Posted on 08/14/2003 8:46:58 AM PDT by Dog Gone
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- If Russian researchers in Antarctica succeed in drilling through the final 396 feet of nearly 2-1/2 miles of ice to reach an ancient, unexplored lake underneath, scientists at NASA warn the hole could cause an eruption that spews water thousands of feet into the air.
The American scientists speculate that the water in pristine Lake Vostok, filled with gases and pressurized under tons and tons of ice, would act like a carbonated drink in a can that's shaken and then popped open.
Their concern is that the lake water, which has not been exposed to Earth's atmosphere in as many as 15 million years, might become contaminated with microbes and chemicals from the surface. And unsuspecting researchers could get injured by an icy blast from the lake.
In an article published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Chris McKay at NASA-Ames Research Center and his colleagues issued a simple message to the Russians: Be careful.
"Imagine opening a can of Coke," McKay said. "We know from experience that you can do it carefully, no problem. But if you didn't do it carefully, there would be problems."
Lake Vostok is filled with water and dissolved gases in roughly the same ratio as a two-liter bottle of Coke, McKay estimates.
If a hole is bored through the ice into the lake, McKay worries that the puncture could send a geyser of freezing cold water flying up from miles beneath the glacial surface.
So why poke a hole in the first place?
It remains a compelling mystery what, if anything, lives in the dark depths of the nearly freezing, highly pressurized, oxygen-filled environment.
McKay has his sights set on Mars and Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Ice has been detected on both globes, and he and other scientists speculate that liquid water exists underneath frozen caps.
And where there is liquid water, there is almost always life, Priscu said. By learning how to study such extreme environments and by confirming if life exists in such austere conditions, researchers could extrapolate that knowledge for the purposes of finding extraterrestrial life.
The Russian group, which controls the drill and operates the only research station above the lake, had planned to make the final push to complete the hole -- about 4 inches in diameter -- this year. Delays, however, have interceded.
About five years ago, the Russians had stopped drilling through the ice when they hit a patch of unusual ice crystals, a signal of the proximity of the lake. Under international pressure, the Russians suspended their drilling to evaluate the best options for entering the lake.
But the Russian team is eager to resume drilling; presumably, they would be the first humans to ever draw water from the lake.
...might become contaminated with microbes and chemicals from the surface.
Warning about what?
A group of mad Russians with a long drill?
Oh......you were advertizing Coke.
Sorry.
Pepsi is majority owned by the French.
I think they are worried the other way around. That microbes would contanimate the water in the lake.
LOL!
No.
Must we screw with every little thing?
It's our nature. Change. Learn. Adapt. Have a word with the Creator if you disapprove. We were made this way.
A polish group is drilling Africa to find out the answer to that very riddle now.
... I don't mean to offend, so please relax.
Water released from Lake Vostok, deep beneath the south polar ice sheet, could gush like a popped can of soda if not contained, opening the lake to possible contamination and posing a potential health hazard to NASA and university researchers.
A team of scientists that recently investigated the levels of dissolved gases in the remote Antarctic lake found the concentrations of gas in the lake water were much higher than expected, measuring 2.65 quarts (2.5 liters) of nitrogen and oxygen per 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of water. According to scientists, this high ratio of gases trapped under the ice will cause a gas-driven "fizz" when the water is released.
"Our research suggests that U.S. and Russian teams studying the lake should be careful when drilling because high gas concentrations could make the water unstable and potentially dangerous," said Dr. Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. McKay is lead author of a paper on the topic published in the July issue of the 'Geophysical Research Letters' journal.
"We need to consider the implications of the supercharged water very carefully before we enter this lake," said Dr. Peter Doran, a co-author and associate professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Lake Vostok is a rich research site for astrobiologists, because it is thought to contain microorganisms living under its thick ice cover, an environment that may be analogous to Jupiter's moon, Europa. Europa contains vast oceans trapped under a thick layer of ice. Russian teams are planning to drill into Lake Vostok's 2.48 mile (four kilometer) ice cover in the near future, and an international plan calls for sample return in less than a decade.
An important implication of this finding is that scientists expect oxygen levels in the lake water to be 50 times higher than the oxygen levels in ordinary freshwater lakes on Earth. "Lake Vostok is an extreme environment, one that is supersaturated with oxygen," noted McKay. "No other natural lake environment on Earth has this much oxygen."
The research also suggests that organisms living in Lake Vostok may have had to evolve special adaptions, such as high concentrations of protective enzymes, in order to survive the lake's oxygen-rich environment, the researchers say. Such defense mechanisms may also protect life in Lake Vostok from oxygen radicals, the dangerous byproducts of oxygen breakdown that cause cell and DNA damage. This process may be similar to that of organisms that scientists theorize may once have lived on Europa, whose ice layer and atmosphere are thought to contain radiation-produced radicals and oxygen.
"We expect to find that the organisms in Lake Vostok are capable of overcoming very high oxygen stress," said co-author Dr. John Priscu, a geo-biologist at Montana State University in Bozeman. Priscu heads an international group of researchers that will deploy a remote observatory at Lake Vostok within three years and return samples within 10 years.
The team also determined the ratios of gases in the lake. The scientists discovered that the air-gas mixture there, besides dissolving in the water, also is trapped in a type of structure called a 'clathrate'. In clathrate structures, gases are enclosed in an icy cage and look like packed snow. These structures form at the high pressure depths of Lake Vostok and would be unstable if brought to the surface.
Lake Vostok is located 2.48 miles (four kilometers) beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The lake, and more than 70 other lakes deep beneath the polar plateau, are part of a large, sub-glacial environment that has been isolated from the atmosphere since Antarctica became covered with ice more than 15 million years ago. Scientists theorize that Lake Vostok probably existed before Antarctica became ice covered, and may contain evidence of conditions on the continent when the local climate was subtropical.
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