There’s a lake under the ice in Antarctica!
In East Antarctica, buried under 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) there lies a lake called Lake Vostok, which is now buried under ice near Russia’s Vostok research station. This lake is cut off from sunlight and contact with the earth’s atmosphere.
In the 1990s, researchers collected ice from the surface of the lake and found bacteria. They were cautious about drilling deeper to collect water as microbes or chemicals from the equipment could contaminate this pristine “natural laboratory.”
Scientists are interested to learn if anything lives down there. Some believe an ecosystem, depending on chemicals in the rocks and water for energy (instead of sunlight) exists in these depths. This type of ecosystem is found in deep-sea vents and caves. Since the lake has been covered in ice for at least 15 million years, there might be new, unknown organisms yet to be discovered!
Gramling, C. (2013, July 09). What's really going on in LAKE Vostok? Retrieved January 24, 2021, from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/07/what-s-really-going-lake-vostok
Jouzel, J., Petit, J. R., Souchez, R., Barkov, N. I., Lipenkov, V. Y., Raynaud, D., . . . Vimeux, F. (1999). More Than 200 Meters of Lake Ice Above Subglacial Lake
Vostok, Antarctica. Science, 286(5447), 2138-2141. doi:10.1126/science.286.5447.2138
Oskin, B. (2017, December 21). Vostok: Lake UNDER Antarctic ice. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from https://www.livescience.com/38652-what-is-lake-vostok.html
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