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Drilling Begins At Lake Hidden Beneath Antarctic
New submitter stonetony writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "A team of 12 scientists and engineers has begun work at remote Lake Ellsworth. They are using a high-pressure hose and sterilised water at near boiling point to blast a passage through more than two miles of ice. The aim is to analyse ice waters isolated for up to 500,000 years. The team of 12 scientists and engineers is using sterilised water at near boiling point to blast a passage through the ice to waters isolated for up to half a million years. The process of opening a bore-hole is expected to last five days and will be followed by a rapid sampling operation before the ice refreezes."
Is there any chance that they're using sterile water heated to almost the boiling point to melt a passage through ice to get to water isolated for up to 5e5 years?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The summary wasn't clear so my questions are: Is the water sterilized? How hot is the water in the hose? How long has the lake water been isolated? Also, Is the water sterilized? How hot is the water in the hose? How long has the lake water been isolated?
I dodn't even need to red it twice to see that a team of scientists is using is sterilised water at near boiling point.
Indeed; using sterilised water at near boiling point.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Nah. The fools will end up releasing some shoggoths.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
you don't need your pills. Now that summary repeats itself, you are all safe.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Mountains of Madness, anyway ?
morcego
If, unlike the typical /.er, you took the time to actually read the article and not just the summary, you would know that it takes 12 people to do this sort of thing.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Maybe it's not a drill bit at all, but some sort of really hot water. I'm not really sure though.
If not, someone should perhaps start some projects like this, such that doomsday cults funnel their money into useful research projects. Win-win for everyone, unless the cult turns out to be right.
Remember the location.
It is more likely to be The Thing.
Just to clarify, the second win is because the cult used their money for something useful, and has less money left to do silly things with, such as buying Nike's, barbiturates, and Vodka.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
You took the words right out of my mouth!
Now we know what the Mayans were predicting:
The scientists wake Cthulhu, R'lyeh rises, and the world ends.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Release the kracken..... release the kraken
Silence is a state of mime.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
Come on, the summary already said it twice!
"His name was James Damore."
in soviet russia the summary repeats the summary ..
oh wait a seco...
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
"Ode to a Small Lump of Greenish Water that Turned to into Putty I Found in my Antarctic Pit That I Reached Using Slightly Sub-Gaseous Phase Water One Midsummer Morning, Which Turned Out to be Cthulhu's Placenta, There in His R'lyeh Prison, Turning What was Going to be my Nobel Prize Science Project into a Sudden Descent into Eldricht Helllllllllllaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahah theMayansDidIttheMayansDidIttheMayansDidIttheMayansDidIt!!!!!!!! "
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Russians did it at lake Vostok.
Tomorrow is another day...
Well, technically the russians haven't quite breached the lake. It's ongoing right now and here's what I've followed so far:
The layer of ice just above the lake is refrozen water (and not compressed snow from above). They already analyzed that without finding anything significant (a US lab found lots of stuff but the word is that it's all contaminated DNA, a french lab found only one candidate piece of DNA, that ice is 10 times cleaner than the cleanest water we can make in a lab).
So a few days ago the russians breached the last remaining ice after using a sterilized drill. They then withdrew the drill and immediately lowered the pressure of the drilling fluid, allowing the water of the lake to raise into the hole for 600 meters. This water froze quickly. Now they are drilling again this freshly frozen ice which will be analyzed in a special very clean lab. I just don't know how they can drill again 600m of ice without deviating more than 10cm (the diameter of the core).
Official results should start coming in about a month.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
After reading the summary my first thought was "I'm never putting too much effort into my submission summaries again."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
if you drank such water it would strip all the nutrients out of your body and kill you
Do you have a credible link to that obvious bullshit statement? I've seen it before, but it makes absolutely no sense at all.
They're using sterilized water so as not to pollute the lake itself with organisms or minerals.
My old man always told me "don't believe nothin' you hear and only half of what you see." You should follow that advice; whoever told you distilled water would strip the nutrients out of your body and kill you was someone you should NEVER get "information" from.
Free Martian Whores!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_purification#Demineralized_water
They call it demineralized water at the power stations. Distillation is most likely part of the process, but there are all sorts of chemicals involved too (acids and whatnot).