Science: Fist Clench Under Ice

Icecaps can be cozy. Last week Arctic Expert Robert Philippe, recuperating in Alexandria, Va. from an airplane crackup, told how the Army engineers make themselves comfortable in Greenland's icy interior. Instead of fighting polar blizzards on the surface of the icecap, they dodge them by burrowing into the ice, just as many Arctic animals find shelter under the snow.

The principle of the Army's Greenland Research Program, with which Philippe has been working since 1953, is to use what it finds on the icecap. What it finds is snow, which gradually turns into solid...