Many years ago, Andrei Kurbatov asked us if we could do laser ultrasound on ice cores, during half time of an international football match we were watching in Golden, Colorado. Dylan Mikesell started these measurements in a home-made refridgerator in the Physical Acoustics Labd as a research project toward his undergraduate degree at Colorado School of Mines. We have come a very long way since, and today — with the additional help of Thomas Otheim and Hans Peter Marshall, our first paper on laser ultrasound on ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic appeared in the journal Geosciences.