Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake
Posted by Dune on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Under: Podcasts
Washington Post National By Marc Kaufman, Published: January 31
"What I can tell you, is that they are doing something that has never been done before— think of it, sampling a lake under 2.5 miles of ice at a location that is the highest, driest and coldest desert on our planet," states John Priscu of Montana State University.
"What the Russian team is trying to do is unprecedented— the waters of Lake Vostok have been left untouched beneath more than two miles of ice for more than 15 million years. Lake Vostok has been called the "most alien lake on earth," and scientists believe microscopic "extremophiles" that can survive in very low temperature and light situations might live in the water." [2]
Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin first proposed the idea of fresh water under Antarctic ice sheets at the end of the 19th century. Kropotkin's theory was further developed by Russian glaciologist I.A Zotikov, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on this subject in 1967.
In 1959 & 1964, Russian scientist Andrey Kapitsa used seismic soundings in the region of Vostok Station to measure the thickness of the ice sheet. It was Kapitsa who first suggested the existence of subglacial lake in this region and named it Lake Vostok.[3]
The Antartic as a whole has a unique history, going as far back as Aristotle's belief in a Cold Land. In the 15th century Terra Australis (the unknown land of the South) began appearing on European maps. It wasn't until 1820 that Russian, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, first confirmed sighting the main land mass we know as Antartica. Other confirmed siting are attributed to Edward Bransfield (British Navy) and Nathaniel Palmer, an American sealer out of Stonington, Connecticut.[4]
As for Lake Vastok, it was an unknown prior to the 1990s. It is part of a web of more 200+ sub-glacial lakes in Antartica, some existing when the continent was still part of Australia and a much warmer climate than today. According to researcher John Priscu, the importance of reaching Lake Vostok lays in the new knowledge gained in understanding our "planet and possibly moons in our solar system and planets far beyond." The caveats according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition and other groups, drilling methods being used and maintaining the pristine conditions of the ice sheet.[5]
As with any new scientific discovery, many theories get bandied about. Some are based in fact, while others are speculative to out right fringe. What I find intriguing, is the discovery of microbes that live in the ice and possibly in the
water. A finding that Priscu is encouraged about, as it has changed the thinking about the snow- and ice-covered continent.
Fact--
"If microbes are found in Vostok, the discovery would have particular significance for astrobiology, the search for life beyond Earth. That’s because Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus have deep ice crusts that scientists think cover large amounts of liquid water warmed by sources other than the sun — just like Vostok."[6] Ah the allure of alien life!!
Speculation--
Alleged, unexplained deaths and medical extractions from the Antartic, began to circulate among theorists. A Pandora's Box, after 400,000+ years of isolation and burial under 4 kilometers of solid ice; life may have strayed far from our conception of normal organisms. A microbe fit for those conditions at the bottom of Lake Vostok might multiply explosively in normal light and temperature, creating a new disease or plague. Can you say Vostok flu??
Another possibility for the evacuations, something was found, an artifact from Zep-Tepi. Translated as "first time or occasion", it refers to Ancient Egytian creation myths. It is a theory put forth by Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara.[7]
I was unable to find any mention of the multiple deaths or extractions within conventional news sources, altho there was one confirmed death of a Russian scientist in 2001. Also I could find only one confirmed extraction and this from
McMurdo station, 1000Km from Vostok. A contract worker with the Raytheon Polar services needed evacuation, in July of 2011, not an easy task in the dead of the Antarctic winter.[8]
Fact--
"He said (Priscu) the doomsday scenario for the Russian breakthrough would be if the suddenly released water pushed its way past machinery to block it and shot up the borehole, which is six to eight inches in diameter at the top. The result, he said, could be an enormous geyser that could empty a quarter of the lake. Priscu said he didn’t expect that to happen, but if it did, the sudden addition of substantial water vapor to the antarctic atmosphere could change the continent’s weather in unpredictable ways."
