Jubilant Russian scientists are carrying home 40 liters of relic water, which waited for them, unblemished, in the Antarctic, long before the man first trod the Earth. Lake Vostok’s treasury is ready to reveal its millions-year-old secrets.
Forget the world’s economic crisis and civil war in Syria: the severe, majestic Antarctic is opening up its eternal fridge to the mankind. Scientists at Vostok Antarctic research station – drilling towards the largest freshwater tank, corked for 20 million years in eastern Antarctica – secured several dozen liters of prehistoric water.
Drilling through over 3,700 meters of quality ice is no fun, especially if you do not want to contaminate anything lying underneath. The international community has been grinding into the glacier for 30 years. Rival Western expeditions have been using the hot-water drilling method – boiling the ice – which is slower but cleaner.
On February 4, it seemed to finally give way, when the drilling machine plunged into water! The ice taken to the surface by the drill was glazed in a way only water could do. The machine also brought back 40 liters of water – frozen, naturally, given the temperature in the crack never goes higher than -55 Centigrade and all the 3766 meters it had to travel up.
To read more, click here.