Scientists Drill Into 3,500 Feet of Ice To Reach a Mysterious Antarctic Lake (gizmodo.com)

Late last week, a team of about 50 scientists, drillers, and support staff successfully punched through nearly 4,000 feet of ice to access an Antarctic subglacial lake for just the second time in human history. From a report: On Friday, the Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) team announced they'd reached Lake Mercer after melting their way through an enormous frozen river with a high-pressure, hot-water drill. The multi-year effort to tap into the subglacial lake -- one of approximately 400 scientists have detected across Antarctica -- offers a rare opportunity to study the biology and chemistry of the most isolated ecosystems on Earth. The only other subglacial lake humans have drilled into -- nearby Lake Whillans, sampled in 2013 -- demonstrated that these extreme environments can play host to diverse microbial life. Naturally, scientists are stoked to see what they'll find lurking in Lake Mercer's icy waters. "We don't know what we'll find," John Priscu, a biogeochemist at Montana State University and chief scientist for SALSA, told Earther via satellite phone from the SALSA drill camp on the Whillans Ice Plain. "We're just learning, it's only the second time that this has been done."

Comments

Precautions

[PuddleBoy]

"A secondary borehole that acts as a well, its water back-pumped into the main hole after being filtered and sterilized, was started a night earlier, Priscu told Earther"

I'm glad they had the foresight to sterilize the water that would ultimately mix with the lake. Not doing so would have been just plain sad and stupid. (and counterproductive, if the goal was really to survey what was down there and *only* what was down there.)

First one was Lake Vostok

[mapkinase]

I remember I had really high hopes only to be utterly disappointed. There was no real insight into prokaryotic science from the effects of such long ecosystem separation.

I again have really high hopes with this one. Mercer Lake does not even have a bloody Wiki page. [RAGE].

I predict that I will be utterly disappointed.

Lake Vostok isolation time:

The overlying ice provides a continuous paleoclimatic record of 400,000 years, although the lake water itself may have been isolated for 15[7][8] to 25 million years

Mercer Lake information:

Lake Mercer was first detected via satellite more than a decade ago, but it's never been explored by humans. The subglacial lake measures about 62 square miles (160 square kilometers ) in size, which is over twice the size of Manhattan. But it's not very deep—just 30 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) at its deepest points.

Lake Vostok is much larger:

Measuring 250 km (160 mi) long by 50 km (30 mi) wide at its widest point[1], it covers an area of 12,500 km2 (4,830 sq mi) making it the 16th largest lake by surface area. With an average depth of 432 m (1,417 ft), it has an estimated volume of 5,400 km3 (1,300 cu mi).[2] making it the 6th largest lake by volume.

Good luck, colleagues.

Re:First one was Lake Vostok

[110010001000]

I don't get it. What ecosystem separation? The lake is refilled "regularly" and they are interconnected with other streams and lakes aren't they? According to the https://salsa-antarctica.org/s... site it says Lake Vostok is only 40,000 years and Mercer is much lower in water retention time.

Re:System upgrade

[Gabest]

Could be it was 1 km, but they rounded it up to be 3500 feet.