Also to be considered, Vostok has been "sealed" for 125,000 years or more, it is the world's third-largest lake by water volume or one really large soda can. Can we say geyser like we have never seen before!![9]
Speculation--
Or what about this possible scenario, you drill a hole into a large soda can. It pops, releasing massive amounts of pressure. Ice shelf collapses!! Is that why the different nations ran to there own lakes and started drilling as well? To
balance out the resulting pressure change that will happen once the ice sheet is pierced?
Some have speculated that since drilling will most likely be postponed by the Antartic winter until December 2012,,,Do I really need to go there??
Fact--
In February 2001, "The Antartic Sun" reported an extremely powerful “magnetic anomaly” located at the Southeast end of the lake. "The findings will help scientists decide between two theories for the creation of the lake. One scenario is that the lake was created by erosion. The second possibility, and the one Studinger said preliminary data supports, is that changes in the earth’s crust formed the lake."[10]
"The Earth's crust in the vicinity of the Lake is simply thinner under this section of Antarctica, having been stretched during the formation of the lake bed itself. This, according to Studinger, would result in a "local magnetic anomaly." Others, like Enterprise consulting geologist Ron Nicks, have serious difficulty with this theory. Nicks explains that such a thinning would heat the underlying rock and thus diminish (rather than increase -- as observed) the crust's ability to locally amplify the Earth's magnetic field."[11]
Speculation--
Some have termed the anomaly as a "masscon - a mass concentration of metal. A gigantic, circular-shaped metallic object." Others have gone so far as to posit an artificial structure, detected by satellite and a secret excavation project being done by the US military.[12]
One "event" that has led to speculation concerning the anomaly, a spinning gray fog:
Ever since writer Edgar Allen Poe wrote about a lost city in Antarctica in his The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Broadview Editions)
(in 1838), arguments have raged on whether or not this frozen continent once supported human life.[14] It gained strength again in 1960s and 1970s, due in part the Piri Reis map which shows an ice free continent.[15] Charles Hapgood is one author whose pre-ice Antartic and a ice-age polar shift theories are outlined in his 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age
[16]
"More recently Rand and Rose Flem-Ath have proposed this in their book, When the Sky Fell; the theory was revised and made more specific in Rand's work with author Colin Wilson, in The Atlantis Blueprint: Unlocking the Ancient Mysteries of a Long-Lost Civilization
(published in 2002). The second work theorized that Atlantis was to be found in Lesser Antarctica, near the coast of the Ross Ice Shelf. A geological theory known as "Earth Crust Displacement" forms the basis of their work. The Atlantis Blueprint uses both scientific and pseudo-scientific,,,means to back up the theory."[17]
One final speculation--
"With the current events happening at Lake Vostok, an old theory saying that German Nazis may have built a secret base there as early as the 1930s, has resurfaced.
It is thought that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis moved to the South Pole and started constructing a base at Lake Vostok. In 1943, Grand Admiral Karl Dontiz was quoted saying “Germany’s submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other end of the world,” in Antarctica.
According to German naval archives, months after Germany surrendered to the Allies in April, 1945, the German submarine U-530 arrived at the South Pole from the Port of Kiel. Crew-members constructed an ice cave and supposedly stored several boxes of relics from the Third Reich, including Hitler’s secret files.[18]
http://en.ria.ru/science/20120206/171176587.html
All I can say at this point,,,Lake Vostok is cool.
Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would be nothing left ~ ~H. P. Lovecraft
Update, Monday, February 6, 1:38 PM:
Russian scientists have drilled into the vast, dark and never-before-touched Lake Vostok 2.2 miles below the surface of Antarctica, the state-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti said Monday.
Yesterday, our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake,” the news agency quoted a source as saying. The team had “finally managed to pierce” the ice sheet into Vostok, the
source said.
