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Antarctic Lake Actually Two in One
Scoria writes "USA Today reports: Scientists have discovered that Lake Vostok, a liquid freshwater lake which has been isolated from the world beneath 4 km of ice for approximately 500,000 years, contains two separate basins. They believe that the basins, which are divided by a ridge that limits water exchange, may host individual ecosystems that are home to ancient microbes."
I hope whoever's studying these lakes takes appropriate precautions against both accidental release and theft by terrorist organizations.
That's rather alarmist, don't you think?
The odds that a microbe that spent the last few eons living in an arctic lake beneath several kilometers of ice would thrive and wreck havoc in a 37C human body strike me as infintesimly small. Further to that, the chances that Al Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, or Cobra itself are going to infiltrate the artic and spirit away with these microbes are too ridiculous to entertain.
Or so I recall from a distant high school class...
Stand clear of the doors. The doors are now closing.
The fact that it isn't saltwater isn't very surprising at all. Almost all glacial ice is freshwater. When saltwater is frozen for a very long time, the salt actually works its way out of the ice, leaving fresh water ice. Since the lake is in the middle of one huge, relatively old piece of ice it is not surprising at all that it is not salt water.
Also, it is not too peculiar that all the ice isn't melting. If you have a few small heat sources in the middle of several kilometers of ice, you'd expect it to melt a small area of ice around it. Since the heat requirements grows exponentially to melt a larger volume of ice and there are several kilometers of ice to melt, it would take a very large heat source to melt enough ice to either melt up to the surface or to the ocean.
<Bitching>I love how I press submit and get an error. I try it again and it tells me that I have to wait xx seconds before posting again. If I couldn't post due to an error, why do I have to wait to try again?</Bitching>
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
I don't think that's necessarily true... This explanation makes sense - the water does expand at freezing point, but contracts again as it continues to get colder. Unless it's a particularly sunny part of the antarctic, I think it would be cold enough that the whole lot could freeze. I'd put my bets on geothermal.
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
The flash animation at the site said that the water in the lake gets replaced every 13,300 years.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
It seems, at least according to this Wikipedia entry, that there is not yet an scientific consensus on why Lake Vostok remains liquid.
Wikipedia: Lake Vostok.
We do have a body temperature of 98.6 degrees when they have spent the last 500,000 years at near freezing.
No
2 - There are already thousands of deadly yet-unknown diseases lurking right here on the surface, in remote rainforests, waiting to be released by idiotic poacher.
Really? Can you substantiate this?
SARS? From cherval cats in China, I think. Not exactly remote rainforests either.
Well let me turn this one around on you. Most "evil rich western" countries are rich precisely because they DONT HAVE BOOMING POPULATIONS. Most of the "developed world" suffers from lower fertility and an aging population that barely replaces itself. It's not because they've all decided to embrace zero population growth, it's because there is an inverse relationship between standard of living and the size of a family. (Standard of living is related to other things to, but there is a definite correlation here).
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Your guess is basically right. The lakes under Antarctica exist because of a balance between the slow trickle of geothermal heat and the insulating qualities of kilometers of ice.
You may be aware that as one digs down into the Earth it starts to get hotter. This is because everywhere on the Earth there is a slow trickle of ambient geothermal energy being dissipated from the hot core out to the much cooler surface. This should not be mistaken for much more intense geothermal phenomena like volcanos and hot springs as they have nothing to do with most subglacial lakes.
Since everywhere on Earth a little bit of geothermal heat is being released (roughly 1% of the power/area of sunshine) this includes the bottoms of glaciers. This causes the bottoms of ice sheets to always be warmer than their tops. For most glaciers this is only a few degrees, and no cares, but as the ice sheet grows, the ice can eventually become so thick that it can't dissipate the geothermal energy effectively and the bottom will melt. This is responsible for the majority of subglacial Antarctic lakes.
The average height is ~8,000 ft above sea level (far higher than any other continent). The weight of the ice depresses the ground so that most of the bedrock is technically below sea level.
Not to mention Ebola and HIV (probably a mutated version of SIV)...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
We humans aren't going to have any immunity to these microbes that have been isolated for 500000 years.
Actually, the reverse is probably true. These things have been isolated from the wild wild world for so long they probably be no match for the predators that await them.
Any expensive evolutionary defenses and weapons will have been bred out as they are unneeded and wasteful.
Think about it logically, who are you going to be more afraid of meeting on the street, somebody who grew up shielded from the outside world thier entire life, given all the food and shelter they ever needed but no knowledge of how the world works, or somone who grew up on the mean streets of detroit having to fight every day just to survive?
There is a reason why you don't just toss your pets into the forest when you are done with them and expect them to survive the night. Things brought up without enemies are very very weak when confronted with new threats.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Is there room to do science without having any theory of the earth's (and universe's) origin?
Umm nope, any science done in ignorance (intentional or otherwise) or conditions preceding any experiments is bad science to say the least.
As to the age of lake, this is basically a very well educated guess, by taking core samples of the ice above and determining rate of ice growth or shrinkage and comparing against data from the same period, a guess can be made. If you want to check out info on carbon dating go here or for ice core dating try here.
Your an idiot.
:) You'd realize that if you weren't a mindless tool.
Certain people want to kill/refute/get rid of God so badly that they will embrase any theory no matter how silly in the sight of empherical science.
Now lets use a fuckin brain and reparse your comment.
Certain people want to love/believe in/promote God so badly that they will embrace any theory no matter how silly in the sight of emperical science.
You my friend are the one who says god exists. The burden of proof lies on you
From the linked Wikipedia article:
"In an unprecedented dive, the U.S. Navy bathyscaphe Trieste reached the bottom at 1:06 pm on January 23, 1960 with U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard."
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