MAPO

CHAPTER 21

You wouldn’t guess it, but microwaves are one of the things that make the South Pole so special.  It turns out that there are heaps of microwaves showering the earth from space, a constant bombardment coming from every direction- a phenomenon aptly named the cosmic microwave background radiation, or CMB for short.  At most places on earth, water vapor in the atmosphere absorbs the CMB, making it near impossible to detect.  But not at the South Pole.  At the Pole, it is so cold that all the water vapor in the atmosphere freezes and drops out, leaving essentially zero humidity, which allows the CMB to come streaming through, making the Pole a very handy place for scientists wishing to observe it.  And why would we want to observe microwaves from outer space you might ask?  Well, to answer the oldest question in the books- how was the universe made?

Without going into too much detail, the CMB is kind of the “afterglow” from the big bang.  It acts as sort of a backlight, casting a silhouette of the structure of the universe at its creation 13.8 billion years ago.  By measuring the intensity of the CMB across the sky, and comparing it to the current structure of the universe, scientists are able to determine how the universe evolved into what we see today.

There has been a progression of projects implemented at the South Pole over the last decade or so with the goal of measuring the CMB, each one striving to gain an increased resolution of the incoming microwaves.  For the most part, they have all been housed in an elevated laboratory/observatory named the Martin A Palmerantz Observatory, or MAPO for short.  The current generation consists of a group of five identical telescopes, mounted in a strange looking cone shaped observatory- the cone is to block out any interference from radiation that has rebounded off the earth’s surface.  All winter long, through six months of freezing, perpetual night, the five telescopes will automatically track in unison back and forth across the southern sky, eventually completing a full survey, which will be compiled into a map of the CMB across the universe.

As incredible as it may sound, the scientists running MAPO, as with all the science labs on station, are more than happy to give tours of their space aged experiments.  Our friend Sarah, of South Pole Marathon fame, happened to work at MAPO and invited us out for a little look around.  It’s a fair walk from the station, so we got bundled up extra warm one early morning a few hours before we had to go to work, and made our way out to her lab.

It was a bit more cluttered and disorganized then I would have thought, with 2 or 3 telescopes in various states of construction in the middle of the room, complicated looking spare parts littering the floor and workbenches.  I asked how they keep it all straight, and Sarah shrugged “We have each assembled and disassembled the telescopes so many times, we could probably do it with our eyes closed.”  Even so, to me it looked like a nightmare waiting to happen- say when some blundering tourist overturns a pan of tiny, but essential screws off a table, scattering them into oblivion, delaying the project for a year while they wait for replacements to be shipped to Antarctica… I quickly knocked on wood, then put my hands in my pockets in an effort to avoid being “that guy”.

After a quick tour around the lab, Sarah led us down a long hallway, up a series of ladders, and into the heart of the observatory- where the five microwave telescopes would soon be mounted to perform their months of tedious work.  Two telescopes were already installed, and it was surprisingly cramped- Kacey and I both just barely fit- and I was incredulous that they would be able to position three more in the small space.  Even if the five telescopes did physically fit in the undersized compartment, it seemed impossible that the scientists would be able to hook up the bewildering rat’s nest of wires and helium cooling tubes that connected to each apparatus.  Our tour complete, I was eager to attend the next Sunday Science Lecture held in the galley, when a group of Sarah’s co-researchers would give a more detailed presentation on the discoveries being made at MAPO.

So what have they discovered so far?  You’ll have to look this up on the internet to get the full story, but basically, in a brief second after the big bang, the universe inflated in volume billions upon billions upon billions of times over- literally stretching space itself in the process, and laying the foundation for what would evolve into the universe as we know it today.  On top of this, the universe happens to be made up of much more than just regular matter- the kind that we can see and touch.  Astonishingly, it’s looking like regular matter is actually only about 4% of what’s out there, with some mysterious, virtually undetectable “stuff” called dark matter and dark energy making up the rest.  And to bring it all together, if the proportions of regular matter to dark matter/energy weren’t just right, the universe wouldn’t have inflated correctly, either stopping short and collapsing back in upon itself, or expanding way too much, flinging the contents of creation out into oblivion, never to coalesce into galaxies and stars and planets, and more importantly, you and me.  In a nut shell, we are all very lucky to be here.  At least that is what I took from it.