Events
The first ice analysis, taken from the largest water body under Antarctica, revealed nothing but pure water that had remained intact for 10 million years. However, this does not mean that the underground lake is uninhabited, experts say.
Sergey Bulat from the St. Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics, Russia, presented the first results of an analysis of ice, samples of which were taken in February this year from a subice lake, which has an area of 15 500 square kilometers. Bulat and colleagues reported finding fewer than 10 microbes per millimeter. This is equivalent to the number of microorganisms in a sterile room.
However, these results were the results of an analysis of ice that froze to the storm, and not the water of the lake itself. Bulat hopes that it will be possible to obtain samples of clean water from the deeper layers of the lake, where, according to researchers, there should be microbes that have been isolated from the rest of the world for about 20 millions of years.
Such unusual life forms can provide clues to what life might look like somewhere else in the universe. However, Lake Vostok is also an interesting research site for other reasons.
The Russian news agency RIA Novosti recently reported that there are many rumors about this lake, including talk about a secret base of fascist submarines and that bodies Hitler and his mistress were taken there for cloning.
Serious research on Lake Vostok has been going on for more than 10 years, but the first drilling work began in 1989. Scientists reached a depth of 3,600 meters by 1999, but were forced to suspend work due to fears of possible contamination of water that had remained intact for millions of years.
Russian scientists stopped working to make sure that the water would not be polluted. They drilled the hole until the sensor showed free water. At this site, the researchers removed the kerosene grease from the drill head and adjusted the pressure so that no liquid from outside could seep into the lake.
Russians are not the only ones who want to uncover the secrets of mysterious Antarctica. Scientists from all over the world have joined a kind of competition to study the icy continent. Several other groups of scientists are currently working in Antarctica.
A team of researchers from the British Antarctic Authority is working in the Ellsworth Lake area, one of the continent's 370 subice lakes, where they are trying to drill a well for the first time. American scientists are working in the Willance Ice Stream area.