| Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station sits at the Earth's axis, atop a constantly shifting continental ice sheet nearly two miles thick. Perhaps the world's most remote research facility, the station lies at the heart of a continent cut off from the rest of the globe by a circulating Southern Ocean current. Antarctica is the coldest, highest, driest and windiest of the continents – and the least hospitable to human life. But paradoxically, those same conditions combine to make the South Pole a unique scientific laboratory for the study of questions as diverse as "What is the origin of the Universe and how did it develop?" or "What is the status of global climate change?"
In January 2008, NSF dedicated a new station at the Pole, the third since 1956. The new elevated station is larger and much more sophisticated than any previous structure built at the Pole – a reflection of the logistical support needed for the ever-increasing range and diversity of the research taking place there. It will also be a radical departure from the first man-made structure erected at the Earth's southernmost point: the forlorn pyramidal tent erected by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen almost a century ago to mark the advent of human habitation at the Pole.
—by Peter West
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