This is neat: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=449?

This flash animation lays it out well: http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/news/vostok/vostok.swf

That is really cool. Glad they stopped short of the actual lake and thinking ahead of the contamination probability.

That is really cool.

About as cool as it gets around here!

It would be interesting to see what might be alive in that pocket given without either sunlight or volcanic activity basic entropy should have reduced them to entirely unlivable, particularly since the organisms that thrive in such extreme environments tend to be anaerobic (they use nitrogen or similiar instead of oxygen) and the indicators are that the lake is superoxygenated.

Very cool stuff.

A Sci-Fi Channel Pictures original in the making.

A Sci-Fi Channel Pictures original in the making.

Possibly ... but would it be better than Derren Brown? (obviously not) What about Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

Excessively high oxygen levels combined with a low temperature don't bode well for life being present in there, depending on whether or not aerobic organisms were already present at the time it formed. Free oxygen is terribly toxic to cell membranes, and organisms that lack catalase, peroxidase, or other enzymes to deal with detoxifying it can't survive even under low oxygen conditions, and enzymes work more slowly the lower the temperature is.

Of course, the excessively *high* temperatures in thermal vent waters brought us Taq polymerase (the enzyme that made modern DNA amplification and sequencing possible), so it's entirely possible some ultra-fluid enzyme exists down there capable of functioning at sufficient speed to keep the organisms from getting torn to bits. In any case, it'll be *really* interesting to see what they find down there, and whether they might yield enzymes or other substances suitable in, say, cryosurgery, which is being increasingly done for heart and heart/lung transplants, as it reduces the patient's oxygen requirements...

Regards,
Nydia

P.S. Hydrogen sulfide is most often used as the electron acceptor in hypoxic environments - as is elemental iron and a few other metal ions. Without some sort of energy inputs though, it's hard to imagine much living there.

Science is raining on my parade. :(

Fortunately, with Sci Fi Channel all things are possible. Alien possessed wooly mammoth corpse? Piece of cake, with Summer Glau making it that much more watchable.

Mark my words, some Saturday at 9pm on channel 49, something is coming out of that lake. Probably a giant armadillo.

Derren Brown will know.

Mark my words, some Saturday at 9pm on channel 49, something is coming out of that lake. Probably a giant armadillo.



You mean Tsunamis are out of vogue now?

I do find it very interesting that this body of water has been cut off from the rest of the world for so long.
Maybe it will give us a glimpse of what the environmental conditions on the planet were like back then.
If we could find a way to sample the water without contaminating it....

Thormir you have it all wrong! Thats where the predators are hiding the aliens after we fubared the other holding area.
thats why the high oxygen levels. it keeps the aliens in a state of hibernation.
definately gonna be AvP II .

P.S. lol i've been playing MMO's for way too long i originally typed Oxygen lvls.

I do find it very interesting that this body of water has been cut off from the rest of the world for so long.
Maybe it will give us a glimpse of what the environmental conditions on the planet were like back then.
If we could find a way to sample the water without contaminating it....

What, don't you think there is at least one, if not more, in that drilling crew who plan to be the first to piss in that lake? I doubt we will ever be able to get a completely untainted specimen from that lake; the drilling equipment itself is picking up all types of residue as it cuts down through the ice, so it will be difficult to determine if bacteria was from the ice 100 feet above the lake or from the water itself.

Further tests on surrounding ice pockets should be able to determine bacteria origin, but exploration it will be a delicate process to say the least.