Fears held for Russian scientists exploring "alien" Antarctic lake, Vostok
Russian scientists preparing to explore the "most alien lake on Earth," Lake Vostok, have reportedly not been in touch with American colleagues in over five days.
News DeskFebruary 3, 2012 06:57


Russian scientists preparing to explore the "most alien lake on Earth," Lake Vostok, have reportedly not been in touch with American colleagues in over five days.

Vostok, buried over two miles — or 13,000 feet — beneath the great Antarctic ice sheet, is one of the world's largest lakes. However, it hasn't been exposed to air in more than 20 million years, Fox News reported.

The team from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) have been drilling for weeks to reach the isolated, subglacial water, part of a network of more than 200 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, according to the Washington Post.

Some of the lakes existed in warmer times, when the continent was connected to Australia.

According to the website io9.com:

Vostok is thought to harbor conditions similar to those of Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, and the discovery of life in the lake's inky depths would significantly strengthen the prospect of discovering life on either of these icy bodies.

However, the lake is "characterized by extremes, as geothermal heat from the Earth's interior warms the lake's bottom keeping it in a liquid state.

Thousands of yards of crushing ice also insulate Vostok from the coldest surface temperatures on Earth, "while infusing it with oxygen at concentrations fifty times higher than is typical of freshwater lakes on the planet's surface," the website said.

However, because there is no light, any nutrients can only exist in small quantities.

Still, the scientists were "enormously excited about what life-forms might be found there," the Washington Post reported.

Their main concern was contaminating the lake with drilling fluids and bacteria, "and the potentially explosive 'de-gassing' of a body of water that has especially high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen."

Meanwhile, Dr. John Priscu, professor of Ecology at Montana State University, told FoxNews.com via email that he had no way to contact the team and the already cold weather was set to plunge, as Antarctica's summer season was ending.

"Temps are dropping below [minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit] and they have only a week or so left before they have to winterize the station," he told Fox. "I can only imagine what things must be like at Vostok Station this week."

What's that still from? I don't think I've seen it.

What's that still from? I don't think I've seen it.

Dude.. seriously?

Russian Scientists Drill to Sub-Glacial Antarctic Lake


ST. PETERSBURG, February 6 (RIA Novosti)
After decades of drilling , Russian scientists have finally managed to pierce through Antarctica’s ice sheet to reveal the secrets of a unique sub-glacial lake, Vostok, that has been sealed there for the past 20 million years, a scientific source said on Monday.
“Yesterday, our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the sub-glacial lake,” the source said.
Explorers hope Lake Vostok, which is the largest of Antarctica's buried network of icebound lakes and also one of the largest lakes in the world, could reveal new forms of life and show how life evolved before the ice age.
The discovery of the hidden lakes of Antarctica in the 1990s sparked much enthusiasm among scientists all over the world. Some think the ice cap above and at the edges have created a hydrostatic seal with the surface that has prevented lake water from escaping or anything else from getting inside.
Lake Vostok could also offer a glimpse of what conditions exist for life in similar extreme conditions on Mars and Jupiter’s moon, Europa, according to RedOrbit scientific news portal.
Explorers from the United States and Britain are following the trail of their Russia’s colleagues with their own missions to probe other hidden Arctic lakes, which are among the last of the world’s hidden and unexplored areas.
With the current events happening at Lake Vostok, an old theory saying that German Nazis may have built a secret base there as early as the 1930s, has resurfaced.
It is thought that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis moved to the South Pole and started constructing a base at Lake Vostok. In 1943, Grand Admiral Karl Dontiz was quoted saying “Germany's submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other end of the world,” in Antarctica.
According to German naval archives, months after Germany surrendered to the Allies in April, 1945, the German submarine U-530 arrived at the South Pole from the Port of Kiel. Crewmembers constructed an ice cave and supposedly stored several boxes of relics from the Third Reich, including Hitler’s secret files.
It is also rumored that later the submarine U-977 delivered the remains of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun to Antarctica for DNA cloning purposes.
The subs then entered the Argentinean port of Mar-del-Plata and surrendered to authorities.