How a Secret Cold War Project Led to Signs of Ancient Life—and a New Warning About the Future

Andrew Christ remembers the day he became part of “this 60-year, weird, wild Cold War story.” It was 2019, and the University of Vermont researcher was just four days away from defending his dissertation. He was beyond stressed, and had better things to do than help examine an ice core sample drilled decades earlier. The core was subglacial sediment and rock, taken from below a mile of ice in 1966 at Camp Century, an American research base in Greenland that had served as cover for a secret—and failed—military project. Since…

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