Our remote Narod magnetometers are buried under the ice. Antarctica is digesting them in the same way it's already slowly digested an entire ex-American base at Casey Station. If we don't get them out when I'm down there this summer, they won't be seen again until they are calved off into the ocean in an iceberg, after having been carried patiently by glacial action 120 kilometers to the coast.

The iceberg thing has happened to some American bases, too: some time in the 1960s the Americans noticed that their five Antarctic bases Little America I to V weren't there anymore. The supposedly fast Ross Shelf ice on which they were built turned out to be a bit too fast for them - it had turned into icebergs and set sail.

We had a meeting today to discuss whether it's worth trying to retrieve the magnetometers from under the ice or whether they're gone for good. The first problem is that they're located over a hundred kilometers inland from the base and are accessible only by helecopter. There's nowhere to stay overnight when you arrive; all that's there is a solar panel, the box containing the data logger, and a ten-metre cable running from it into the ice and along to the buried sensor head. Work time is limited to a few hours by the fact that the helecopter pilots don't want to let the engines get too cold before heading back to Davis Base. Then there's the problem of working out exactly where the sensor head is buried - a metal detector could be the answer. In order to melt through the ice we'll need some sort of industrial strength hairdryer of the sort used by glaciologists when they're collecting meltwater, which may or may not be able to melt to enough depth to reach the sensor which could be under as much as three metres of concrete-hard ice. On top of all that there's the question of whether the magnetometer will be of any use without also melting out the cable which has been tailored to the individual sensor head.

Antarctica looks quiet and calm and docile but as soon as you look away it will quietly and calmly mangle your steel structures, bury your experiments and ship your buildings off into the ocean.