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Russian Team Prepares To Penetrate Lake Vostok
Lanxon writes "Lake Vostok, which has been sealed off from the world for 14 million years, is about to be penetrated by a Russian drill bit. The lake, which lies four kilometers below the icy surface of Antarctica, is unique in that it's been completely isolated from the other 150 subglacial lakes on the continent for such a long time. It's also oligotropic, meaning that it's supersaturated with oxygen — levels of the element are 50 times higher than those found in most typical freshwater lakes."
...release unknown, ancient pathogens into the atmosphere...
which can't survive in our environment which has 1/50 the oxygen they are used to?
...so they can drill it next year to extract specimens...
like 2012? uh oh, you may be on to something. :-)
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
No, it means that the lake has very few nutrients and is therefore not terribly productive biologically. see here. Many lakes that fall into the oligotropic chategory are also Oxygenated but it is not why they are oligotropic.
The real question I have is where that Oxygen is coming from. There probably isn't much photosynthesis going on at that depth which means either Oxygen is being imported to the system, it isn't being consumed very rapidly or it's being generated somehow.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Dumb question: Can anyone tell me how they know it contains 50% more oxygen w/o ever having a sample? I know it must be some sort of indirect findings but am curious they could know something like that when it's burried 4km down.
I wonder if Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or some Russian bottling company has thought of trying to acquire the rights to bottle water from the lake. It's Antarctica, so it's legally & technically challenging. But I can imagine quite a market for 14-million year-old bottled water. Seriously!