[cogitator]

It will be VERY interesting to see the results of the paleoclimate indicators from this core, and to see how they compare to the data from previous cores. Despite the depth, ice flow and compression in the oldest ice tends to smear the data a bit.

[alaskanfan]

EPICA's chief scientist, BAS's Eric Wolff, said the drilling program took scientists back to the future. "Information about how climate worked in the past is locked in the ice," he said. "Understanding this helps predict future changes."

Excuse me if I get this wrong, but isn't this "understanding" subjective to the interpretation of said data.

It would be interesting to know how much this project cost the taxpayers.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Ice more than half a million years old...

And I thought my freezer needed defrosting?!

[smokinleroy]

530,000 years ... 420,000 years...

It's ammusing that they tack on the extra significant figure when they are pretty much taking a wild guess. Must be some conversion from metric or something.

That reminds me of the time I was working at the refinery dumping bags of chemicals into a big mixing tank.

The bags were labeled:
40 lbs.
18.1437 kg.

[RightWhale]

the ice retrieved covers four glacial and interglacial periods,

Awesome. Also they are not down to bedrock, so there is more to the record if they can reach it.

[LetsRok]

Who cares?!? Ice is ice. I defy them to compare a cube of their to one from my freezer and tell me the difference.

[farmfriend]

Ping.

[monkey]

"If the bottom of the ice sheet lies on rock, and there is no melting, then the ice at the very bottom is almost infinitely old, and the annual layers infinitely thin," Mulvaney said.

It's nice to see such precise use of words like "infinite" from scientists.

[pragmatic]

I presume this means no 500,000 year old alien parasites have killed all the scientists.

[Junior]

Someone better notify Answers in Genesis. They claim the world's only 6000 years old.

[dead]

I would be so much more interested in this sort of scientific work, if I wasn't convinced that a majority of those doing it approach their work with a strong bias.

In other words, they are not there to learn, they are there to prove, and that affects their interpretations and conclusions.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Antarctic Ice Core over 500,000 Years Old Extracted

Where's the Hundred-Billion-Year-Old-Ice?!</font size>

Either the "old earth" heated up dramatically long ago, or it's not quite so old.

It used to be hot
Then not
Global Warming s'not

AMPU

[athiestwithagun]

Impossible. Everyone knows the Earth is only 10,000 years old. This is a trick of the Evil One.