The report could not be verified Monday, but numerous Antarctica experts in the United States said they were hearing the same unconfirmed news."[19]
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
See also:
Another good article with some great pics
Documentary on Lake Vostok
Lake Vostok Antarctica: breakthrough imminent
Article from Scientific American about imminent break through
A great article and where I got the Lovecraft quote from, which was very fitting
This is an excellent bibliography of Antartic fiction going back to 1605 CE
Mystery Of Missing Deep Arctic Lake Drilling Scientist That May Have Changed Earths Weather - from Mary Greeley's News: The Truth They Don't Wan t You to Know
Third Reich Maps of the Inner Earth
Atlantis Antarctica Secret - An Alternative History
Sources:
[1] Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake
[2] Fox Flub: Russian Vostok Lake Scientists Safe
[3] Lake Vostok
[4] History of Antarctica
[5] Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake
[6] ibid
[7] Antartic X-Files, p10
[8] Daring flight evacuates ill McMurdo worker from Antarctica
[9] Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake
[10] S O A R i n g below Vostok, p.6
[11] What is Happening at the South Pole?
[12] The Lake Vostok ‘Alien Craft’ Coverup
[13] Deadly_time_vortex_appears_over_Antarctica.htm
[14] Piri Reis map
[15] Antarctica
[16] Polar shift
[17] Antartica
[18] Russian Scientists Drill to Sub-Glacial Antarctic Lake
[19] Russians drill into previously untouched Lake Vostok below Antarctic glacier
After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, dark lake that hasn’t been touched by light for more than 20 million years.
Scientists are enormously excited about what life-forms might be found there but are equally worried about contaminating the lake with drilling fluids and bacteria, and the potentially explosive “de-gassing” of a body of water that has especially high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen.[1]
"What I can tell you, is that they are doing something that has never been done before— think of it, sampling a lake under 2.5 miles of ice at a location that is the highest, driest and coldest desert on our planet," states John Priscu of Montana State University.
"What the Russian team is trying to do is unprecedented— the waters of Lake Vostok have been left untouched beneath more than two miles of ice for more than 15 million years. Lake Vostok has been called the "most alien lake on earth," and scientists believe microscopic "extremophiles" that can survive in very low temperature and light situations might live in the water." [2]
A DECENT BBC2 DOCUMENTARY/VIDEO CONCERNING VOSTOK
Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin first proposed the idea of fresh water under Antarctic ice sheets at the end of the 19th century. Kropotkin's theory was further developed by Russian glaciologist I.A Zotikov, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on this subject in 1967.
In 1959 & 1964, Russian scientist Andrey Kapitsa used seismic soundings in the region of Vostok Station to measure the thickness of the ice sheet. It was Kapitsa who first suggested the existence of subglacial lake in this region and named it Lake Vostok.[3]
The Antartic as a whole has a unique history, going as far back as Aristotle's belief in a Cold Land. In the 15th century Terra Australis (the unknown land of the South) began appearing on European maps. It wasn't until 1820 that Russian, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, first confirmed sighting the main land mass we know as Antartica. Other confirmed siting are attributed to Edward Bransfield (British Navy) and Nathaniel Palmer, an American sealer out of Stonington, Connecticut.[4]
As for Lake Vastok, it was an unknown prior to the 1990s. It is part of a web of more 200+ sub-glacial lakes in Antartica, some existing when the continent was still part of Australia and a much warmer climate than today. According to researcher John Priscu, the importance of reaching Lake Vostok lays in the new knowledge gained in understanding our "planet and possibly moons in our solar system and planets far beyond." The caveats according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition and other groups, drilling methods being used and maintaining the pristine conditions of the ice sheet.[5]
RT NEWS INTERVIEW WITH JOHN PRISCU
As with any new scientific discovery, many theories get bandied about. Some are based in fact, while others are speculative to out right fringe. What I find intriguing, is the discovery of microbes that live in the ice and possibly in the
water. A finding that Priscu is encouraged about, as it has changed the thinking about the snow- and ice-covered continent.
Fact--
"If microbes are found in Vostok, the discovery would have particular significance for astrobiology, the search for life beyond Earth. That’s because Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus have deep ice crusts that scientists think cover large amounts of liquid water warmed by sources other than the sun — just like Vostok."[6] Ah the allure of alien life!!
Speculation--
Alleged, unexplained deaths and medical extractions from the Antartic, began to circulate among theorists. A Pandora's Box, after 400,000+ years of isolation and burial under 4 kilometers of solid ice; life may have strayed far from our conception of normal organisms. A microbe fit for those conditions at the bottom of Lake Vostok might multiply explosively in normal light and temperature, creating a new disease or plague. Can you say Vostok flu??
