! I couldn't even imagine, let alone figure out the reasoning behind storing ice samples! :) Well done, Tom!
I'm surprised that in all your travels you haven't been somewhere 40 below. I experienced that once in Manning park in Canada, and my nose hairs froze!
Emily Klassen I live in oregon and it got to abou 45 bellow where Iive for a while
The buiscuit does ah low temperatures, where the centigrade and fahrenheit systems agree. it's really cold
haha I went to the north of Sweden once and mostly the air is less humid so the temperature is not biting your face as much as in the south at the same degrees. On a few occasions on cold days in the north though strange things happened in my nose hehe! :D
Heâs talking in celsius.
Below -40 it doesn't really matter
Even with 900k subscribers, this channel is WAY underrated.
This channel always deserves n+1 subscribers.
his videos are way to short and vague. hes gives you just enough info to get your attention but not enough to make it very informative.
I had an internship at the gloaciology lab in Grenoble, France, and it was just amazing. Really stimulating. I've been several times to the french equivalent of this freezer, and it was actually quite comfortable to work in. I prefered it to a rainy, windy 0°C.
I showed this video to my 7th grade science class in order to teach my students on how ice cores can tell us about Earth's history specifically it's climate. They loved it!
Ay. I'm sure your students are extremely lucky to have you. You are indeed a great teacher!
This reminds me of the Seed Vault but for looking back in history
Always great Tom. When you do these kind of videos it'd be really interesting to have even a few seconds to ask the people in them how they ended up doing those jobs.
this was actually a bit mind blowing and just super impressive and interesting. Thanks for sharing, Tom!
Dude this is so cool. I wish it were longer! Like, what process do they use? How is it cored? How is it shipped? What's the method of storing? How do they keep the integrity of the sample? Where does that data go? All these questions. So cool!
It fascinates me that they have these important samples in a freezer and yet would decide to start playing, but not finish, a game of noughts and crosses (on tube 2782, centre of the screen at 2:52). Some of the others have doodles on too. I'd love to have seen more of the doodles!
future civilisations: "what do these symbols meaaaaaan?"
You are very observant!
This was a great video. I wouldn't mind seeing longer videos when you go to exotic or unique places. And maybe a deeper insight into their studies
Great as always Tom
This is the best channel on youtube. Always exciting subjects and nice editing.
It's funny for a Canadian like me whenever we see people put in -40 degrees temperature who've never experienced it before and are surprised at the experience. I once walked to school as a child in a snow storm at around -45 to -50 degrees. That wasn't enough back then to close down the school. -40 for me is cold but normal on a cold winter day.
I know thatâs not even that cold especially when youâre bundled up
Celsius or Fahrenheit?
For anyone who missed the joke: -40° is the same temperature in both systems.
2:50 , pi = *drawing of a pie slice*, shooting star, tic tac toe, a playing card and is that a canoe?
noticed that :D and the smiling star (bottom screen)
I was enjoying the "no shoes, no shirt, no ice core" sign on the examination room door (0:23) too...
I didn't see this when I was watching. Thanks for pointing it out!
Cheat sheet:
2767 shooting star
2777 playing card
2778 canoe/kayak (this took me a long time to find!)
2780 pi, slice of pi
2782 tic tac toe
2791 ??? ice!
2797 chocolate chip cookie
2798 moon
The last 2 are only visible at around 2:53
Dragon Curve Enthusiast that's a ":3" on 2791
Itâs comforting to know that someone cared enough to do this.
This was a super neat video! Amazing work by everyone!!
"My eyelids are sticking together ?"
Well yeah Tom. Welcome to -40C. Where in Canada everything closes at that point for public safety :P
I lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota during the Polar Vortex of 2014, and the air temperature was this cold. Wind-chill was -68 degrees Fahrenheit (-55 Celsius).
Skip6235 I was a Driver Helper for UPS that year (in Minneapolis). Never again.
A fantastic video as always
0:36 Nice
-38°C happens every now and then in southern Canada. It's fairly rare but it happens. What's really surprising is the massive temperature shifts between summer and winter ranging 70-80°C
The dude getting caught eating chips is me
I didn't know about this either. Damn, Tom, love your videos! I just wish thy were a tiny bit longer cause subjects are amazingly interesting.
