Russian Scientists Poised to Be First to Reach Ice-Buried Antarctic Lake
If they don’t reach the lake before they are forced to leave for the winter, the Russian team will be forced to wait two more years to sample water from the lake, and discover what may be living in it.
At a tiny outpost in the middle of Antarctica, Russian scientists are poised to become the first humans to reach a massive liquid lake that has been cut off from the sunlit world for millennia, and may house uniquely adapted life forms that are new to science.
Researchers are racing against the fast-approaching bitter cold and total darkness of Antarctic winter to complete a drill hole to Lake Vostok, one of the largest lakes on Earth, and the largest of the nearly 400 ice-buried lakes discovered on the frigid continent so far.
It’s an effort that began more than 10 years ago, and one that has been plagued by difficulties — and this season, the stakes are higher than ever. If they don’t reach the lake before they are forced to leave for the winter, the Russian team will be forced to wait two more years to sample water from the lake, and discover what may be living in it.
The project is a product of serendipity. The colossal lake was discovered beneath a pre-existing drill project, and, although the Russians were the first to begin drilling to a hidden Antarctic lake, they may not be the first to sample one. Teams from the United States and the United Kingdom are nipping at their heels, poised to begin drilling with specially designed equipment as early as fall 2012. However, scientists from U.S. and British projects say it is not a race, and there is enormous scientific value in all three projects. [Race to the South Pole in Images]
Lake Vostok, roughly the size of Lake Ontario, lies in the middle of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, and is buried beneath 2 miles (3.7 kilometers) of ice. The lake itself is likely almost as old as the ice sheet that covers it — around 14 million years old — and the water within could be 1 million years old, according to rough estimates.
Scientists suspect that Vostok and other Antarctic lakes, long secreted beneath the ice, are home to cold-loving organismsthat have been left to their own evolutionary devices for hundreds of thousands of years.