Russians drill Lake Vostok ice, race for alien-like life

ORIGINAL: EarthSky

Russian scientists have penetrated miles of Antarctic ice at Lake Vostok as others race to analyze waters for alien-like life.

Russian scientists penetrated miles of Antarctic ice to reach Lake Vostok. (Russian Geographical Society)

Russian scientists have penetrated miles of Antarctic ice as others race to analyze its waters for alien-like life, according to the news agency Reuters.

An artist's cross-section of Lake Vostok, the largest known subglacial lake in Antarctica. The depth of the drill core has increased since the diagram was created. Credit: Nicolle Rager-Fuller, NSF

Valery Lukin is head of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute that oversaw the scientific drilling in the sub-glacial lake of Antarctica’s Lake Vostok. He said:

It’s like the first flight to the moon

After 30 years, Russian scientists finally announced on February 8, 2012, that they had penetrated 3769.3 meters of glacial ice to reach the waters of Lake Vostok, which hasn’t seen the light of day in over 15 million years.

Russian researchers at the Vostok station work in a snow bore pit. (Russian Geographical Society)

Oceanographer Chuck Kennicutt of Texas A&M heads the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, which coordinates research in the area. Kennicutt told EarthSky:

This is truly a breakthrough event. Our Russian colleagues should be congratulated on an outstanding feat of accomplishment, technologically. This has been a long time in the planning. There’s been great interest for more than a decade, that these are very unusual environments that we know little about, primarily because they’ve never been penetrated.

So this first entry, in and of itself will only be the beginning of providing information about what might be living in the lakes, how have these lakes evolved over time, do these lakes impact the overlying ice sheets, are ice streams associated with accumulations of water, and just a whole range of scientific knowledge will ultimately come from the exploration of these environments.

Russian Vostok station and 5G drill tower. (Russian Geographical Society)

Russian scientists call Lake Vostok “the pole of cold,” with average surface temperatures a chilly -56 degrees Celcius (-68.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Scientists worldwide suspect that microbes might be living in the sub-glacial waters of Lake Vostok. The extreme conditions there are similar to what life on other worlds might face. Dr. Kennicutt explained the search for alien-like life at Lake Vostok:

Fundamental to the existence of life as far as we know it is the existence of liquid water. That has always been the touchstone for looking for where life might exist beyond planet Earth. This is particularly true in our own solar system such as the discovery of icy moons like Europa, that we’re convinced now from studies does have liquid water beneath a thick ice sheet; and also the moon of Saturn, Enceladus. We do know that there are places in our solar system that have thick ice sheets over what appears to be liquid water. And that’s the analogy that’s often given.

These lakes in Antarctica are similar, though there are much more severe conditions once you get off of planet Earth. There is at least the analogy that these are locations that organisms could possibly have colonized that are beneath large ice sheets in liquid water. That’s the connection that people make in trying to understand where is the most likely place to look for life beyond Earth.

Jupiter's moon Europa, which scientists also suspect might harbor life beneath miles of ice.

Bottom line: Russian scientists penetrated miles of Antarctic ice to reach Lake Vostok, and scientists worldwide are racing to analyze samples for possible alien-like life.

THE LOST WORLD OF LAKE VOSTOK

In 1957 the Russians established a remote base in Antarctica -- the Vostok station. It soon became a byword for hardship -- dependent on an epic annual 1000km tractor journey from the coast for its supplies. The coldest temperature ever found on Earth (-89°C) was recorded here on the 21st July 1983. It's an unlikely setting for a lake of liquid water. But in the 1970's a British team used airborne radar to see beneath the ice, mapping the mountainous land buried by the Antarctic ice sheet. Flying near the Vostok base their radar trace suddenly went flat. They guessed that the flat trace could only be from water. It was the first evidence that the ice could be hiding a great secret.

But 20 years passed before their suspicions were confirmed, when satellites finally revealed that there was an enormous lake under the Vostok base. It is one of the largest lakes in the world -- at 10,000 square km it's about the extent of Lake Ontario, but about twice as deep (500m in places). The theory was that it could only exist because the ice acts like a giant insulating blanket, trapping enough of the earth's heat to melt the very bottom of the ice sheet.