Another possibility for the evacuations, something was found, an artifact from Zep-Tepi. Translated as "first time or occasion", it refers to Ancient Egytian creation myths. It is a theory put forth by Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara.[7]
I was unable to find any mention of the multiple deaths or extractions within conventional news sources, altho there was one confirmed death of a Russian scientist in 2001. Also I could find only one confirmed extraction and this from
McMurdo station, 1000Km from Vostok. A contract worker with the Raytheon Polar services needed evacuation, in July of 2011, not an easy task in the dead of the Antarctic winter.[8]
Fact--
"He said (Priscu) the doomsday scenario for the Russian breakthrough would be if the suddenly released water pushed its way past machinery to block it and shot up the borehole, which is six to eight inches in diameter at the top. The result, he said, could be an enormous geyser that could empty a quarter of the lake. Priscu said he didn’t expect that to happen, but if it did, the sudden addition of substantial water vapor to the antarctic atmosphere could change the continent’s weather in unpredictable ways."
Also to be considered, Vostok has been "sealed" for 125,000 years or more, it is the world's third-largest lake by water volume or one really large soda can. Can we say geyser like we have never seen before!![9]
Speculation--
Or what about this possible scenario, you drill a hole into a large soda can. It pops, releasing massive amounts of pressure. Ice shelf collapses!! Is that why the different nations ran to there own lakes and started drilling as well? To
balance out the resulting pressure change that will happen once the ice sheet is pierced?
Some have speculated that since drilling will most likely be postponed by the Antartic winter until December 2012,,,Do I really need to go there??
Fact--
In February 2001, "The Antartic Sun" reported an extremely powerful “magnetic anomaly” located at the Southeast end of the lake. "The findings will help scientists decide between two theories for the creation of the lake. One scenario is that the lake was created by erosion. The second possibility, and the one Studinger said preliminary data supports, is that changes in the earth’s crust formed the lake."[10]
"The Earth's crust in the vicinity of the Lake is simply thinner under this section of Antarctica, having been stretched during the formation of the lake bed itself. This, according to Studinger, would result in a "local magnetic anomaly." Others, like Enterprise consulting geologist Ron Nicks, have serious difficulty with this theory. Nicks explains that such a thinning would heat the underlying rock and thus diminish (rather than increase -- as observed) the crust's ability to locally amplify the Earth's magnetic field."[11]
Speculation--
Some have termed the anomaly as a "masscon - a mass concentration of metal. A gigantic, circular-shaped metallic object." Others have gone so far as to posit an artificial structure, detected by satellite and a secret excavation project being done by the US military.[12]
One "event" that has led to speculation concerning the anomaly, a spinning gray fog:
As one bizarre event followed another, a research team of US and UK scientists accidentally came across a mind-numbing discovery. While working on a joint weather research project, the team witnessed the creation of a spinning vortex of time.Or is Atlantis rising once again, a victim of a polar shift? Or plate tectonics? Many see Antarctica as a continent, as Hitler did, the source of the worldwide "Atlantis" legends we have all heard and read.
US physicist Mariann McLein allegedly testified that she and her colleagues became aware of a “spinning gray fog” in the sky over their heads. They initially dismissed the phenomenon as merely part of a random polar storm.
The vortex, however, did not disperse. Stranger still, despite gusts of wind and briskly moving clouds overhead, the weird spinning gray fog remained stationary.
Deciding to explore the odd phenomenon, the group took one of its weather balloons and attached a meteorological instrument to it that calibrated temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, windspeed and a scientific chronometer to record the times of the readings.
After attaching a cable to the balloon, and securing the other end to a winch, they released it. The balloon and instrument package soared upwards and were immediately sucked into the gaping maw of the swirling vortex.
The balloon and instruments disappeared.
After several minutes, they decided to retrieve the balloon. Despite some difficulty with the winch they succeeded in bringing the balloon back to earth and checked the instruments. McLein stated that everyone was stunned by the readout on the chronometer. It displayed a date decades in the past: January 27, 1965.
