Drilling the Ice from the Past - Lake Vostok Reached

The Earth Story's Facebook Page LAKE VOSTOK, ANTARCTICA

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Cool Find: Russian team takes ice from biggest Antarctic sub-glacial lake, searching for life
Published: 11 January, 2013

Nearly a year after Russian researchers reached the unique sub-glacial Lake Vostok, the first sample of transparent ice from its water has been taken. The finding is of great value as it could reveal if the lake harbors life.

“The first core of transparent lake ice, 2 meters long, was obtained on January 10 at a depth of 3,406 meters. Inside it was a vertical channel filled with white bubble-rich ice,” the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute said in its statement.

The ice formed as the water from the lake rose up into the whole due to under-pressure in the crack researchers drilled in last February.

Drilling in the lake is far from an easy task, with average temperatures near the Vostok Station in the Antarctic reaching around –66 degrees Centigrade. This is close to the record breaking freeze recorded in 1983 when Earths lowest ever temperature was recorded at –89.2 C.

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Drilling the Ice from the Past to the Future
VideoLecturesChannel
Published on Nov 13, 2012

VideoLectures.Net Jozef Stefan Institute colloquia
View the complete series: http://videolectures.net/kolokviji_ijs/
Speaker: Alexey A. Ekaykin - Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring

License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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On the 5th of February 2012 the hardened hands of drill masters turned a new page of the chronicle of the Antarctic exploration. A long way led to this event, full of mystery, tragedy, disappointment and luck. An overview of Russian activities with focus on deep ice drilling at Vostok Station and the investigations of the subglacial Lake Vostok will be presented. How the Lake was discovered? Why is it important to explore it? What do we know about the Lake now? What shall we know after penetrating it? These and other questions will be addressed here. In addition, the climatic record over the past 420.000 years, as the main achievement of the Vostok deep ice coring, will be shortly discussed.