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Heres a program from our archives.Ambience, Footsteps on Polar Plateau, We're listening to the sounds of a researcher crunching his way across the Antarctic ice sheet. It turns out that Antarctica, one of the most inaccessible and unhospitable places on our planet, is one of the best laboratories to study what's going on above and below the surface of the earth. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Dr. Peter Wilkniss is director of the division of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation.Wilkniss: The Antarctic serves as an absolutely first-rate platform for remote observations of the sun, and the stars, and the universe. Because around the poles, the conditions of the earth's magnetic field and the clear, dry atmosphere are such, that we can peer out into the beginnings of the universe and understand how it developed, how galaxies were formed and distributed; and within the galaxies, how stars are formed. Finally, it is a unique place from where we can look into the interior of the earth because it's a very quiet place, and huge earthquakes can be registered at the South Pole, and they tell us about the interior of the earth.Sometimes in Antarctica, the surface of the earth carries a message from outer space.Wilkniss: It just so happens that the Antarctic is a fantastic collector of meteorites. Some come from the moon, some are suspected from Mars. We have people that look for meteorites in the Antarctic. We take them out with an airplane that has skis on it, a big four-engine airplane. They carry with them tents, and snowmobiles. We drop them off for weeks on end to roam across the big ice in their little snowmobiles, and they look for meteorites. I think they're some of the real pioneers that we have left to do this kind of work.This archival program is part of our thirtieth anniversary celebration. If you want hear more, check out our podcast.