What if you could study a frozen moment in time?

What would you want to know?

In Denver, Colorado, there's a lab where scientists collect frozen pieces of time.

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 lead gasoline.

We can see when we banned lead gasoline because the concentration of these lead particulates

within the dust particles trapped in the ice vary and we have the ability to actually look

at these incredibly trace molecules and determine these sorts of events.

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 Thoris 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 Corps facility where science

piers into the depths of ice to tell us about our past and our future.

Is after this.

So my name is Richard Nunn.

I'm the Assistant Curator at the National Science Foundation Ice Corps facility here in

Lakewood, Colorado.

In case you miss that, that is Richard Nunn, the Curator of the National Science Foundation

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