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Russians drill into Antarctic lake sealed beneath ice for 20m years
Source: Agencies |
February 10, 2012, Friday
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SCIENTISTS expect to find microbes in a lake four kilometers beneath the thick ice of Antarctica. If so, it will illustrate once again that somehow life finds a way to survive in the strangest and harshest places.
And it offers hope that life exists beyond Earth.
Russian researchers reported on Wednesday that they had reached Lake Vostok, a pristine body of fresh water untouched by light or wind for about 20 million years.
It doesn't sound like a place where life could exist, but scientists keep finding germs in places they don't expect, from underneath ice to hot mines. There's even a germ, nicknamed Conan the Bacterium, that survives deadly radiation.
Scientists may find similar weird germs inside Mars or on the moons of Saturn or Jupiter.
Touching the surface of the lake, the largest of nearly 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, came after more than two decades of drilling, and was eagerly anticipated by scientists around the world.
"In the simplest sense, it can transform the way we think about life," NASA's chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said on Wednesday.
The Russian team made contact with lake water on Sunday at a depth of 3,769 meters, about 1,300 kilometers east of the South Pole in the central part of the continent.
Scientists hope the lake might allow a glimpse into microbial life forms that existed before the Ice Age.
They believe that microbial life may exist in the dark depths of the lake, despite its high pressure and constant cold - conditions similar to those believed to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said reaching the lake was comparable to the United States putting a man on the moon in 1969.
"I think it's fair to compare this project to going to the moon," said Lukin, who oversaw the mission and whose team endured temperatures of minus 89 degrees Celsius.
At 250 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide, Lake Vostok is similar in size to Lake Ontario. It is kept from freezing by the more than two-mile-thick crust of ice across it that acts like a blanket, keeping in heat generated by geothermal energy.
Lukin said he expects the lake to contain chemotroph bacteria that feed on chemical reactions in pitch darkness, probably similar to those existing deep on the ocean floor but dating back millions of years. "They followed different laws of evolution that are yet unknown to us," he said.
The project has allowed the testing of technology that could be used in exploring icy worlds. "Conditions in subglacial lakes in Antarctica are the closest we can get to those where scientists expect to find extraterrestrial life," Lukin said.
Russian scientists will remove their frozen sample of lake water for analysis in December, when the next Antarctic summer season arrives. They reached the lake just before they had to leave at the end of the Antarctic summer, when plunging temperatures halt all travel to the region.
Drilling began in 1989 and dragged on slowly due to funding shortages, equipment breakdowns, environmental concerns and severe cold.
And it offers hope that life exists beyond Earth.
Russian researchers reported on Wednesday that they had reached Lake Vostok, a pristine body of fresh water untouched by light or wind for about 20 million years.
It doesn't sound like a place where life could exist, but scientists keep finding germs in places they don't expect, from underneath ice to hot mines. There's even a germ, nicknamed Conan the Bacterium, that survives deadly radiation.
Scientists may find similar weird germs inside Mars or on the moons of Saturn or Jupiter.
Touching the surface of the lake, the largest of nearly 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, came after more than two decades of drilling, and was eagerly anticipated by scientists around the world.
"In the simplest sense, it can transform the way we think about life," NASA's chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said on Wednesday.
The Russian team made contact with lake water on Sunday at a depth of 3,769 meters, about 1,300 kilometers east of the South Pole in the central part of the continent.
Scientists hope the lake might allow a glimpse into microbial life forms that existed before the Ice Age.
They believe that microbial life may exist in the dark depths of the lake, despite its high pressure and constant cold - conditions similar to those believed to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said reaching the lake was comparable to the United States putting a man on the moon in 1969.
"I think it's fair to compare this project to going to the moon," said Lukin, who oversaw the mission and whose team endured temperatures of minus 89 degrees Celsius.
At 250 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide, Lake Vostok is similar in size to Lake Ontario. It is kept from freezing by the more than two-mile-thick crust of ice across it that acts like a blanket, keeping in heat generated by geothermal energy.
Lukin said he expects the lake to contain chemotroph bacteria that feed on chemical reactions in pitch darkness, probably similar to those existing deep on the ocean floor but dating back millions of years. "They followed different laws of evolution that are yet unknown to us," he said.
The project has allowed the testing of technology that could be used in exploring icy worlds. "Conditions in subglacial lakes in Antarctica are the closest we can get to those where scientists expect to find extraterrestrial life," Lukin said.
Russian scientists will remove their frozen sample of lake water for analysis in December, when the next Antarctic summer season arrives. They reached the lake just before they had to leave at the end of the Antarctic summer, when plunging temperatures halt all travel to the region.
Drilling began in 1989 and dragged on slowly due to funding shortages, equipment breakdowns, environmental concerns and severe cold.
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