Under the Pole

Polar scientists have long speculated on what lies beneath the ice-covered surface of the South Pole, which is 9,200 ft. above sea level. Last week the best look yet beneath the Pole came from the Rev. Daniel Linehan, S.J., seismologist, burly professor of geophysics at Boston College and onetime (1923) guard on a good B.C. football team. Jesuit Linehan's findings: the Pole is underlain by rock above sea level.

Working under Rear Admiral George J. Dufek, commander of Operation Deep Freeze Three, Linehan set off three blasts of TNT in a 48-ft. crater not far from Paul Siple's camp. (The crater had been made by an air-dropped tractor that dropped too far too fast.) The sound wave took .4 seconds to reach solid rock beneath the ice and return. Linehan calculated that the bedrock is 903 ft. above sea level. Over this is "very dense" ice 8,200 ft. thick, topped by a 20-ft. belt of "hard" ice. In turn, the hard-ice belt is covered by a surface layer of snow and ice 77 ft. thick. After studying his charts, Linehan said: "We probably can assume that the same type of rock keeps on through the plateau."

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