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| 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
Related Articles:
“… 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. …”
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