If they don't reach the lake before they are forced to leave for the winter, the Russian team will be forced to wait two more years to sample water from the lake, and discover what may be living in it
?| February 4, 2012
Russia's Vostok Station, in a photograph taken during the 2000 to 2001 field season.
Image: Josh Landis, National Science Foundation
At a tiny outpost in the middle of Antarctica, Russian scientists are poised to become the first humans to reach a massive liquid lake that has been cut off from the sunlit world for millennia, and may house uniquely adapted life forms that are new to science. ? ?
Researchers are racing against the fast-approaching bitter cold and total darkness of Antarctic winter to complete a drill hole to Lake Vostok, one of the largest lakes on Earth, and the largest of the nearly 400 ice-buried lakes discovered on the frigid continent so far.
It's an effort that began more than 10 years ago, and one that has been plagued by difficulties ? and this season, the stakes are higher than ever. If they don't reach the lake before they are forced to leave for the winter, the Russian team will be forced to wait two more years to sample water from the lake, and discover what may be living in it.
The project is a product of serendipity. The colossal lake was discovered beneath a pre-existing drill project, and, although the Russians were the first to begin drilling to a hidden Antarctic lake, they may not be the first to sample one. Teams from the United States and the United Kingdom are nipping at their heels, poised to begin drilling with specially designed equipment as early as fall 2012. However, scientists from U.S. and British projects say it is not a race, and there is enormous scientific value in all three projects. [Race to the South Pole in Images]
Lake Vostok, roughly the size of Lake Ontario, lies in the middle of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, and is buried beneath 2 miles (3.7 kilometers) of ice. The lake itself is likely almost as old as the ice sheet that covers it ? around 14 million years old ? and the water within could be 1 million years old, according to rough estimates.
Scientists suspect that Vostok and other Antarctic lakes, long secreted beneath the ice, are home to cold-loving organismsthat have been left to their own evolutionary devices for hundreds of thousands of years.
New life
"I think we'll find unique organisms," said John Priscu, a microbiologist at the University of Montana, and a veteran Antarctic researcher.
Priscu has studied the microbial life inside Antarctica's ice?for decades, and has been corresponding with the Russian team at Vostok through headquarters in St. Petersburg.
The work had been progressing well, Priscu said. The latest press release from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, issued Jan. 13, said that drilling began this season on Jan. 2, progressed by 5.7 feet (1.75 meters) a day, and was halted on Jan. 12.
Priscu said the team stopped to take measurements and to switch drills from a large ice-coring drill to a smaller thermal drill designed to melt through the final 16 to 32 feet (5 to 10 meters) of ice that remain. [Stunning Photos of Antarctic Ice]
"This was the plan, but when you're in the field, things can change," Priscu said. He last corresponded with the team on the ice two or three weeks ago.?
"This has never been done before," Priscu told OurAmazingPlanet. "It's a one-of-a-kind drill, a one-of-a-kind borehole, and a one-of-a-kind lake, so I'm sure they're making decisions on the fly all the time."
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