The Antarctic Geological Drill (ANDRILL) team, as they're known, has just completed its second field-season here, retrieving an 1, 100-metre core of rock and sediment.

ECONOMIST: The South Pole as location and metaphor

When the ice sheets were thick and advancing, more pebbles, stones, and dirty sediment would have been carried into the core by the moving ice.

ECONOMIST: The South Pole as location and metaphor