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Lake Vostok Reached
First time accepted submitter Cyberax writes "After 30 years of drilling and weeks of media attention the Antarctic underground lake Vostok has been reached by Russian scientists (translated article). Deep drilling in the vicinity of Vostok Station in Antarctica began in the 1970s, when the existence of the reservoir was not yet known. Scientists are beginning paleoclimatic studies and further exploration of the lake will continue in 2013-2014."
Expecting a lone husky to be seen escaping the facility in 2 days time.
It turns out that the microbiological conditions of ancient lake Vostok are strikingly similar to those of early 21st century drilling mud.
The timeline altering implications of this discovery will keep scientists busy for decades!
According to the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2095193/Lake-Vostok-Russian-scientists-drilling-alien-Antarctic-lake-buried-20m-years.html) this morning, the Russian team has been out of contact for a week. An American scientist says they're probably just busy. Busy incubating aliens, more likely.
There was an episode of Northern Exposure where they tapped an ancient glacial lake and found that the water made women extremely horny. So there could be an upside here.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Suddenly, deadly bacteria/frozen alien/frozen robotic alien/frozen goo-like mind control alien.
Huh. I can see the "I Tapped That at Vostok" T-Shirts and Bumper Stickers now...
and how so few people/countries seem to be taking lifestyle-changing action against it, they wasted 30 years when in a few years or so, they might have the ice melt enough for them to reach the lake by just tapping on a thin sheet of it with the back of a pencil...
Did they find the Stargate yet? or the weapons platform?
"In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming..."
Until some pesky humans drill into his cool jacuzzi...
No sig for the moment.
13,100 feet to the lake.
Been digging since 1974. That's 344 feet a year, or a foot per day. Hell, *I* could have dug quicker than that!
Or maybe they just had lots of problems, costs, setbacks, etc. associated with a 13,000 foot-long drill through a substance that nobody has ever drilled 13,000 down through?
Bruce Willis could have drilled it in a matter of hours.
Only to find Chuck Norris waiting for him at the bottom.
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How do we know this lake isn't connected to an underground river that could easily wash modern biology in and out?
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13,100 feet to the lake.
Been digging since 1974. That's 344 feet a year, or a foot per day. Hell, *I* could have dug quicker than that!
Or maybe they just had lots of problems, costs, setbacks, etc. associated with a 13,000 foot-long drill through a substance that nobody has ever drilled 13,000 down through?
It's also in the middle of the Antarctic, just about, and almost 900 miles from the Scott-Amundsen base at the South Pole. It's where the coldest temperature on earth has been measured, a whopping -128F (-89C). I'd love to see anyone dig a foot *that* day! :)
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
How do you keep a hole 13,100 ft deep melted when the average temperature in summer is -30C (-22F), and in winter -65C (-85F)?
The warmest it ever gets is about -12C (10F) - that's a record by the way, the warmest ever measured at Vostok station.
It's not exactly a resort, you know:
The warmest recorded temperature at Vostok is -12.2 C (10.0 F), which occurred on 11 January 2002.[10]
The coldest month was August 1987 with a mean temperature of -75.4 C (-103.7 F) and the warmest month was December 1989 with mean of -28 C (-18 F).[9]
In addition to the extremely cold temperatures, other factors make Vostok one of the most difficult places on Earth for human habitation:
* An almost complete lack of moisture in the air.
* An average windspeed of 5 m/s (18 km/h) (11 mph), sometimes rising to as high as 27 m/s (97 km/h)(60 mph).
* An acute lack of oxygen because of its high altitude at 3,488 meters (11,444 ft).
* A higher ionization of the air.
* A polar night that lasts approximately 130 days, from mid April to late August,[13] including 80 continuous days of civil polar night (i.e. too dark to read, during which the Sun is over 6 degrees below the horizon.)
(source wikipedia)
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
They almost reached the lake in 1998 ...stopped to find a way of drilling without contaminating
Try this :
Go to the top of Rees Peak in the Rockies near Flagstaff, Arizona ...and see how quickly you can drill ...
Arrange the temperature to never get above -10C and go down to -80C
Do not get supplied regularly, and not at all in Winter
Strip all the moisture from the air
Increase the Wind speed so that it always blows at a minimum of 10mph and often goes up to 60mph
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
They were using kerosene originally to keep it from freezing. I do not believe the ice temperature is as cold as the ambient air either. Snow is a decent insulator. Ice maybe not so much though. The permafrost in the Arctic does not extend down 13000 feet (although it is not pure water). There must be some radiant heat from the earth. Generally temperatures increase 3 degrees C for every 100 meters deep.
How long until we get Vostok(tm) bottled water in the grocery store?
Well, they were keeping the well thawed using kerosene, which is lighter than ice and water, so presumably the weight of the ice sheet would force the water up the well, pushing out the kerosene until it reaches equilibrium, which would be somewhere beneath the surface of the ice sheet. Not sure exactly at what depth that would be. I'll let somebody else do the math.
Dissolved gases could certainly come out of solution as the column of water rises up the well. There have also bee suggestions that the water is supercooled and prevented from freezing only due to the high pressures involved. If so, then it would freeze as it rises and probably wouldn't make it all that far up the well before freezing solid.
You certainly saw a different version of "Earnest goes to Jail" than my kids did.