Two large lakes found beneath Antarctic ice

Submitted by Rick Hamell: Antarctica has at least 145 small lakes buried under its ice and one large one called Vostok. Now scientists have found the second and third largest known bodies of subsurface liquid water there.Exotic ecosystems frozen in time may thrive in the lakes, untouched for 35 million years, scientists said.

Vostok has a surface area of 5,400 square miles. One of the newfound lakes measures 770 square miles in size, or roughly the size of Rhode Island.

View: Full Article | Source: Live Science

Awesome technology showing us more about our world.

Let's see the polar bear club jump into one of those lakes!

excellent article. I wonder if there is life in the lakes; what a big wonderful world.

To be honest with ya, I think it would be more difficult to find truly sterile environments (at least here on Earth). Everywhere, and I mean everywhere we have looked, we find life.

Tenacious thing life.

I think we will find much of the same as we explore the solar system and beyond.

I would be suprised if we found no evidence of current or past life in places like Mars, Europa, Titan or many of the other places we look for it.

I also believe that there may be spores or at the least - the right ingredients for life just about everywhere, just waiting for the right conditions to arise.

To be honest with ya, I think it would be more difficult to find truly sterile environments (at least here on Earth). Everywhere, and I mean everywhere we have looked, we find life.

Tenacious thing life.

I think we will find much of the same as we explore the solar system and beyond.

I would be suprised if we found no evidence of current or past life in places like Mars, Europa, Titan or many of the other places we look for it.

I also believe that there may be spores or at the least - the right ingredients for life just about everywhere, just waiting for the right conditions to arise.

yeah I do to, but what most people want to see are life such as animals, or worms. but if there is current life on mars, it will be bacteria and such.

I reckon there'd be life on europa under the ice sheets, they say theres a heat ventalation beneith its surface, and like on earth theres life around heat vents on the ocean floors.

This is a great resource if anyone hasn't seen it yet:

http://www.astrobiology.com/extreme.html

I can't wait till we actually pull up samples from these lakes.

I forget the exact distance, but the Russians actually drilled down to within a few tens of meters or so of the liquid part of Lake Vostok. They stopped short while they work out some way of sampling the water w/o contaminating it.

Talk about an exercise in patience!

A possible Eco-System unknown and untouched by man.

But not for much longer!

Good or Bad?

Are you kidding?

Perrier will buy the rights to the lake and sell us the water for $8 a liter!

Well, the potential advancement in understanding concerning the origin of life or at least the resilience of life (including as it applies to finding microscopic life on other planets), this is good.

Contamination, obviously though could be a tremendous impact on the ecosystem if one does indeed exist. All the more reason to tread slowly I guess.

Yeah, but their not treading at ALL right now!

Couldn't they devise some type of drill or probe with a vacuum behind it and sterilize the heck out of it?

I guess it would be simple enuff to implement in less extreme conditions.

The Russians want to pierce the ice cap and let the water pressure bring the water to the surface. Apparently US scientists don't like this idea saying its going to lead to contamination. They want to send a probe down and start testing in the environment without bringing any water up. It's tens of millions of dollars though and they're having a hard time getting funding. I guess we'll find out soon enough:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...ic_lakes_2.html

This says the Russians are planning to carry out there sampling this summer.

thats form AvP

Hey, I know this sounds outlandish but weren't there reports that at the pole there was a hole that lead to underground caverns where an advanced civillization was thriving? I mean I know it sounds far fetched but you know where there is smoke there is fire. Now we have confirmed that there are vast stretches of underground lakes at -2 degrees Celcius temperature above the water level. I think the encounter was written after World War II by a British Admiral called Boyd? I'll try to google it soon.

I have read rumours on the internet that at the end of the second world war Hitler escaped to Argentina and then to the North pole or something i know it was one of the ice regions and lived there with the SS members supposodly.

But it is possible for a race of some kind to be living there whether they be more or less adavanced would have to be seen

If by "race" you mean a race of microbes or if we're incredibly lucky perhaps small fish or crustaceans then I agree but that's doubtful (any chordates I mean). These lakes have been under ice for at least 15 million years. The glaciation would have killed off any complex animals that couldn't evolve quickly enough to feed off of purely chemical processes. Any photokentic life certainly would have died off, destroying any complex food chain. There's a good chance we'll find some wacky microbes though.

I think they are refering to "Hollow Earthers."

These Hollow Earthers believe that there are entrances to the planet's interior at the poles. They also believe that this is where the civilization which flies the UFOs lives.

It was a fun website to explore. Just scares me that some people believe it. It is a 3D take on "Flat Earthers."

Try this link

Go all the way to the bottom of the page on that link. They purport to have images of the entrances taken from space!

Edited February 4, 2006 by Rykster

Yeah, I've seen that before. It's a storm. People have been at both poles and satellites have surveyed the entire planet. No holes. Not to mention if the earth was hollow it would collapse under it's own weight, nor would there be enough mass to maintain our orbit around the sun as it currently is.

Amazing what people will believe.

Like PT Barnum said......

Granted, such claims are ridicule worthy in most circles (regarding the "Hollow Earth" theory), however instead of having one large structure as in the "Hollow Earth" how about a network of cavernous areas?

Granted, such claims are ridicule worthy in most circles (regarding the "Hollow Earth" theory), however instead of having one large structure as in the "Hollow Earth" how about a network of cavernous areas?

Sure. You can have your caves.

yeah caves would work however dig to many and the Earth would become almost hollow