Vast underground freshwater lake

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Listening to BBC World Service news at 1am this morning, it was announced that the Russians had finally drilled through to a vast underground freshwater lake in Antarctica which has been totally sealed off from the outside world for 20 million years.

The ramifications are huge with the possibility of microbacteria being present which could tell us something about how life began on earth.
The mind boggles at what else they could learn or find.

Neil.

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I was half asleep when I heard it on the news last night, so this morning I managed to google the story here : Lake Vostok: Russian scientists confirm triumph as drilling is successful in Antarctica | Mail Online

Well I think it's exciting anyway !

Neil.

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Just think how pure that water must be! Hope they don't just bottle it up and start selling it, but preserve it well.

Nige

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Yes me too ! I wonder if somebody has chipped off a piece of that ice core already and tasted it ?

My only reservations are the scruffy dressed workmen around that drilling bit, but then again in those conditions you wear what you can to keep warm.
Seems to me they must use kerosene as a lubricant for the drilling bit, just hope they were right when they said the pressure of the water when they broke through would have pushed the kerosene back up and apparently that was proven when the kerosene was returned in a frozen form.

Neil.

[Jim Ford]

I saw the news that they were drilling down to the lake (there are others) a few years ago. They said that when they got close they would take every precaution to prevent contaminating the lake with external lifeforms.

Jim

[Dorts]

The British are doing similar into a lake 2 miles beneath the ice said to contain one-million year-old water. It's called 'The Lake Ellsworth Programme'. More than 400 subglacial lakes have so far been discovered across Antarctica, all containing very ancient water.

Fascinating stuff!
Dorts.

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I find it difficult to understand what exactly is going on.
On another web page it explained there was a heated rock layer under the lake which keeps it liquid, but as soon as the drill broke through or rather it stopped a couple of metres short and 'sucked' out the final length to avoid contamination, the pressure was such, that water shot up the hole and it became frozen or self sealing before it could reach the surface.

So, IF the Russians plan to extract the water, how will they do it ?
Surely they never went to all this trouble just to try to learn how life may have begun.
Maybe they were after their 'best' water to sell alongside their 'best' Vodka ?

Neil.