Posts
By | Associated Press
MOSCOW (AP) — 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.
"It's
like exploring another planet, except this one is ours," Columbia
University glaciologist Robin Bell told The Associated Press by email.
Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), which is in charge of the mission, said in Wednesday's statement that his team reached the lake's surface on Sunday.
Lukin has previously compared the Lake Vostok
effort to the moon race that the Soviet Union lost to the United
States, telling the Russian media he was proud that Russia will be the
first this time. Although far from being the world's deepest lake, the
severe weather of Antarctica and the location's remoteness made the
project challenging.
"There is no other place on Earth that has
been in isolation for more than 20 million years," said Lev Savatyugin, a
researcher with the AARI. "It's a meeting with the unknown."Savatyugin said scientists hope to find primeval bacteria that could expand the human knowledge of the origins of life.
"We need to see what we have here before we send missions to ice-crusted moons, like Jupiter's moon Europa," he said.
Lake Vostok is 160 miles (250 kilometers) long and 30 miles (50 kilometers) across at its widest point, similar in area to Lake Ontario. It lies about 3.8 kilometers (2.4 miles) beneath the surface and is the largest in a web of nearly 400 known subglacial lakes in Antarctica. The lake is warmed underneath by geothermal energy.
The project, however, has drawn strong fears that 60 metric tons (66 tons) of lubricants and antifreeze used in the drilling may contaminate the pristine lake. The Russian researchers have insisted the bore would only slightly touch the lake's surface and that a surge in pressure will send the water rushing up the shaft where it will freeze, immediately sealing out the toxic chemicals.
Lukin said about 1.5
cubic meters (50 cubic feet) of kerosene and freon poured up to the
surface from the boreshaft, proof that the lake water streamed up from
beneath, froze, and blocked the hole.
The scientists will later remove the frozen sample for analysis in December when the next Antarctic summer comes.
Scientists
believe that microbial life may exist in the dark depths of the lake
despite its high pressure and constant cold — conditions similar to
those expected to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter's moon
Europa and Saturn's move Enceladus.
"In the simplest sense, it can
transform the way we think about life," NASA's chief scientist Waleed
Abdalati told the AP by email.
Scientists
in other nations hope to follow up this discovery with similar
projects. American and British teams are drilling to reach their own
subglacial Antarctic lakes, but Bell said those lakes are smaller and
younger than Vostok, which is the big scientific prize.
Some
scientists hope that studies of Lake Vostok and other subglacial lakes
will advance knowledge of Earth's own climate and help predict its
changes.
"It is an important
milestone that has been completed and a major achievement for the
Russians because they've been working on this for years," Professor
Martin Siegert, a leading scientist with the British Antarctic Survey,
which is trying to reach another Antarctic subglacial lake, Lake
Ellsworth.
"The Russian team share our mission to understand subglacial lake
environments and we look forward to developing collaborations with
their scientists and also those from the U.S. and other nations, as we
all embark on a quest to comprehend these pristine, extreme
environments," he said in an email.
In
the future, Russian researchers plan to explore the lake using an
underwater robot equipped with video cameras that would collect water
samples and sediments from the bottom of the lake, a project still
awaiting the approval of the Antarctic Treaty organization.
The
prospect of lakes hidden under Antarctic ice was first put forward by
Russian scientist and anarchist revolutionary, Prince Pyotr Kropotkin at
the end of the 19th century. Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa pointed
at the likely location of the lake and named it following Soviet
Antarctic missions in the 1950s and 1960s, but it wasn't until 1994 that
its existence was proven by Russian and British scientists.
The
drilling in the area began in 1989 and dragged on slowly due to funding
shortages, equipment breakdowns, environmental concerns and severe
cold.
While temperatures on the
Vostok Station on the surface above have registered the coldest ever
recorded on Earth, reaching minus 89 degrees Celsius (minus 128 degrees
Fahrenheit), the water in the lake is warmed by the giant pressure of
the ice crust and geothermal energy underneath.
The Russian team reached the lake just before they had to leave at the end of the Antarctic summer season.
____
AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report from Washington.
