This Antarctic Research Station Lifts up on Hydraulic Legs

Anything heavy built in Antarctica, unless it's on bare ground, will eventually sink into the ice. Germany's Neumayer Station III on the northern coast of Antarctica, built in 2009, sits on 16 hydraulic legs that keep the structure 6 meters off the ice.

It is necessary to periodically lift up a leg, shovel snow under it, and then lower the leg so that the station is not devoured by the icy abyss. Eventually, though, the station will fall off into the sea. The Alfred Wegener Institute explains that the ice sheet moves 40 centimeters toward the sea each year. Eventually, the section of ice on which the station rests will become an iceberg.

-via Massimo


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