By Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
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In this Jan. 9, 2007, photo provided by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of St. Petersburg, showing the Russian drilling machine 5-G works in Antarctica. In a statement Wednesday Feb. 8, 2012, the research institute said it has reached Lake Vosok, Antarctica's largest icebound freshwater lake which has been sealed off for millions of years, after more than two decades of drilling, and the breakthrough has been eagerly anticipated by scientists who hope to find virgin clues about the progenitors of life, on earth and other planets. (AP Photo/ Pavel Teterev, Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute Press Service)
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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 km) long and 30 miles (50 km) across at its
widest point, similar in area to Lake Ontario. It lies about 3.8 km (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.
SOURCE: The Associated Press