McLein claimed the experiment was repeated several times with the same result.
Later, she said, the entire episode was reported to military intelligence and passed on to the White House. Presumably the strange vortex phenomenon—a highly magnetic tunnel to the past–was code named The Time Gate by military intelligence.
As the phenomenon was generated in the same general vicinity as the discovery of the giant apparatus deep under the ice, it’s thought the two may be related.[13]
Ever since writer Edgar Allen Poe wrote about a lost city in Antarctica in his The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Broadview Editions)
(in 1838), arguments have raged on whether or not this frozen continent once supported human life.[14] It gained strength again in 1960s and 1970s, due in part the Piri Reis map which shows an ice free continent.[15] Charles Hapgood is one author whose pre-ice Antartic and a ice-age polar shift theories are outlined in his 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age
[16]"More recently Rand and Rose Flem-Ath have proposed this in their book, When the Sky Fell; the theory was revised and made more specific in Rand's work with author Colin Wilson, in The Atlantis Blueprint: Unlocking the Ancient Mysteries of a Long-Lost Civilization
(published in 2002). The second work theorized that Atlantis was to be found in Lesser Antarctica, near the coast of the Ross Ice Shelf. A geological theory known as "Earth Crust Displacement" forms the basis of their work. The Atlantis Blueprint uses both scientific and pseudo-scientific,,,means to back up the theory."[17]One final speculation--
"With the current events happening at Lake Vostok, an old theory saying that German Nazis may have built a secret base there as early as the 1930s, has resurfaced.
It is thought that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis moved to the South Pole and started constructing a base at Lake Vostok. In 1943, Grand Admiral Karl Dontiz was quoted saying “Germany’s submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other end of the world,” in Antarctica.
According to German naval archives, months after Germany surrendered to the Allies in April, 1945, the German submarine U-530 arrived at the South Pole from the Port of Kiel. Crew-members constructed an ice cave and supposedly stored several boxes of relics from the Third Reich, including Hitler’s secret files.[18]
http://en.ria.ru/science/20120206/171176587.html
All I can say at this point,,,Lake Vostok is cool.
Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would be nothing left ~ ~H. P. Lovecraft
Update, Monday, February 6, 1:38 PM:
Russian scientists have drilled into the vast, dark and never-before-touched Lake Vostok 2.2 miles below the surface of Antarctica, the state-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti said Monday.
Yesterday, our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake,” the news agency quoted a source as saying. The team had “finally managed to pierce” the ice sheet into Vostok, the
source said.
The report could not be verified Monday, but numerous Antarctica experts in the United States said they were hearing the same unconfirmed news."[19]
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
See also:
Another good article with some great pics
Documentary on Lake Vostok
Lake Vostok Antarctica: breakthrough imminent
Article from Scientific American about imminent break through
A great article and where I got the Lovecraft quote from, which was very fitting
This is an excellent bibliography of Antartic fiction going back to 1605 CE
Mystery Of Missing Deep Arctic Lake Drilling Scientist That May Have Changed Earths Weather - from Mary Greeley's News: The Truth They Don't Wan t You to Know
Third Reich Maps of the Inner Earth
Atlantis Antarctica Secret - An Alternative History
Atlantis beneath the Ice: The Fate of the Lost Continent
Sources:
[1] Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake
[2] Fox Flub: Russian Vostok Lake Scientists Safe
[3] Lake Vostok
[4] History of Antarctica
[5] Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake
[6] ibid
[7] Antartic X-Files, p10
[8] Daring flight evacuates ill McMurdo worker from Antarctica
[9] Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake
[10] S O A R i n g below Vostok, p.6
[11] What is Happening at the South Pole?
[12] The Lake Vostok ‘Alien Craft’ Coverup
[13] Deadly_time_vortex_appears_over_Antarctica.htm
[14] Piri Reis map
[15] Antarctica
[16] Polar shift
[17] Antartica
[18] Russian Scientists Drill to Sub-Glacial Antarctic Lake
[19] Russians drill into previously untouched Lake Vostok below Antarctic glacier
In : Podcasts