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.

AP file

Russian researchers at the Vostok station in Antarctica pose for a picture after reaching Lake Vostok in February 2012. Scientists hold a sign reading "05.02.12, Vostok station, boreshaft 5gr, lake at depth 3769.3 metres." The researchers now report that they have brought up fresh samples from the borehole.

Russian researchers say they have brought up fresh samples of clear ice from Antarctica's Lake Vostok, a huge reservoir of freshwater more than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) beneath the surface.

Lake Vostok could contain water and perhaps living organisms that have been sitting undisturbed in the deep dark for up to 20 million years. The drilling operation also could set a precedent for far more ambitious efforts to find life beneath the ice of the Jovian moon Europa or the Saturnian moon Enceladus.

Because of the potential for contamination, scientists have been taking extreme care at Lake Vostok, which is situated 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) from the South Pole in East Antarctica. A year ago, the Russian drilling team reached the lake and brought up water samples. Some of the water was even served to Vladimir Putin, who was then Russia's prime minister and is now the country's president. But it wasn't clear whether those samples were actually from the lake or from the glacier above the lake, the Russian news service RIA Novosti reported.

This year's drilling operation is aimed at bringing up samples that can be linked more definitively to the lake itself.

"The first core of transparent lake ice, 2 meters long, was obtained on Jan. 10 at a depth of 3,406 meters," Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute said in a statement. "Inside it was a vertical channel filled with white bubble-rich ice."

The institute said that drilling operations would be extended another 24 meters with the existing cables, and that new cables were being delivered to the Vostok research station. The core samples were to be subjected to chemical and biological analysis.

Lake Vostok is about 160 miles (250 kilometers) long and 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide, making it the largest of Antarctica's nearly 400 subglacial lakes. Last year's drilling operation drew up samples from a depth of 12,366 feet (2.34 miles, or 3,769 meters). In October, Russian team members reported finding no native life within those samples. They said the only microbes they detected were traced to contaminants from the drilling oil.

The lake could serve as a laboratory for studying what Antarctica's climate and ecosystem was like millions of years ago. It may contain creatures unlike any that exist today. And as ambitious as all that sounds, the Vostok operation is seen as a mere warmup for future sampling missions to Europa, Enceladus and perhaps other icy moons in the solar system.

Planetary scientists see ample evidence that liquid water exists on those worlds, miles beneath the icy surface, and astrobiologists have theorized that internal heat may provide enough energy for organisms living within those hidden oceans.

Correction for 1:30 p.m. ET Jan. 14: I initially described Vostok station as 800 miles east of the South Pole, but that's not quite right: All directions from the South Pole are north, as commenters have pointed out. There is an "east" and "west" to the continent, and Vostok happens to be in East Antarctica. I've changed the reference to the location accordingly.

More about the mysteries beneath the ice:

• Saturn moon eyed for sample return mission
• Satellite shows Russia's 'moon shot' ice station
• Mission to drill into Antarctica's Lake Ellsworth suspended

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.

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

Preparing to launch from the sea to Antarctic sea ice, an Emperor penguin reaches maximum speed.

You thought "The March of the Penguins" was cool? Check out the launch of the penguins — an aerodynamic phenomenon that helps these flightless birds take flight.

Emperor penguins can't fly just by flapping their wings, but they can propel themselves fast enough through Antarctic waters to turn themselves into winged rockets. They do it by releasing tiny bubbles of air from their feathers: The air acts as a lubricant, reducing drag as they swim up from the depths like tuxedoed torpedoes. In fact, engineers have used air bubbles in similar ways to speed the movement of torpedoes through the water.

Who knew that penguins have been doing the same sort of thing for eons? University College Cork's John Davenport knew: He and his colleagues studied video footage from the BBC's "Blue Planet" TV series to develop a biochemical model for the penguins' torpedo trick. They were amazed to find that the birds' speed was due to the "coat of air bubbles" streaming from their feathers.

National Geographic

The penguin images are from the November edition of National Geographic magazine. The electronic versions of the report include an exclusive video and interactive graphic that show penguins rocketing onto the ice.

Before the penguins dive into the water, they ruffle their plumage to trap air within the feathers' structure. A deep dive compresses the air into a smaller volume. When the penguins go into their launch, the decompressing air is released through pores in the feathers — creating a layer of tiny, lubricating bubbles.

The trick is described for scientists in the Marine Ecology Progress Series, and for the rest of us in November's issue of National Geographic magazine. The heart of the magazine story is Paul Nicklen's pictures, which have just won him top honors in the Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

"We wanted to change people's perception of penguins as ungainly animals," said Nicklen, who has followed penguins and other polar species for years, and admits he's always had an obsession with Antarctica. "The biologist in me was trying to learn about the science."

And he did learn more about the biological background for the bubble trick: Penguins are preyed upon by leopard seals, which lie in wait beneath the ice to ambush the birds during their ascent from the depths. "The penguins know they're there, and as they're coming up ... it's like someone turns on a tap, and there are millions of microbubbles pouring over their bodies."

The supercharged speed helps the penguins elude their predators and shoot up to safety on the ice, Nicklen said. The masses of bubbles have another defensive effect: They confuse the seals as they try to swim in for the attack. Nicklen himself found out how that feels. When he got too close to the penguins underwater, they released a bubbly barrage.

"It was like I was floating through space, in a sea of bubbles," he said.

