Cold Rush (continued 2/4)

The Pole's ice is also the best spot on earth to find clues to the origins of the universe. In the past five years, Antarctic-based astrophysics research has mushroomed and is now one of the top endeavors at the Pole. The South Pole's new Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (Amanda) - a system that scans the ice cap, looking for the tiny subatomic particles as they pass through the planet - is already the largest anywhere. And a larger one is under construction: the $250 million IceCube neutrino detector, which will cover a cubic kilometer of ice with an array 100 times the size of Amanda.

This new research is attracting scores of eager scientists, and the southerly migration has triggered the first-ever housing crisis on this mostly uninhabited, 5.4 million-square-mile Popsicle. Marty points out that a facility originally intended for 33 men (literally an all-male crew, with two to a room) now sees more than 150 researchers and staff in the summer and about one-third that many through the eight-month austral winter, which begins in February. During the summer, overflow residents sleep in Korean War surplus tents on the snow.

So why not just expand the current structure? Not an option, explains Marty - the sheer weight of snow piling onto its exterior is gradually crushing the dome. At one point, snow buried enough of the shell that residents could ski off the roof.

And if that doesn't sound threatening enough, consider the fate of the original, 1956 South Pole station, a precursor to the current dome: It has long-since vanished under 30 feet of ice.

Ferraro Choi and Associates, the South Pole station's principal architectural firm, is headquartered in downtown Honolulu. On most days, temperatures here top 80 degrees with light northerly trade winds. Soaring palms shade the building's courtyard, where people eat lunch outside year-round. William Brooks, the project's 51-year-old leader - who is tall and stocky, with a faint resemblance to Brian Dennehy - typifies the mainlander haole: His forehead is sunburned, arms tanned to the elbow; he wears a bright orange T-shirt emblazoned with a logo for Freakin' Hot Sauce.

Brooks got started on the project in the early 1990s, when the NSF, having abandoned hopes of salvaging the old centerpiece of the South Pole, began soliciting ideas for a wholly new compound. The vision that emerged was of an elevated station, one that would prevent blowing snow from piling onto its exterior. For six months, Brooks studied specs from other Antarctic outposts and consulted Alaska-based engineers and NASA astronauts familiar with working in extreme cold and darkness. His final plan, which won Ferraro Choi its NSF contract, featured a two-story complex with steel pylons fastened to a horizontal foundation - which Brooks compares to a giant raft on an ocean of ice - and nearly 10 feet of ground clearance to let snow freely pass beneath.

"We used computer modeling to predict wind speed over every square inch of the building," recalls Joseph Ferraro, a founding partner at Ferraro Choi who wears an aloha shirt and shuts his eyes as he talks of the Pole, as if it's impossible to conjure with windsurfers gliding by outside his window. The designers tested mock-ups in wind tunnels and experimented with fluid dynamics. Finally, they built a scale model about the size of a conference table and left it at the Pole for a few years to watch what would happen.

By raising the station high enough so wind could channel above and below it, the Ferraro Choi design solved the snowdrift issue. But there was another problem. "The entire snow plain is crushing under its own weight," explains Brooks. "So the building is like a boat going down with low tide." His plan called for a series of hinges at various joints to absorb any minor shifting. That way, doors and windows will stay centered in their frames as the ice below tweaks the foundation. Brooks also integrated thermal breaks - large neoprene gaskets - wherever a steel beam penetrates the interior. "This prevents heat transpiration down the pylons and into the snowpack," he says.