Slashdot Mirror
Fish Found Living Half a Mile Under Antarctic Ice
BarbaraHudson (3785311) writes "Researchers were startled to find fish, crustaceans and jellyfish investigating a submersible camera after drilling through nearly 2,500 feet (740 meters) of Antarctic ice. The swimmers are in one of the world's most extreme ecosystems, hidden beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, roughly 530 miles (850 kilometers) from the open ocean. "This is the closest we can get to something like Europa," said Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a chief scientist on the drilling project. More pictures here."
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia
The Ross Ice Shelf is open to the sea on one edge. It is possible to access the same site by going deep under the edge of the self and then in. It is not "sealed away".
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia, I'd have thought they'd take more care about preserving its microbial integrity and not just go diving in it.
Please look at the pictures in the last link - they show a probe about to be lowered into the borehole - that 3" pipe at the bottom of the pic. Nobody went diving unless they were blended first. Also, the site has value because it shows that animals needing high energy (to avoid the constant rain of gravel, dust, and boulders) can survive in such austere conditions. Look at how the sea bottom is totally dead - nothing stationary or slow can live there.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia ...
The site is connected to the open sea. It is not sealed. There are other bodies of water under the Antarctic ice, such as Lake Vostok, that really are isolated. Greater precautions are taken for those, and it would really be a surprise if anyone found fish living in Lake Vostok.
Disruption and contamination is a constant concern in an ecosystem ecological research, particularly microbial work. I think of it as being somewhat akin to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the more deeply you investigate an ecological system, the more likely you are to mess up the that system.
That being said, these folks are professionals, I guarantee you that the first thing they did was collect the microbial samples. Further, there are sterilization protocols in place to limit contamination:
http://www.nature.com/news/lakes-under-the-ice-antarctica-s-secret-garden-1.15729
From the article:
"Although contamination is always a concern, researchers not connected with the Lake Whillans project say that the sterilization precautions seem to have worked well. One sign is that the microbial density of the drilling water in the hole was 200 times lower than that of the lake samples, says Peter Doran, an Earth scientist at the University of Illinois in Chicago, who worked with the US National Research Council for ten years to develop guidelines for sampling Antarctic lakes cleanly. Doran was convinced by the evidence of diverse microbial life in the lake. “They found it in such a way that it can't be questioned. It's pretty iron-clad,” he says."
Care was taken. All instruments were cleansed with hydrogen peroxide, and then irradiated with a ultravoilet light before/while being lowered down the borehole
While Jupiter really wants to grow up and become the brown dwarf it was always meant to be, it didn't. The radiation it puts out is hardly enough to make up the difference between the solar energy received by Earth and by Europa.
The energy to keep most of Europa above the freezing point of water comes from gravitational forces, not radiation. It's enough to even drive volcanoes.NASA's Europa FAQ
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia, I'd have thought they'd take more care about preserving its microbial integrity and not just go diving in it.
You're confusing this with Lake Vostok.