Antarctica Researchers Seek Life in Lake 2 Miles Under Ice

Jakarta Globe, September 07, 2012

Picture of tiny shrimp-like creature 600 feet under Antarctic ice.
(Photo courtesy NASA/AP) 

  

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British researchers are preparing to drill through 3 kilometers of Antarctic ice to search for life in samples from a lake that’s been isolated from the outside world for hundreds of thousands of years.    

A year after delivering 70 tons of equipment to the site of Lake Ellsworth, a body of fresh water between the West Antarctic ice sheet and the bedrock under the southern continent, scientists next month will deliver another 26 tons of gear, the British Antarctic Survey said today in an e-mailed statement. In December they plan to drill for 100 hours to reach the lake.    

The UK effort follows a Russian project that in February drilled to Lake Vostok, more than 3.7 kilometers under the Antarctic ice. The teams are searching for signs of life in water that remains liquid due to a combination of the pressure of thousands of meters of ice and geothermal heat from below.    

“For years we have speculated that new forms of microbial life could have evolved in the unique habitats of Antarctica’s sub-glacial lakes,” John Parnell, a professor of geology at the University of Aberdeen, said in the statement. “If life can withstand even the deepest, darkest and most isolated conditions for more than a million years, then it has the ability to exist anywhere - and by that I mean not just on Earth.”     The British team will employ a drilling technique using hot water to create the borehole 36 centimeters (14 inches) wide, according to the statement. After 100 hours of drilling, the scientists will have just a day to recover samples before the borehole refreezes, sealing the lake again.                         

Finding Life    

“We are standing at the threshold of making new discoveries about a part of our planet that has never been explored in this way,” Martin Siegert, the project’s principle investigator and a researcher at the University of Bristol, said in the statement. “Finding life in a lake that could have been isolated for up to half a million years is an exciting prospect.”    

To ensure the samples aren’t contaminated by material from the surface, they’ll be collected using equipment that meets the same standards as equipment designed for space exploration.    

A Russian team on Feb. 5 penetrated more than 3.7 kilometers of ice to reach the waters of Lake Vostok, another body of water underneath Antarctica, where they collected samples of “fresh frozen” water, according to the country’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute.    

Lakes exist deep below the Antarctic surface because the pressure exerted by thousands of meters of ice drives down the freezing point of water. Lake Ellsworth is one of 387 known subglacial Antarctic lakes.

Bloomberg

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"Around the Horn" - (a message from Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

“… Now, in the process of all of this, there's going to be renewed interest in Antarctica, and you're going to find some interesting things about the land under the ice. The topography of the land under the ice does not match the topography of the ice above. Some astonishing shapes will be revealed when you map the actual land under the ice. Points of mountains are going to be revealed, giving an entire different idea of what Antarctica might have been and what its purpose really is. The continent that is uninhabitable by Human Beings may very well be the engine of life for Human Beings. And I will leave it at that. …”