It is summer.
It is midnight.
We are headed south.
Um, uh, we just logged another run low 10-10 spot.
Chain before coming in.
As they travel south,
the men and women in this ship will be bitterly cold.
Sun will burn their faces,
wind will sear them,
but they will feel fortunate ...
to have become part of a great adventure.
For thousands of years,
as human beings spread across the planet ...
no one came here.
Antarctica was as remote as the moon.
Ancient Greeks reasoned that the world was round ...
and that there must be a great southern continent.
They called the stars above the North Pole ...
Arktos, the bear ...
so they named the far Pole Antarktos.
They imagined a land ...
of strange beasts and stranger customs ...
where the laws of nature might be reversed.
It was the greatest mystery on Earth.
A world of ice.
A continent far larger than the United States,
it is three times higher than any other continent.
Its air is drier than the Sahara ...
yet 70% of the fresh water in the world is frozen here ...
in ice sheets up to 3 miles thick.
For centuries, Antarctica was the ultimate goal ...
the last challenge of exploration.
Getting here was the hardest thing ...
a human being could do.
Until 1821, no one even saw it.
Explorers came bravely in wooden ships.
The ice crushed them ...
but they never gave up.
In 1911, Robert Falcon Scott of Britain ...
and Roald Amundsen of Norway ...
both started for the South Pole.
Both men would reach the Pole,
but only one of them would return.
This is Scott's party sitting like knights ...
at the long table beneath their battle flags.
The long table is still there...
the chairs they sat on,
the cups they drank from.
Here, they helped to build the foundations ...
of Antarctic science.
Their isolation was complete.
They worked at the very edge of what was known ...
and the lessons they learned were often hard.
Near Scott's old hut,
in the shadow of a volcano called Mount Erebus,
there is a nursery on the ice.
Weddell seals were one of the first animals ...
to be studied in Antarctica, one of the few species ...
that lives here all year.
The pup was born a few weeks ago ...
and, now, it's time for it to learn how to swim.
At home beneath the ice, they call eerily to one another.
Scientists have been counting seals here ...
since the early days, but they are still fascinated ...
by how these animals have adapted to the climate ...
and to the freezing water.
The seal's blood carries so much oxygen ...
that is can hold its breath for over an hour.
They're amongst the greatest natural divers in the world.
The ice is six feet thick.
This is where Antarctica hides its color ...
and its complexity.
Forests of tiny plants' called algae ...
grow in the ice as if in a greenhouse.
Millions of krill, which are like small shrimp ...
eat the algae.
Fish eat the krill and seals eat the fish.
This chain of life is so isolated and balanced ...
it gives scientists clues ...
to the health of the whole planet.
Diving here is agony for the first 20 minutes.
After that, it becomes dangerous.
Keep a hold!
Less than 2% of Antarctica is free of ice.
Here, Adelie penguins build nests of stones.
But even stones are in short supply.
Somewhere, a leopard seal waits −
a thousand pounds of muscle ...
and teeth well-adapted to tear flesh.
So scientists have built a cage ...
for a view of emperor penguins early explorers longed for.
The penguin on land is almost wholly ludicrous.
But the penguin in the water is another thing.
One would like to follow the bird in his aquatic life −
if only such a thing were possible.
The penguins sense danger, so they don't surface.
No other bird lays its eggs on the darkness of a polar winter ...
or hatches its chicks in the coldest months ...
of the Antarctic year.
I think we are right to consider the bird to be eccentric.
They may look silly, but they're unbelievably tough.
They must walk great distances from the sea ...
lashed by sub-zero winds, bellies full of fish and quill ...
to feed their chicks.
At the edge of the penguins' empire ...
ice bergs move slowly out to sea.
They're pieces of Antarctica, born high on the continent ...
where snow packs into ice and flows slowly outward.
If the earth grows warmer, the movement may speed up ...
and ice sheets as big as nations slide into the sea.
The sea would rise, the climate change.
It may already be happening.
As the ice sheet moves, it strains and splits.
Some crevasses are so huge' they could swallow a house.
They can be hundreds of feet deep.
Wind-blown snow gradually builds crystal bridges ...
across the gap at the top.
The bridges can be quite invisible on the surface.
Some will support the weight of a man,
but some will not.
Whoa!
This is only a demonstration.
But this was real.
The driver in this accident was lucky.
He survived.
But his bulldozer is now in a long slow grind to the sea.
These ponds look shallow, but they're not.
When a diver swam through a hold ...
in the bottom of one these pools ...
this is what she found.
We're inside a moving glacier.
