This exquisitely oxidized vessel probably made a handy container in its more cylindrical days. The test tube shape suggests it held scientific specimens. Possibly pebbles or ice chips. Penguin bones or seal tissue. Nematodes, lichens, mosses. Algae, zooplankton, tardigrades.
Or perhaps it held field implements: pencils, tweezers, map pins, eyedroppers, lenses, batteries, clips, clasps, measuring devices. Maybe all of the above. Maybe none. In any case, it holds a good mystery.
This week’s items were found and donated to the Long View Project by Randall “Crunch” Noring, Marble Point field camp manager in Antarctica’s Dry Valleys. Thank you, sir!
Today’s mystery item had a rotating part that’s now stuck. Whatever its former purpose, the “dial with a smile” appears content in retirement.
The flip side is happy too, perhaps because it kind of resembles a toy automobile when turned upside-down. Not a bad after-life for a mechanical device.
This week I’ll be posting found Antarctic objects of a mysterious nature. Their purpose may once have been indicated by labels, connecting parts and context, but their isolated and weathered state now recasts them as curiosities appreciable for shape, color and texture.
If you happen to know what the items are or just want to venture a guess, drop a comment. I like to think of this one as a hybrid of a buckle, can opener, and emergency shoe horn.
This is a fabric map of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The airstrip is at top. The
new elevated station is shown in blue. The Xs indicate the ever-migrating geographic
South Pole marker, and the knob at right is the Dark Sector, a research area free of electromagnetic interference. Everything else that goes on is at left.
Accuracy and scale aside, I could have used one of these sewn to my jacket sleeve dur-
ing my visit there. It beats fumbling with paper maps in windy, subfreezing conditions.
That’s the new South Pole Elevated Station on the left, and the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI) on the right. A la fabric discards.
