Antarctica’s 15-Million Year-Old Lake

Deep under the frozen ice of the Antarctica lies the ancient Vostok lake estimated to be a million years old or more.

The scientists are breaking the ice as we speak, using  novel genomic techniques to determine how tiny, living “time capsules” survived the ages in total darkness, in freezing cold, and without food and energy from the sun. Located beneath four kilometers of ice in East Antarctica, the lake is approximately 250 km long, 50 km wide and the overlying ice provides a continuous paleo-climatic record of 400,000 years, although the lake water itself may have been isolated for as long as 15 million years.

It is believed that Lake Vostok could contain new lifeforms, and unique geochemical processes and because of that agencies like NASA have a large interest in exploring the lake to search for microbes that might be similar to ones on other planets. The exploration will not be an easy thing  because of its millions of years of isolation from the rest of the world, the lake cannot be explored without introduction of microbes from the outer world. Also NASA thinks that the lake could be an analog to Jupiter’s moon Europa or subsurface where conditions are similar.

This lake may have been isolated for that long - 15 million years,” said Lanoil, the principal investigator of the research project. “After nearly a year of preparation and verifying protocols, we are now ready to process the samples, and will examine the DNA of these microorganisms to understand how they survived in such an extreme environment.”

via: dailygalaxy.com

    Sphere It