You're the best. I love these videos. Please keep it up.
0:28 This guy looks like a mix of tom scott from years ago and jeb
This was a really *ice* video.
PowahSlap Entertainmint Not ice, but N*ICE*
Y'know cool would've been a better pun
@@hakunayourtatas8175 Tom already took that.
Good to see they use ryobi too. Gives me hope
I love the doodles on the ends of the tubes at 2:50! Pi is the best.
Dear tom - As an idea, could you please condense all or as many as you can of these works, the 3-5 minute ones you do, into an 1 hour or even 2 hours (depending, clearly) long video documentary ... seriously, i would watch that at the drop of a hat - Keep up the fantastic work squire, i always look forward to seeing your uploads!
Hey! I have that same Einstein made out of galaxies shirt! It glows in the dark!
Looking at all that old ice.... Gives me chills
Even I'm ashamed of myself
Fascinating - thanks for sharing.
-38C?
*Laughs in Finnish*
torille
A question that I would love to ask is, "Has there been any similarities between the ice pulled recently (~100-50 years) to anything of the past?" I'm curious about the pollution/volcanic activity/radioactive debris of past ice samples. Since as many would know, the sun plays a big role in climate
I honestly don't really know anything about this topic at all, but my guess would be that (especially with global warming) there hasn't been much ice buildup on top of what was already there in the last 50-100 years, probably even 500+ years back. If there has been then its probably still at/near the top of the ice so its likely that debris/dust/polution/etc levels wouldn't be correct because of everything in the air and settling on the ice
holy wow that guy is good at explaining stuff. like, he's just amazing at it
I always knew that mascara would look great on Tom!
You have such an awesome job. You go around really cool places and talk about it
Him: "i've never been this cold."
Russians: "easy."
thankyou guys i love what you are doing lettin us know this exist i really do love this stuff
Brilliant human beings, thanks for this
They've been farming the ice golem
This video came out at the same time as the Overwatch animated short about Mei :thinking:
Exactly what I've studied in geography. Very cool
Wow, I love the wood planer used to level the ice.
interesting, wonder how effective this would be apply to archaeology.
Sadly the room isn't -40 degrees (C and F) :(
How cool. I remember going to the ice core lab with my dad as a kid (he works at the Fed Center)
Well done you're on trending!
Okay, where can I buy product that make my eyelashes as gorgeous as yours?!
Cold? Tell me more, Komrad.
ĐлДĐșŃĐ”Đč ĐĐŸĐ»ĐŽĐžĐœ i remember waiting for someone to open school doors at -33°C when i was a kid.
Aaro HyötylÀinen Yes. (Swede here.) Have you guys ever had school cancelled because of "snow days"? That's a thing in the US I understand. We just walked to school as usual, weather was never an excuse, back when I was a kid anyway.
i love the pinguins plushies,scientiest always have such a good sense of humor
I was thinking why would they store ice, but then they explained it so well. Very intriguing!
"in our lab the oldest ice we have is about 420k years old"
... nice
Tom is the greatest educational CZcamsr
Really wish I know about this place before, I lived in Colorado for 23 years! Really cool and cold!
This was a lot cooler than I expected it to be.
I can't even survive 20 C, I got a fever once just from travelling to Australia. Warm clothes and all.
and if I were to walk in there, -38 C
I'd die.
20C is room temperature in most of the world. it's the same as 68 Fahrenheit. Having said that, -38 is 'wear your scarf today' weather.
Where on Earth do you live? 20 C is not even cold at all.
Is it just me or does Richard Nunn look like jens bergensten?
Glad I wasnât the only one
Tom rockin those frosted tips đł
This was really cool.
Tom scott: This is cold
Swedes: Hold my beer
du menar vÀl? "Norrlands guld och snusdosa"
I just looked it up, Sweden is way warmer on average during the winter at the very northernmost tip of the country.
Most of Scandinavia below the Arctic circle rarely gets that cold
400000 years old? Be careful, creationists will shut down the facility and
melt the ice.
