Until recently, you'd never have guessed what's beneath Greenland's Ice Sheet . But now it's been laid bare for all of us to see. The 2025 documentary titled "The Memory of Darkness, Light, and Ice" focuses on research conducted at the University at Buffalo (UB) on ancient soil from below the Greenland Ice Sheet. The film won the 2026 national Emmy for Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary and it raises awareness of a hidden secret that has significant implications for global sea level rise.

The sediment sample studied at UB was originally collected at a Cold War-era military camp in Greenland, where U.S. Army operatives had drilled deep with the goal of placing nuclear missiles beneath the ice. In the process, they unearthed a soil sample with plant remains from 400,000 years ago.…