20 years, 3km of ice... and Russia hits lake

[The_Unbeliever]

How did they know that there was a lake down there?

 

[SinghDude]

How did they know that there was a lake down there?

Pretty sure as per article.... its Lake Vostok

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok

 

[Elimentals]

How did they know that there was a lake down there?

They used the old maps that showed Antarctica before it was covered with snow

I think it was probably done via Sonar and/or radar imagery from ground and satellite stations.

 

[Ninja'd]

They used the old maps that showed Antarctica before it was covered with snow

I think it was probably done via Sonar and/or radar imagery from ground and satellite stations.

When I first saw this thread I wanted to create one about that map. How the hell did they know?

 

[Elimentals]

When I first saw this thread I wanted to create one about that map. How the hell did they know?

Most probably copied but the last estimate of the time Antarctica was without snow was about 9000-13000 BC, so either science is wrong or they copied that section from someone that had the means trace maps before general civilization existed.

Sorry for the sidetrack I merely meant it as a joke.

 

[killadoob]

They used the old maps that showed Antarctica before it was covered with snow

I think it was probably done via Sonar and/or radar imagery from ground and satellite stations.

Nope, they have been looking at it for 30 years, did they have all that 30 years ago? Someone told them about it and that is how they started it, no fancy gadgets just a man telling them there is a lake there amazingly.

It took so long because they can only drill during certain times of the year and also they never had the means to drill it without contaminating it for 6-10 years.

 

[Mars]

Pretty sure as per article.... its Lake Vostok

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok

they spelt vistok wrong...

 

[killadoob]

Rt.com story

Team of the 57th expedition to Vostok Antarctic research station (Photo from aari.nw.ru)
TRENDS: Antarctic lake mystery

TAGS: Ecology, Global warming, Antarctic, Russia, SciTech, Thrills&Spills

Jubilant Russian scientists are carrying home 40 liters of relic water, which waited for them, unblemished, in the Antarctic, long before the man first trod the Earth. Lake Vostok’s treasury is ready to reveal its millions-year-old secrets.

*Forget the world’s economic crisis and civil war in Syria: the severe, majestic Antarctic is opening up its eternal fridge to the mankind. Scientists at Vostok Antarctic research station – drilling towards the largest freshwater tank, corked for 20 million years in eastern Antarctica – secured several dozen liters of prehistoric water.

Drilling through over 3,700 meters of quality ice is no fun, especially if you do not want to contaminate anything lying underneath. The international community has been grinding into the glacier for 30 years. Rival Western expeditions have been using the hot-water drilling method – boiling the ice – which is slower but cleaner.

On February 4, it seemed to finally give way, when the drilling machine plunged into water! The ice taken to the surface by the drill was glazed in a way only water could do. The machine also brought back 40 liters of water – frozen, naturally, given the temperature in the crack never goes higher than -55 Centigrade and all the 3766 meters it had to travel up.

But the next plunge proved the work was not yet over.

The following day, drilling liquid gave a sudden massive splash – some 1,500 liters of kerosene and Freon poured into special containers. The scientists first held their breaths, skipping several heartbeats. But there was no doubt any more: Vostok had opened up! The lake water, rising up to 40 meters due to under-pressure in the crack, pushed the drilling liquid back onto the surface.

It had cost the team 3.3 additional meters of drilling.

Relics of ancient life, clues to climate change, the whole history of planet Earth – scientists have everything to look for in the lake. The biggest closed ecosystem ever found, Vostok is as alien as the lakes on Jupiter's moon Europa.

But carving a threshold to this science treasury is not the only triumph for Russian scientists. Their technology to drill into the pristine waters and preserve them immaculate has proved to be efficient. This is the reason the project halted in 1998 just 130 meters from the lake’s surface and did not resume till 2005: the world community feared contamination. Russian technology, involving the kerosene-Freon drilling liquid, helped to avoid that.

Now the scientists are heading home. The water they collected from the lens just over the lake is traveling with them in special sterile containers.

The team will come back to the station in a while to take samples of Vostok water, which is believed to be “twice as pure as double-distilled water.” They say their success is the best present to Russia celebrating Day of Science on February 8.

 

[Elimentals]

Pretty sure as per article.... its Lake Vostok

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok

Dam I took a guess on how they found it,

I think it was probably done via Sonar and/or radar imagery from ground and satellite stations.

As per top mentioned Wiki link:

Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin first proposed the idea of fresh water under Antarctic ice sheets at the end of the 19th century. He theorized that the tremendous pressure exerted by the cumulative mass of thousands of vertical meters of ice could increase the temperature at the lowest portions of the ice sheet to the point where the ice would melt. Kropotkin's theory was further developed by Russian glaciologist I. A. Zotikov, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on this subject in 1967.

Russian geographer Andrey Kapitsa (Pyotr Kapitsa's son) used seismic soundings in the region of Vostok Station made during the Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1959 and 1964 to measure the thickness of the ice sheet.[11] Kapitsa was the first to suggest the existence of a subglacial lake in this region and named it Lake Vostok

When British scientists in Antarctica performed airborne ice-penetrating radar surveys in the early 1970s, they detected unusual radar readings at the site which suggested the presence of a liquid, freshwater lake below the ice.[13] In 1991, Jeff Ridley, a remote sensing specialist with the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, directed the ERS-1 satellite to turn its high-frequency array toward the center of the Antarctic ice cap. The data from ERS-1 confirmed the findings from the 1973 British surveys,[14] but these new data were not published in the Journal of Glaciology until 1993. Space-based radar revealed that this subglacial body of fresh water is one of the largest lakes in the world, and one of some 140 subglacial lakes in Antarctica. Russian and British scientists delineated the lake in 1996 by integrating a variety of data, including airborne ice-penetrating radar imaging observations and space-based radar altimetry. It has been confirmed that the lake contains large amounts of liquid water under the more than 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) thick ice cap, promising to be the most unspoiled lake on Earth. The lake has at least 22 cavities of liquid water, averaging 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) each.[15]

In 2005 an island was found in the central part of the lake.[16] Then, in January 2006, the discovery of two nearby smaller lakes under the ice cap was published; they are named 90 Degrees East and Sovetskaya.[17] It is suspected that these Antarctic subglacial lakes may be connected by a network of subglacial rivers. Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling glaciologists Duncan Wingham and Martin Siegert published in Nature in 2006 that many of the subglacial lakes of Antarctica are at least temporarily interconnected. Because of varying water pressure in individual lakes, large subsurface rivers may suddenly form and then force large amounts of water through the solid ice

 

[medicnick83]

I hope they don't find sleeping demons and then wake them and then we are all screwed... by russians!

 

[rph72]

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[Picard]

Hopefully they don't **** up the lake!

My first thought too was ... we might be contaminating that environment with our junk.

We can't expect all drilling equipment to be sterilised beforehand ... and kerosene!!!! WTF!