I wish Americans were leading this expedition -- the Russians are on a shoestring budget and I just don't trust them not to screw this up. _____ Lake Vostok drilling team claims breakthrough Russian scientists are reporting success in their quest to drill into Lake Vostok, a huge body of liquid water buried under the Antarctic ice. It is the first time such a breakthrough has been made into one of the more than 300 sub-glacial lakes known to exist on the White Continent. Researchers believe Vostok can give them some fresh insights into the frozen history of Antarctica. They also hope to find microbial lifeforms that are new to science. "This fills my soul with joy," said Valery Lukin, from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St Petersburg, which has been overseeing the project, "This will give us the possibility to biologically evaluate the evolution of living organisms... because those organisms spent a long time without contact with the atmosphere, without sunlight," he was quoted as saying in a translation of national media reports by BBC Monitoring. The drilling project has taken years to plan and implement. The lake's location in the heart of East Antarctic Ice Sheet is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. It is the place where thermometers recorded the lowest ever temperature on the planet - minus 89C on 21 July 1983. Vostok Station was first set up in 1956. However, it was only in the 1970s when, with the help of radar, British scientists first started to suspect there might be something underneath all the ice. Further geophysical survey data then established the true scale of the sub-glacial feature. With an area of 15,000 square km and with depths reaching more than 800m, Lake Vostok is similar in size to Lake Baikal in Siberia or Lake Ontario in North America. More than 300 such bodies of water have now been identified across Antarctica. They are kept liquid by geothermal heat and pressure, and are part of a vast and dynamic hydrological network at play under the ice sheet. Some of the lakes are connected, and will exchange water. But some may be completely cut off, in which case their water may have been resident in one place for thousands if not millions of years. Russian researchers will try to establish just how isolated Lake Vostok has been. If it has been sealed then micro-organisms new to science are very likely to have evolved in the lake. Nonetheless, there will be concerns about introducing contamination, and there have been criticisms of the methods used by the Vostok drilling team. Vladimir Chuprov, from Greenpeace Russia, commented: "There is a set of risks which can damage this relic lake and some of them are connected with polluting the lake with the drilling fluids, as well as other stuff that can get into this unique lake." The drilling team counters that is has taken the necessary precautions. The Vostok project is one of a number of similar ventures being undertaken on the White Continent. The British Antarctic Survey (Bas) is hoping to begin its effort to drill into Lake Ellsworth in West Antarctica later this year. An American crew is targeting Lake Whillans, also in the West. "It is an important milestone that has been completed and a major achievement for the Russians because they've been working on this for years," Professor Martin Siegert, the principal investigator on the Bas-Ellsworth project said. "The Russian team share our mission to understand subglacial lake environments and we look forward to developing collaborations with their scientists and also those from the US and other nations, as we all embark on a quest to comprehend these pristine, extreme environments," he told AP. The projects are of particular fascination to astrobiologists, who study the origins and likely distribution of life across the Universe. Conditions in these Antarctic lakes may not be that different from those in the liquid water bodies thought to exist under the surfaces of icy moons in the outer Solar System. Places like Europa, which orbits Jupiter, and Enceladus, which circles Saturn, may be among the best places beyond Earth to go look for alien organisms. link
is your concern related to endangering the life forms that lie beneath? I have been fascinated by Europa for years, so any momentum this might lend to NASA finally embarking on a mission there is well worth the risk for me personally...
Of course they could end up dropping hundreds of tons of kerosine and other anti-freezing agents down the hole. Not to mention all of the bacteria etc. in the kerosine.
I see a movie in the works. A dramedy that will be a children's adventure movie. And the main character will be The Rock. Set to release in the Summer of 2013.
Where's the updates? They've had access to this body of water for at least a month. I smell a US military coverup.
From the original article it said to prevent contamination they weren't going to draw out water right away but let the bottom of the bore hole freeze up and then they would sample the ice. This would mean letting it freeze over an Antarctic winter.
I hear they're the ones who thawed out DaDakota whom we thought was in hiatus from the BBS but was really FrOzEn. edit: Never mind... I see he's in this thread. :grin:
Unknown class of bacteria found under ice crust of Antarctic lake Tests of water samples from Antarctica's Lake Vostok have yielded a completely new class of bacteria, a Russian scientist has told reporters. The frozen samples were brought up from under the Antarctic ice in May 2012. Sergei Bulat of St. Petersburg’s Nuclear Physics Institute said they collected a core sample of water frozen into the borehole. He said the probe contained bacteria that didn’t belong to any known phyla, which is the next ranking above a class in size. In May, the samples will be brought to the lab by the Akademik Feodorov icebreaker to confirm the discovery. link
Here's a story of another team that has done the same... Antarctic Lake Beneath the Ice Sheet Tested Jan. 29, 2013 — In a first-of-its-kind feat of science and engineering, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research team has successfully drilled through 800 meters (2,600 feet) of Antarctic ice to reach a subglacial lake and retrieve water and sediment samples that have been isolated from direct contact with the atmosphere for many thousands of years. Scientists and drillers with the interdisciplinary Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project (WISSARD) announced Jan. 28 local time (U.S. stations in Antarctica keep New Zealand time) that they had used a customized clean hot-water drill to directly obtain samples from the waters and sediments of subglacial Lake Whillans. The samples may contain microscopic life that has evolved uniquely to survive in conditions of extreme cold and lack of light and nutrients. Studying the samples may help scientists understand not only how life can survive in other extreme ecosystems on Earth, but also on other icy worlds in our solar system. (more at link)
Not really anything new. Just somewhat of a bump to a cool/potentially-disastrous story... (and yes...it is a little old) http://rbth.ru/news/2013/05/09/rese...ic_bringing_water_from_lake_vostok_25848.html Research vessel returns from Antarctic bringing water from Lake Vostok ST. PETERSBURG. May 9 (Interfax) - The Academician Fyodorov research vessel is returning to St. Petersburg from the 58th Russian Antarctic expedition voyage. Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute reported that the ship would arrive in its home port on May 10. The Academician Fyodorov has 55 expedition members aboard, mostly specialists from the Progress and Novolazarevskaya stations. Its voyage began on Nov. 1, 2012, and lasted for 190 days. During the trip, the ship covered 30,600 nautical miles, including 7,600 nautical miles through iceberg-infested and icebound Antarctic waters. "Every task has been performed with high quality and within deadlines. Specialists of the institute and other research centers of the country will evaluate quality of scientific survey done by the personnel stationed aboard the ship as the data is received on the first days after the expedition\'s return home," the report said. The Academician Fyodorov will also deliver samples of refrigerated water from the Vostok sub-glacial lake obtained in January 2013. In early February 2012 Russian scientists were the world's first to drill through the ice shell of the Lake Vostok to the waters isolated under Antarctic ice for millions of years. The last meters of ice (with the total thickness of 3,768 meters) were drilled through on Feb. 5 and the researchers reached the sub-glacial lake's surface. The drilling from the Russian Antarctic research station Vostok under which the lake is situated had been on since 1990 with pauses. The Academy of Sciences compared the event to landing on Mars. The lake may contain unique organisms unknown to science. Lake Vostok water samples are being tested at laboratories of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute and the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute.
55 scientist crammed into a ship for 190 days through Antarctic waters and the heat of the equator....with a cargo of million year old water What could possibly go wrong?
