On June 24 , 1893 , the Norwegian polar explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen put off to explore the unmapped land at the very top of the world .
Taking with him 12 men , the program was to take a particularly reinforced ship run enough supplies to last five age into the Arctic Ocean and deliberately freeze it into the ice . They would then baby-sit there and let the currents do their piece of work , project where the glass would take them .
When Nansen first talked about the programme , other polar explorerscalled it"an illogical schema of ego - destruction , " but he came back with a trove of antecedently unknown information from the Arctic Ocean , from temperatures and salinity to currents – rotatory for a world for whom the top of the major planet was nothing but a mystery .
There are n’t many opportunity to explore the truly great unknown today , where the " here be dragons " portion of maps have all been filled in with more sensitive description like " here be a field " . However , there are some people who do get to run out this kind of exploration , they just have to do it in the dark .
In the winter of 2010 , a squad on the Norse inquiry vessel theHelmer Hanssensailed out into the Arctic Ocean and were just off the coast of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard when they turned their Light off , plunging themselves into full darkness .
In a fresh episode of63 degree North , an original podcast by NTNU , theNorwegian University of Science and Technology , the squad explain how they headed out into the complete darkness of the Arctic nighttime , and what they discover when they start there .
" [ W]hen we looked down , we saw this cosmos of blue , green light that was shining and blink and in a three - dimensional space , a bit like looking up and you see the existence with all the stars , " Jørgen Berge , a diametrical maritime biologist from the University of Tromsø , tellsNancy Bazilchuk .
" [ T]hese were moments of realizing that there is something very particular going on in the Arctic polar night that no one has ever examined before . "
