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WISSARD Project via Antarctic Sun
A laptop screen shows a video view of the borehole drilled through Antarctica's ice down to Lake Whillans.
The first signs of potentially exotic life have been spotted in a sample of water drawn from Antarctica's hidden Lake Whillans, a half-mile beneath the surface, according to reports from the scene.
The telltale green glow of cells stained with a DNA-sensitive dye could be seen when water from the lake was put under the microscope on Monday, Discover Magazine's Crux blog reported. "It was the first evidence of life in an Antarctic subglacial lake," science journalist Douglas Fox reported for The Crux. Fox is an embedded journalist reporting from Lake Whillans under the auspices of a National Science Foundation program.
The U.S. scientists in charge of the project to drill into Lake Whillans — known as the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling, or WISSARD — will be more circumspect: They'll have to demonstrate that the green-glowing cells are truly alive and capable of growing in culture. They'll also conduct tests to make sure that the microbes are indigenous to the lake, rather than the result of contamination from the drilling operation.
Last year, Russian scientists analyzed water from Lake Vostok, an even deeper and bigger subglacial lake beneath Antarctica's Vostok Station, but the only microbes they found in the sample were surface-dwelling species that may have come from contaminated drilling chemicals rather than the lake itself.
During the current Antarctic research season, the Russians resumed their drilling at Vostok. They said earlier this month that they had reached transparent lake ice at a depth of 3.4 kilometers (2.1 miles). Since then, they've reported retrieving "fresh frozen" ice cores from slightly deeper levels.
The Russian and U.S. teams are drilling into the lakes in hopes of finding evidence of life forms that could have been living in the dark for thousands of years, or even millions of years. Theoretically, such organisms could live off the minerals in deep-buried rock, plus oxygen dissolved in the lake water.
The Whillans Ice Stream is a glacial river that pushes ice from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into the Ross Ice Shelf. Lake Whillans lies about 800 meters (0.5 miles) beneath the ice, less than 400 miles (640 kilometers) from the South Pole. Just this past weekend, the WISSARD team reported that their borehole connected with the lake after several days of drilling.
Fox quoted scientists as saying that Lake Whillans is just 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 2 meters) deep, as opposed to the 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters) that was expected. The first water samples that were brought up contained the ancient fossils of dead diatoms — tiny marine creatures that are thought to have been pushed down into the lake from West Antarctica.
The study of Lake Whillans and other subglacial lakes should shed light on Antarctica's climate history, as well as the long-term interaction between the continent's ice and the water and rocks that lie beneath. The discovery of novel life forms could open up an entirely new frontier for biologists. And even if the organisms found in the lakes aren't all that unusual, the drilling operations could set the stage for future missions to the ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn, where similarly challenging conditions for subsurface life are thought to exist.
More about the mysteries beneath the ice:
- Saturnian moon Enceladus eyed for sample return mission
- Underground ocean goes deep on Jovian moon Europa
- Mission to drill into Antarctica's Lake Ellsworth suspended
For more about the WISSARD project at Lake Whillans, check out this report from The Antarctic Sun.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Antarctica, hidden lake, manmade borehole. What could possibly go wrong?
I just hope no one falls in.. it's gotta be a bitch getting them out
Probably somem killer bug down there with a 99% kill rate on the human race!
AZB, Antarctic Zombie Bug.
Or like "The X-Files" movie, it's sheltering an alien virus that will turn us all into bug eyed creatures! Nooo.
When I first saw "The Thing" I said.. we need to stop poking around up there... Too late.
The findings arent as surprising as I thought but it would be cool if they could employ the same tech on Europa or some other Solar planet... that is where I see this really paying off as pertained to science.
lol...
I thought the same thing. Carpenter did a great job on that movie.
I was thinking the 1951 movie with Marshall Matt Dillon as the monster.
I hope they don't find an ice fishing lure , boot or old used discarded snow shoe down there .
Happy hunting .
Dude - I know you are gay and want to be a girl but HOT chicks don't respond to every male topic.
"On the next episode of Ultimate Ice Fishing..."
This is pretty cool, but also pretty humbling as humans. The Russians have been drilling for decades to accomplish this, and that's right here on Earth, a few 1000 of miles from home. The moons of Jupiter are half a BILLION miles from Earth, so it'll be very, very difficult to accomplish this there. I hope we try, but realistically, this is going to be really, really tough. :)
I too was at first wondering how'd we pull this off on neptune or io or europa or (my fav for most likely to have life, encelades (the water sprinkler to the solar system)) when I remembered why the sci fi authors had no problem with using hot water to drill through ice...... since thorium would most likely be the power source of a robotic probe, the real problem is engineering the plumbing!! (after the rocket science that is).
We've got to save them. They have scientific value.
We've got to stop global warming.
It's got to be.
And now...a bulletin from Antarctica: Russian and American scientists have been found dead from an apparent highly infectious disease. It appears to be similar to Ebola but is spread merely by staring at someone who is infected. Details at 11.
I wonder if I can get the bottle water rights? How about using the water to make beer? Wow, what potential!
This has to be the Super Grand Daddy of all Ice Fishing Records.
"The next thing ya know." They'll be pulling up an old beer can.
Another sequel to ...''The Thing" ?
