With temperatures always below zero and blizzards driving at 100 mph, Antarctica is no easy place to survive in. Yet there are now more than 2,000 scientists and engineers from 14 countries who put up with the discomforts to study in such a clean and largely untouched environment.
There are Americans trying to answer the question of why cold-blooded fish don't freeze to death in the icy seas. Others are studying the seeming stupidity of the Emperor penguin in nesting not in spring but at the height of winter.
But most teams have come to use Antarctica as a great natural laboratory. From here they can study just who has polluted the earth most - man or nature herself. Using this vantage point to look through the upper atmosphere to the other side of the earth, they may learn more about the weather.
The scientific work in Antarctica, with its far reaching consequences, is dependent on the continent remaining untouched, but already natural gas has been struck and the mountains contain some of the biggest coalfields in the world.
Antarctica film by Franz Lazi Film, Stuttgart