There are at least 360 sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica.
Many of them have been pristinely sealed for millions of years.
The historical and scientific value of pristine water and bottom samples from these lakes cannot be measured.
This research requires the absolutely most meticulous drilling and collection standards possible.
The USA, the UK, and Russia are drilling into three different lakes.
The UK had technical problems with their hot water drill and stopped drilling and sealed their site to prevent contamination.
America is still drilling, but very carefully.
Russia decided to drill into the largest lake on the continent.
They turned this pure research into a competitive race.
They released almost no details of their efforts, and often maintained complete silence for weeks.
They finally broke through to the lake, and, according to the Russians, extracted pure water samples.
On Thursday, Russia claimed it had isolated bacterial DNA that could not be traced to any known life form.
On Saturday, they retracted.
Now they claim their pristine samples were contaminated at the laboratory.
For months prior to this fiasco non-Russian scientists have been quietly voicing their concerns that the Russian drilling effort had a major risk of contaminating this lake with kerosine and anti-freeze.
Who knows if they will ever allow a neutral third party to investigate their bore hole and their samples.
What should we do?
I was a tad skeptical when I heard the original claim.
It’s not like they found them on Uranus.
You kind of knew this was Russian bs when they claimed to have found an unrelated bacteria. Get serious, this water has been isolated by ice for just six or seven million years. Marked changes over that time I could buy but a new and unrelated bacteria, no.
“D@mmm*t, Ivan, I told you not to spit down the hole!”
Okay, what the hell do they have in that laboratory that could contaminate their samples and not match anything known on earth?............
See what fracking can do to the environment?