No other film like this exists.
No one has seen caverns like this before.
Here, scientists would expect only rock-hard ice.
So Antarctica reminds us again:
We have scarcely begun to understand our planet.
Once, these dry valleys were full of ice.
Thousands of years ago ...
something happened to the climate ...
and the ice that was here disappeared.
It left behind vast empty valleys ...
where it has probably not rained for a million years ...
where algae grows inside solid rock ...
and the land is so arid,
we practice experiments designed for Mars.
And it left a mystery ...
that becomes more important to us each day:
What makes the climate change?
Sea ice around the continent waxes and wanes.
In winter, Antarctica doubles in size.
The expanse of coldness affects climate all over the globe.
But Antarctica not only affects climate,
it also records it.
Far from civilization ...
a core drill digs deep into the ice sheet.
Ice layers can be read like the rings of trees.
The climate record goes back 100,000 years.
Entrapped bubbles of ancient air −
ice cores tell a simple story.
When the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere change ...
so does the climate.
A day, a week, a month, a year, a decade ...
This core came from 466 feet down.
It's ice that fell as snow about 4,000 years ago.
In the crystal ball of the ice, the news from Antarctica is bad.
Methane, strontium 90, lead ...
increased carbon dioxide ...
were changing the air ...
and we're starting to see the effects.
20 years ago, scientists predicted that man-made chemicals ...
would thin the planet's protective layer of ozone.
Recently, the thinning became dramatic ...
letting dangerous ultraviolet rays from the sun −
shown here in red − hit the Earth.
Nobody noticed it ...
except in Antarctica.
Here, a few scientists doing theoretical research ...
noticed the change in the upper atmosphere ...
and learned that man-made chemicals were causing it.
International cooperation may slow production of the chemicals ...
but the damage has been done.
So the research goes on ...
trying to understand what we're doing to our world ...
trying to find out in time.
In this climate, you must cooperate to survive.
Here, that hard truth applies even to politics.
Antarctica is not a nation.
It is protected by a unique agreement among many nations ...
to save the continent for peace and science.
This treaty has lasted for over 30 years ...
and stands as a model for a happier world.
In 1929, 17 years after the Pole was won,
Richard Byrd traded dogs ...
for an airplane,
and was the first to fly over the South Pole.
He looked in awe on the wilderness ...
that Scott and Amundsen took months to cross.
Today, the flight takes three hours ...
and the plane lands ...
at what seems to be a space station in low orbit.
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
Here, on ice 9,000 feet thick ...
almost a hundred people from all over the world ...
work on 30 projects,
each looking beyond the edge of what is known.
At this altitude, the air is so thin ...
newcomers struggle for breath ...
and the cold is unrelenting.
Even in summer, it reaches 40 below.
The sun rises once a year.
During the six months of daylight ...
it makes an almost perfect circle in the sky every day.
They've come to take its picture for 2.5 days.
A quick stroll around the world.
The camera's ready ...
and it re-orders time.
Wind is blowing hard ...
and there's that curious, damp feeling in the air ...
which chills one to the bone.
Praise God ... this is an awful place.
Captain Scott and his companions arrived at the Pole ...
to find that Roald Amundsen had been there ...
just four weeks before.
Taf Evans died ...
a month into the return journey from the cold,
Titus Oates, who slowed his companions with his lameness,
walked away to his death to try to save them.
700 miles from the Pole ...
and just 11 miles from safety,
the last three men were stalked by a blizzard.
With them were 35 pounds of geological samples ...
they had hauled hundreds of miles ...
in the cause of science.
It seems a pity ...
but I don't think I can write more.
These rough notes and our dead bodies ...
must tell the tale.
I should so like to have come through ...
for your dear sake.
It is splendid to pass, however, with such companions as I have ...
and as all five of us have mothers and wives ...
you will not be alone.
Your ever-loving son ...
to the end of this life and the next ...
when God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes.
Scott and his men were buried in the ice ...
which will someday carry them to sea,
but their rock samples were taken home by others ...
and their work became ...
part of the new century's Age of Science,
and of the peculiarly human combination ...
of curiosity and courage ...
that has marked Antarctica's story.
Dear Lord, we thank you for this time and this place ...
and an opportunity to gather together to give thanks.
We just thank you, Father ...
for the food that was prepared for us ...
and we just pray that you will keep us safe ...
and protect us as we work down here.
For it's in your name we pray. Amen.
The quest continues, driven by the same force ...
that inspired the old explorer knights.
Here, in this place of great beauty and hard truth ...
we're given reason to hope that we may yet do our best.