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."

Comments

Does anyone else find it amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

That a liquid freshwater lake can survive that far underneath Antarctica? I would've imagined it to have either frozen, or at least be saltwater, which would enable it to stay liquid in low temperatures. If geothermal heat is responsible, then why isn't the ice around it melting, or is it just one of those finely balanced peculiarities of nature?

Re:Half a Million is LONG for a microbe.

[toxic666]

I fully agree with your comments. The oil fields have microbes that are hundreds of millions of years old, uniquely evolved to their environment and may have evolved from the microbes that were in the original, surficial organic muck.

My original point was that /. editors tend to have a point of view that coincides with NASA funding requests based upon a search for life as justification. Describing a 500,000 year-old environment as "ancient" suggests something unique.

Re:Careful

[Artifakt]

1/10th's actually a fair number. Ranching Beef, for example is about 10% efficient. Every 1 lb steak you skip represents 10 lbs. of grain that could be available to feed people instead of cattle, IF we can work out ways to distribute it.

Gulag Ice Lens

[handy_vandal]

From the preface to The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhensitsyn:

"In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream -- and in it were found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preserved in so fresh a state, the scientific correspondent reported, that those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot."

Links

Re:Maybe

[lonesome phreak]

Cthulhu sleeps under an island (Pohnpei) in the South Pacific. Off http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com:

"Co-ordinates of S. Latitude 47 9, W. Longitude 126 43 have been stated by Lovecraft but never investigated. August Derleth used the co-ordinates of S. Latitude 49 51, W. Longitude 128 34 in his own writings. The latter also places it about a day's journey from Pohnpei, an actual island of the area, which consequently plays a central part in the Cthulhu Mythos."

Also noted "The island is notable for the prevalence of the extreme form of color blindness. Maskun is a medical condition (also called achromatopsia) characterized by the inability to perceive any colors, a severe and rare form of color blindness. It is caused by the lack of any functioning cone cells in the retina; these are the light receptors responsible for color perception. It is endemic on Pohnpei and was described by Oliver Sacks in Island of the Colorblind. Sacks went there with a Dane who had maskun, and the book narrates his experiences on the island. Maskun is relatively rare in humans but often shows up in communities with small gene-pools.

Strange stuff no doubt.