The world holds its breath, hoping for the best after six days of radio silence from Antarctica -- where a team of Russian scientists is racing the clock and the oncoming winter to dig to an alien lake far beneath the ice.
The team from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) have been drilling for weeks in an effort to reach isolated Lake Vostok, a vast, dark body of water hidden 13,000 ft. below the surface of the icy continent. Lake Vostok hasn't been exposed to air in more than 20 million years.
What the Russian team is trying to do is unprecedented—the waters of Lake Vostok have been left untouched beneath more than two miles of ice for more than 15 million years. Lake Vostok has been called the "most alien lake on earth," and scientists believe microscopic "extremophiles" that can survive in very low temperature and light situations might live in the water.
There you go. Like millions of Americans (and far too many Canadians), I have fallen victim to the ineptitude of Faux News. I should be ashamed of myself...
There you go. Like millions of Americans (and far too many Canadians), I have fallen victim to the ineptitude of Faux News. I should be ashamed of myself...
After more than two decades of drilling in Antarctica, Russian scientists have reached the surface of a gigantic freshwater lake hidden under miles of ice for some 20 million years — a lake that may hold life from the distant past and clues to the search for life on other planets.
Reaching Lake Vostok is a major discovery avidly anticipated by scientists around the world hoping that it may allow a glimpse into microbial life forms, not visible to the naked eye, that existed before the Ice Age. It may also provide precious material that would help look for life on the ice-crusted moons of Jupiter and Saturn or under Mars' polar ice caps where conditions could be similar.
The sample is frozen, though after bringing it up through the core. So likely the little micro-orgnisms they might find will be dead, but at least identifiable.
Russian scientists believe they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica, the RIA Novosti news agency reported on Thursday. The samples obtained from the underground lake in May 2012 contained a bacteria which bore no resemblance to existing types, said Sergei Bulat of the genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics. "After putting aside all possible elements of contamination, DNA was found that did not coincide with any of the well-known types in the global database," he said. "We are calling this life form unclassified and unidentified," he added.
At least we agree that the resources down there are virtually endless!
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