new creation date for north pole
June 2006
The results of the 2004 Arctic Coring Expedition
(ACEX), which took 430m long cylinders of sediment
from the floor of the Arctic Ocean, have just been
published in Nature. Several of the findings
have shattered widely-held beliefs about the
North Pole, including the previous estimates of
when it began to cool down and freeze over.
Existing climate models had suggested that
glaciers and sea ice had begun to form between 6
and 10 million years ago. However, the ACEX team
has discovered that the Arctic really started to
winterise at around the same time that the
Antarctic began to turn white, some 45 million
years ago.