All the scary implications are handled by established protocols, similar to the ones observed by the WHO when handling new diseases, and the US government when we were developing germ warfare. The water, sealed up tighter than the truth right before an election, is sealed for our protection as well, and handled very delicately, for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. Most interesting to me are the astronomical possibilities because organisms live near volcanic vents in the ocean under very hot conditions, and finding life in lightness frigid conditions would make the 'Goldilocks zone', the area of orbits that are not too hot and not too cold of distant planets (and where we think extraterrestrial life might exist) could become a much larger area, significantly raising the number of possible instances.
I think one day we will find there is life out there somewhere, even intelligent life. Maybe we are just too boring to talk to right now.
Any life so much smarter than us that they are able to travel across deep space would probably look at us as inferior, the same way we view other animals. ..and treat us the same, too.
They would probably only make the trip here to steal our resources, mine for metals, or refuel their ship en route to somewhere else. They will probably kill us with impunity unless we stay out of their way.
Then again, if we are going to make it much longer, we have to change our M.O. and the way we manage our environment. I would like to think any species that had been around long enough to acquire the necessary knowledge would have learned that lesson, too.
@oz, I grimace becasue after such a long trip they would be hungry, and if they got ketchup, that might not be a good thing.....for us.
@fred, I do believe that is the correct observation regaurding the goldilocks zone theory, the zone is apparently a moving target and not a precisely defined orbital parameter set. we know the tidal forces of jup cause volcanoes and we know life is adaptable, sadly we just have not been able to get out there and look under all the rocks we can to see if there is life, and if not, plant some.
.....And then we introduce modern microbes into the lake that kill off everything alive down there.
Not very likely. Life topside is not very well adapted to living in the cold, dark waters that deep below. Likewise for the reverse - life from that deep is very difficult to grow in conditions topside. So it's unlikely that they will do irreparable harm down there, and just as unlikely that they will bring something up that will kill all life topside.
But - it never hurts to be extra careful. A tiny risk is stil a risk...
OZ ........ Who cares? Its not like its been a major factor for millions of years so who is going to miss it when its gone? An interesting conversation piece if it can be grown in a culture environment but other than that?
Not very science minded, are you, Dennis?
your last sentence says it all alan. We have inched just that much closer to an ice world robotic mission. Are they not just about ready to drop a little robot vid probe down that ice hole??...maybe you can get in two stories this time and get us more updates on Oscy....she oughta be on the drilling rig binge right about now, eh?
It's interesting how we assume whatever is down there is only microscopic.What if it isn't? I mean, it was only in 2011 we discovered the spade-tooth beaked whale actually existed. Hiding from man for 140 years out in the ocean.Maybe something big is living down in its comfortably dark,frozen world and doesn't like surprise guests dropping by.If life can live in acid,toxic lava hot conditions, why not frozen? Nature is after all, a demonstration of life surviving in every conceivable form.We just haven't learned all of her secrets. I'm sure she has some whoppers!
"life finds a way"....jurrasic park;-)
This lake is suppose to be untouched by man, it"s going to be interesting to see what they may find.
and then we wonder why al quaeda hates us, these people moved to the farthest reaches of the iciest areas on earth to be left alone why don't we just grant them that simple wish rather than trying to exploit their lands for its natural resources and abundance of developable land for you and tina fey and crap to build their million-dollar estates on top of killing the fragile ecosystems that have existed there for centuries and further isolating ourselves from the rest of sentient life on this planet.
Oh grow up. In islamic culture everyone else is hated and I have news for you, In the mideast that culture the average goatherder is not intelligent enough to think in such an abstract chain. It just happens that currently the biggest guy on the block happens to be the U.S. so thats the present target. What is scary is the "progressive" agenda of importing the culture in hopes of "assimilation" and civilizing it ... events in Europe pretty much prove the insanity of that childish fantasy, all that happens is degraded society.
haven't these people ever seen The Thing? run. run as fast as you can and don't ever look back. it's probably too late anyway
All I can say is, in the words of Spock: "Fascinating."
I'm all for science, and I understand the reasons for doing this...but wouldn't the money spent on this be better used to pay down national debt? Just a thought...
First it is Europe and Russia doing the research, the welfare state in the U.S. is broke and cant afford doing anything constructive. Second what cost involved is pocket change when the government has to borrow money to make just the interest payment on money it borrowed yesterday. Third, in the present welfare state if the Nanny finds any of that chump change it will be wasted with new welfare voter bribery not used constructively in trying to get your great-grandkids out of debt. Every single penny in the Nanny-state welfare check is money borrowed that can not under even the perfect recovered economy be paid back in less than hundreds of years. Heck the U.S. owes more than the total combined GDP of every nation in the world as it is.
After rereading, I was wondering if maybe they don't need a bottle of blumenthol blue down thar at the bottom of the earth...the green was nice but a usb microscope shot of an earthly "alien" microbe would be a show stopper. Perhaps they just want to get the dna test done asap rather then end up red faced if it turned up to be regular e.coli or something just as common.
I forgot to mention ira on npr's science friday's program interviewed some antarctic scientists from the project, you might still have time to catch a rerun of the program somewhere. Interesting. They send out a team of tractors on a thousand mile quest, wait till camp is pitched and show up in airplanes to land nearby later on.
Far cry from the early expeditions of years long gone by, but I doubt I would want it any different either. Still the trek through no mans land has GOT to exciting!! If I ever make it to europa or Io or enceladus I'll write and tell if it's cold or really, really cold.
I think you need a few more "really"s in front of that cold, if you are talking about the satellites.