Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1946. ANTARCTICA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 67, Issue 47, 5 December 1946, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1946. ANTARCTICA

Will the secrets of the mighty Antarctic be revealed within the next few months ? Much money has been spent and many lives have been lost in efforts to locate the South Pole, and various expeditions by land, sea and air have given to the world a good deal of knowledge, but much remains to be learned. ' RearAdmiral R.' E. Byrd is going south with another expedition; a former United States naval commander contemplates an expedition next year; the Australian Government is discussing the idea, of sending an expedition to develop mineral and fishing resources; while yet a fourth joint British-Swedish-Norwegian expedition is planned. Out of these expeditions some further vital information concerning the suspected but hitherto unrevealed vast resources of the southern continent: should surely come. Admiral Byrd, who has been south before believes that hidden in these regions there is sufficient co.al to satisfy the needs of the United States for 50 years. That is a big claim, but Admiral Byrd may be able, with the facilities he will have at his disposal, to prove it. Quite apart from mineral re ■ sources, there is much in the Antarctic to interest explorers. Byrd will spend a good deal of time establishing meteorological stations and studying the weather, and he will no doubt make use of his planes to map out hitherto uncharted areas. According to recent cable messages, explorers before the war sighted mountains free from- snow and ice, and these will no doubt be a great attraction. So far as coal is concerned, it is known that in the Ross Dependency of the Australian quadrant there is a vast coalfield, probably at least 1000 miles in length by 50 to SO or more miles in width. This is. perhaps the largest unworked coalfield in the world. Frank Wild on the first Shackleton expedition discovered seven seams of coal at the head of the Beardmore Glacier, of which at least one seam was of workable quality. The fossil plants brought back from this locality by- Scott’s heroic party on their last expedition were of quite extraordinary interest, and promised a rich harvest if only this area was systematically and scientifically explored.

So far as these expeditions are, concerned, the greatest scientific value may come in the meteorological field, for even if the vast coalfields were uncovered, the question of economically working them would be a tremendous hurdle. Antarctica is the greatest refrigerator in the world, and though in that respect it is passive as compared with the activity of the sun’s heat, Antarctic conditions, by keeping a sea like the Weddell Sea frozen for one year and ice-free for t another, automatically sum up fcft* us the net results of the various changing factors which go to make up weather, and this perhaps offers possibilities of long-range weather forecasts. All these matters are of extreme interest, and the work of all the expeditions is likely to be followed with the greatest interest.