A whiteout rolled in about 10:30 last night - although not a whiteout in the sense of walking outside and not being able to see anything. Rather, everywhere in the sky was white and visibility from about 50m was hazy. The whiteout was still around in the morning when we walked out to the AASTINO so we couldn't see the sun and the wind was very still. Almost an eerie experience.

We put our electrician hats on today and set about wiring up a switch for the lights we installed yesterday and for the fan. Our first step was remembering which colour corresponded to live, neutral and earth. Being experimentalists, I suggested that Jon stick a fork into a live cable and I would watch the results...kidding...we resorted to sticking a multi-meter across an extension lead that I had cut in half - yes, I intentionally cut it in half. My first switch took a while to put together so I'm glad I wasn't paying myself as an electrician. The second one was a lot faster and I even managed to make it from a cable hanging in mid-air. Jon wired up a plug and we weren't at all surprised to find that the switch worked exactly as intended...we are very skilled electricians. We admired our set up for awhile then returned to other tasks.

We chatted to the ice core drillers at lunch today. They are getting close to the bedrock so it's getting very exciting. Each day they extrapolate how long it will take them to hit the bottom, this has ranged from 800 days - I think something broke that day - to about the 19th of December, just after we leave. The elevation of Dome C is around 3200m so it's a mighty big hole they have drilled. The hole is filled with "drilling fluid" that has the roughly the same density as the ice, to stop the hole collapsing in on it's self. They ran seismic tests the other day by blowing up some dynamite down a 30m hole and recording the reflected pulse from the bottom of the hole. This test seems to indicate that there is a layer of water between the bedrock and the ice. When the drill breaks through into this layer the pressure of the water will push the drill fluid back up the hole. Everytime they bring a new ice core up they break a record for the oldest ice - I think they are now bringing up ice over 800 000 years old.

- Suze