Antarctic Subglacial Lakes May Not be Isolated

core plexus writes "Plans to drill deep beneath the frozen wastes of the Antarctic, to investigate subglacial lakes where ancient life is thought to exist, may have to be reviewed following a discovery by a British team. In a Letter to Nature they report that rivers the size of the Thames have been discovered which are moving water hundreds of miles under the ice. The finding challenges the widely held assumption that the lakes evolved in isolated conditions for several millions years and thus may support microbial life that has evolved 'independently'. It has been suggested that if microbes exist in the lakes, they could function in the same way as those in the subsurface ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa or within subsurface water pockets on Mars."

Comments

Or, in short:

[Anonymous Coward]

Water dissolving, and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean
Letting the days go by, letting the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground.

Re:"hundreds of miles under the ice?"

[MichaelSmith]

Hundreds of miles would be through the earth's crust, surely?

It means hundred of miles horizontally from pond to pond.

Laterally..

[NevarMore]

Its moving water hundreds of miles under the ice in the same way a normal river moves water hundreds of miles.

40,000 Leagues Under The Sea wasn't about diving deep, it was about going far.

Ahem

[gowen]

"40,000 Leagues under the Sea", or "There and Back Again".

[I think you mean 20,000 :)]

Fascinating

[deuterium]

I've always been fascinated with the great subglacial lakes. The residence time of the water is about a million years. Now that's some stale water. It's also under enormous pressure, and contains 50x as much oxygen as a typical freshwater lake. More can be read here.