Will this robot sub find the Atlas Fracture?

Screen Shot 2014-12-03 at 10.43.25 PMScientists from the UK, USA and Australia are using a sonar equipped robot sub to measure Antarctic ice shelves from the underside. Will this little robot swim under the Ross ice shelf and find the Atlas Fracture zone? – that thinned area of localized stress that is the perfect place for terrorists to attack to collapse the entire France-sized ice shelf? Probably not, since the Atlas Fracture zone was cooked up primarily for my novel of the same name. But if they do find a major thin ice fracture zone in Antarctica with this thing, I’ll be psyched to read about it!

Read all about the Atlas Fracture now! 

Have scientists discovered the Atlas Fracture?

Screen Shot 2013-10-07 at 9.13.31 PM

MODIS Mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) Image Map / Anne le Brocq.

A story in the British paper The Telegraph details recent discoveries of vast water flows under Antarctic ice caps. These water flows, some of which are 250 meters deep reportedly flow out under the ice caps and carve channels into the ice shelves like the Ronne and Ross ice shelves, making the shelfs thinner in spots. The Atlas Fracture zone discovered at last?

“Vast streams found beneath Antarctic ice sheet.

“Giant channels of water almost the height of the Eiffel Tower have been discovered flowing beneath the Antarctic ice shelf.

“The streams of water, some of which are 250m in height and stretch for hundreds of kilometres, could be destabilising parts of the Antarctic ice shelf immediately around them and speeding up melting, researchers said.

“However, they added that it remains unclear how the localised effects of the channels will impact on the future of the floating ice sheet as a whole.

“The British researchers used satellite images and radar data to measure variations in the height of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, which reveal how thick the ice is.
Writing in the Nature Geoscience journal, they described finding large rivers of meltwater beneath the floating ice shelf which had not previously been identified.”

More here.

Atlas Fracture book talk, Portland Public Library

TimQueeny_AtlasFracture_BookCover_031913On Friday, September 13 at noon, as part of the Portland Public Library’s Local Author Series, I will read and discuss my latest adventure thriller, The Atlas Fracture. Set in Antarctica, Atlas tells the story of DARPA agent Perry Helion’s attempts to prevent terrorists from unleashing a worldwide disaster. USM biology professor Dr. David Champlin <http://www.usm.maine.edu/bio/david-champlin> will “guest star” and discuss the possibilities for bizarre microbial life under the Antarctic ice cap.

For those who want to pick up up the book beforehand, here is a link to The Atlas Fracture’s Amazon page.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Atlas-Fracture-ebook/dp/B00BX7FTUU

Coldest, driest, windiest, highest

AntarcticaRight off the bat, The Atlas Fracture is a different thriller. A novel set in Antarctica is a rare creature. And for good reason: Antarctica is a land of extremes. The frozen continent is the coldest, driest, windiest and highest of Earth’s continents. Cold: Even in the Antarctic summer the temperature at the South Pole averages a chilly -15° F. (The action in the Atlas Fracture takes place along the Antarctic coast where the temps are a balmy 30° or 40°F in summer!). Dry: Antarctica is so dry, it is technically a desert. Due to the cold what little snow falls, never melts. Windy: Katabatic winds blowing down the high ice sheets regularly reach hurricane force. High: the continent’s massive ice sheet is an average of one mile thick and sits atop the Antarctic land mass like frosting on a cake.

It is in this distant, dangerous land that DARPA agent Perry Helion must battle a gang of terrorists intent on making use of a unique feature of Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf. If the terrorists succeed, their diabolically ingenious plan will wreak havoc with world weather, freezing Europe and releasing much of Antarctica’s ice sheets into the world’s oceans. In the empty reaches of the frozen continent, Perry can expect no help other than scientist Ellen Kaminev, a tough and lovely young microbiologist who has been tricked into participating in the deceptive Antarctic expedition. Together, Perry and Ellen must outwit the terrorists and derail their twisted plan.

Amazon link: http://viewBook.at/B00BX7FTUU

It all begins: subglacial life brought to surface

According to a story on Huffington Post, the Lake Whillans expedition may have broken the seal on unknown nasties: “Scientists have the first hints of life from a lake long trapped beneath tons of Antarctic ice.”

After drilling into the lake below the Antarctic ice, the American Lake Whillans scientists have brought up tiny cells and…… those cells respond to DNA-sensitive dye. This could be it, folks. That flu shot you got won’t help you now!

Read more about what could happen with these little subglacial beasties in my upcoming thriller, The Atlas Fracture. 

Just keep saying to yourself, “it’s only a thriller novel, it’s only a thriller novel.”

(Feature image courtesy Discover magazine)