South Pole May Hold Secrets Of Life

This is the second part of a series on the effects of global warming in Antarctica.

At the South Pole it's 48 degrees below zero on a typical summer day. Antarctica holds 90 percent of the Earth's ice - that's seven million cubic miles of it.

At the South Pole, the enormity of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is striking. Beneath the spot on Antarctica where CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reported, the ice is two miles thick, and it stretches over an area larger than the United States and Mexico combined. The ice is so thick, it buries entire Antarctic mountain ranges.

It's so cold at the South Pole, the snow never melts; it just turns to ice and gets thicker. Now the secrets of the ice are coming into focus.

"For me, the really cool thing about Antarctic ice is the bubbles," said Kendrick Taylor, a Glaciologist from the Wais Divide Ice Core Project.

Those bubbles are samples of the earth's ancient atmosphere, trapped in the ice. For Taylor, the ice is like a library, stacked with climate records going back thousands of years. He expects his ice core samples will confirm a key argument in global warming.

"The current levels of greenhouse gases are much higher than they've been at any time during the last 650,000 years, and it's all due to human activity," he said.

When CBS News last visited Antarctica in 1999, the geodesic dome of the American scientific station was already disappearing under the snow. Now there's a new state-of-the-art station for dozens of scientists and support workers.

It's on stilts so it can be raised as the snow builds around it.

No one owns the South Pole, but the American presence makes a subtle point about who's in charge; discouraging the kind of competing land-grabs currently happening at the North Pole, where Russia even sent a submarine to plant its flag in the ocean floor beneath it.

"This station represents the United States presence in playing a key role in scientific research in understanding our planet better," said Jerry Marty, South Pole Station Manager.

So the National Science Foundation is funding ambitious experiments like the $272 million telescope drilled into the ice. It detects neutrinos - powerful particles from space that travel right through the Earth - and may reveal how the universe was formed.

"There is a chance that this telescope will have great discoveries that no one is able to predict," said physicist Mark Krasberg.

Looking down may yield even more immediate breakthroughs … under the ice in the ocean around Antarctica. From fish with anti freeze in their blood, this is one of the last largely undisturbed ecosystems on earth.

And it's filled with unusual creatures that somehow survive when they should be freezing.

"Here's a sea spider, if you'd like to hold him," said Cara Sucher, picking up another creature, this one round and jelly-like. "What's interesting about this guy, his shell is on the inside."

"There's a lot these organisms can do which would be really great for humans to understand and apply to human biology," said USF biologist Deneb Karentz.

Like how doctors can use cold fluids to keep critically ill patients alive. Cool science from a frozen continent.