Dr Craig Stevens slowly lowers the camera into a 500-metre-deep hole in the ice. He is leading a team of scientists from New Zealand’s universities of Wellington, Auckland and Otago in a study of the extreme environment under Antarctica’s ice caps.
But as the camera reaches the bottom, the scientists watching the screen are clearly disappointed as the first pictures reach the surface. They can see only dark lumps, and initially think that something must be wrong with the camera. But when they adjust the focus, they cheer loudly.
The lumps turn out to be clusters of
