An ice core that may be older than 1.5 million years has arrived in the UK where scientists will melt it to unlock vital information about Earth’s climate, the BBC reports.
The glassy cylinder is the planet’s oldest ice and was drilled from deep inside the Antarctic ice sheet.
Frozen inside is thousands of years of new information that scientists say could “revolutionize” what we know about climate change.
“This is a completely unknown period of our Earth’s history,” says Dr Liz Thomas, head of ice core research at the British Antarctic Survey.
For seven weeks, the team will slowly melt the hard-won ice, releasing ancient dust, volcanic ash, and even tiny marine algae called diatoms that were locked inside when water turned to ice.
These materials can tell scientists about wind patterns, temperature, and sea levels more than a million years ago.
It was a huge multinational effort to extract the ice cores in Antarctica, at a cost of millions. The ice was chopped into 1m blocks and transported by boat and then in a cold van to Cambridge.
