National Ice Core Lab (Classic)

Dylan Thuras· Host0:01

What if you could study a frozen moment in time? What would you wanna know? In Denver, Colorado, there's a lab where scientists collect frozen pieces of time.

Richard Nunn· Guest0:13

We can very clearly see when the Industrial Revolution happened. We can even look at lead concentrations, and we can see when the Romans started smelting lead. We can see when we started using leaded gasoline. We can see when we banned leaded gasoline, because the concentration of these lead particulates within the dust particles trapped in the ice vary. Um, and we have the ability to actually look at these incredibly trace molecules and determine these sorts of events.

Dylan Thuras· Host0:42

These scientists travel the world, and they collect samples of ice, these frozen fossils of our environment, that can show us how the Earth has changed over time. I'm Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today, we're going to the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility, where science peers into the depths of ice to tell us about our past and our future. That is after this.