I'm part of a monotheistic religion, I can confirm that we don't believe the Earth is 3000 years old, that's just a myth
@@YahyaFalcon isnt it supposed to be like 6-8000?
We literally believe that the earth in millennia old... The "seven days" that god took to create the planet is more metaphorical than literal...
When I worked at Honda they had a cold testing chamber. I remember a guying saying to be careful about going in and out because of all of the moisture that would condense in your lungs. Not sure how true that was, but it definitely hurt to breathe when going from 20C to -40C.
Thatâs where itâs all going!
Question: why can't we see your breath if it's that cold?
makes sense, any moisture would cause ice to build up and you ain't defrosting that room twice a year!
More to the point it's a room of ICE. You would want to do everything you could to mitigate additions to the samples.
Yeah but he's still human so he should be exhaling water vapor. Idk why we don't see any of that. Maybe the amount your body add to the air you breathy out is negligible.
If air is dry enough the water vapor from your breath will dissipate faster than you can see it.
-Plowkiller I'm probably missing something here, but whatever. You can see his breath a few times during the scene at 1:31, particularly right at the end of the scene.
Okay, Calm down Tom. ;) As a Canadian -40C isn't going to murder your camera in minutes. I mean my car can sit outside in well below -50C (With windchill) and not fall apart. Though I have seen some people's car door handles break off. Ha ha ha
Allan003 I don't think comparing a camera's temperature sensitivity to a car's is a good comparison.
Well I would be comparing the wires and battery, also his camera is in there for maybe an hour, where as a car is outside all the time. But I am only teasing of course. :)
i never knew Canada could get that cold... hmm i wonder how an EV will survive??
inanimate objects aren't subject to windchill
JB Lewis - Tell that to my block heater... ;)
In the northern part of Minnesota it can get to -80°F in winter (with windchill). That's -62.22°C
never thought this would be analised off sight
Now tell me... Wheres east Antarctica? Where ever you stand theres always something in the east
Wow you have 0 concept of a map
But east is something humans made up it isn't a constant of the universe plus there is space which way is easy when your in space?
@@wwellthemage8426 you mark a central point to base your directions off, and then declare a direction from that point north. The rest follows suit. It's not as difficult as you think.
When kids in 10 years watch this there going to be like: âwhat the hell is ice?â
your videos are the best.
That dude looks exactly how i would imagine a scientist working in a place like that. Very cool
Omg an american that uses the metric system!
it's likely they have to in order to fit in with clients in the rest of the world using their data
Actually, Tom is British.
EDIT: Oh, you mean the signs in the background.
Scientists tend to do that, even in the US.
I think he referred to the guy from 0:20
Michael Lohmann he works for the USGS he's probably a scientist
One of these core sampling people from Greenland came to my university to give a lecture, and he said that the dating methods used on the ice layers are actually NOT very accurate at all. He said for many years, he believed the dust and ice layers were summer/winter layers, but then they drilled down through what was about a thousand years worth of layers of ice and found a crashed World War II airplane beneath those layers. Either the plane time-traveled 900+ years into the past, or the plane crashed during WW2, and the ice layers were just "warm/cool" instead of "summer/winter".
After looking at the ice layers that formed on his own vehicle in the spring and fall when there were large temperature swings, he realized that the summer/winter method of dating ice layers was totally flawed. He was in the process of coming up with a better model, but last I heard, that model hasn't been released yet.
900+ years is really not much when they're talking about hundreds of thousands years old samples of ice. It's like 1m deep vs couple hundreds meters deep.
It's an interesting problem, I'd love to hear addressed by an expert. With the ability to back check it (even occasionally) with carbon dating, an issue like that should become obvious pretty quickly. I have to assume they've addressed this, but I'd like to know how.
This is problematic since they claim to have +/- 10 year accuracy
Jon carbon dating has volatile accuracy as well
I heard this argument several years ago, and all that it proves is that different areas get different amounts of snowfall.
www.godofevolution.com/lost-wwii-squadron-proves-noahs-flood-or-not/
this is actually awsome
That frost on the eyelashes was cool.