The online version of National Geographic's penguin spread will feature a video and interactive graphic showing in detail how the penguins rocket out of the water and onto the ice. Next week, the photographer will unveil an app called "Paul Nicklen: Pole to Pole," with more images. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these images from National Geographic, plus two bonus videos:

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

An airborne penguin shows why it has a need for speed: to get out of the water, it may have to clear several feet of ice. A fast exit also helps it elude leopard seals, which often lurk at the ice edge.

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

Life is safer at the colony, where predators are few and company is close.

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

The danger of ambush by seals is greatest when entering the water, so penguins may linger near an ice hole for hours, waiting for the first bird to dive.

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

"These penguins have probably never seen a human in the water," says photographer Paul Nicklen, "but it took them only seconds to realize that I posed no danger. They relaxed and allowed me to share their hole in the sea ice." This photo earned Nicklen the Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.

More about penguins:

• Penguins' graphic sexual acts shocked researcher
• Not-so-happy feet: You're stressing out the penguins
• Satellite view doubles Emperor penguin count
• Chinstrap penguin colony declines as ice and food shrink

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 via email every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

(c) NERC ChEsSo Consortium

White crustaceans that have been nicknamed Hasselhoff crabs are piled around hydrothermal vents.

When word got around that scientists nicknamed a particularly hairy-chested kind of deep-sea crab after "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff, "The Hoff" didn't get huffy. Instead, he proudly tweeted the news to his 358,000 Twitter followers. The Southern Ocean's "Hoff crabs" are just the latest critters to get celebrity nicknames.

The saga of Hasselhoff's crabs came out this week when researchers reported the discovery of a "lost world" in waters off the Antarctic coast in the journal PLoS Biology. Piles of white yeti crabs were found clumped around hydrothermal vents at the ocean's bottom, in an area known as the East Scotia Ridge.

Baywatch

David Hasselhoff in his "Baywatch" heyday.

Expedition leader Alex Rogers, a zoologist at Oxford University, said the crabs were notable because they had long hairs, or setae, covering their smooth undersides. "Their nickname on the cruise ship was the 'Hasselhoff crab,' which gives you some idea of what they look like," Rogers told the BBC.

Rogers was clearly referring to the hairy-chested look that Hasselhoff sported when he portrayed a beefcake lifeguard on the '90s TV series "Baywatch." Hasselhoff, now 59, has had his ups and downs in recent years, but he saw the story of the Hoff crabs as one of the ups. "Check this out!" he said in a Twitter tweet pointing to the BBC story and bearing the hashtag "Got Hoff Crabs." He even urged one of his followers to retweet the news.

Rogers and his colleagues still have to decide what the crabs' scientific Latin-derived species name will be. The crabs are part of the genus Kiwa, along with other types of yeti crabs, so Kiwa hasselhoffi is a possibility; however, Hasselhoff would be well-advised not to get his hopes up just yet.

"There are no plans to formally name the crab after David, but I am yet to discuss this with my colleagues," Rogers told me today in an email. "The species is distinct from Kiwa hirsuta and Kiwa puravida, and we are describing it at present. An alternative name that was being batted around was the wookie crab — again for obvious reasons. The Hoff stuck...."

Rogers et al. / PLoS Biology

A single "Hoff crab" is surrounded by gastropods in this picture from a research team's expedition to the Southern Ocean.

I'm not aware that any species has so far been formally named after the Hoff — or after Wookiees, for that matter. But there have been plenty of celebrities honored with scientific species names, including an ant and a spider named after the guy who played Han Solo (Pheidole harrisonfordi and Calponia harrisonfordi, respectively), a beetle that looks as if it has Arnold Schwarzenegger's bulging biceps (Agra schwarzeneggeri), a bunny named after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri), a lichen named after President Barack Obama (Caloplaca obamae), and a beetle and spider named after talk-show comedian Stephen Colbert (Agaporomorphus colberti and Aptostichus stephencolberti).

Asteroids and other celestial bodies can provide celebrities with additional pieces of scientific immortality. There's no Asteroid Hasselhoff yet, but the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center lists Spielberg, Lancearmstrong, Tomhanks, Megryan and more. When astronomers found a world on the solar system's rim that was bigger than Pluto, they gave it the nickname Xena, in honor of the TV warrior princess. (It was later named after Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and strife.)

Whether or not those Southern Ocean crabs get the scientific name "Kiwa hasselhoffi," they'll probably end up being known informally as Hoff crabs from now on. But it's a delicate environment down there, so I wouldn't advise any celebrity junkets to the hydrothermal vents.

Come to think of it, that should be set down as one of the ironclad rules on the East Scotia Ridge: Don't hassle the Hoff crabs.

More about yeti crabs:

• Top 10 oddballs of the animal world
• Hairy-chested crabs found in deep-sea vents
• Divers discover new kind of crustacean

More about scientific names: 

• What's in a scientific name? (Scroll down)
• One way to get a species named after you
• Rename Homo sapiens? The idea seems unwise

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

BEDMAP Collaboration / BAS

This graphic shows the bedrock beneath Antarctic ice. The color scale goes from 2,250 meters below sea level (blue) to 2,250 meters above sea level (red).

A British survey suggests what the Antarctic continent would look like if it were stripped bare of all its ice.

This BEDMAP elevation image of the polar region is based on satellite imagery as well as observations made from planes, ships and even dog-drawn sleds, the British Antarctic Survey reported today. Hamish Pritchard, a researcher from the BAS, presented the digital maps at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

Less than 1 percent of Antarctica's bedrock projects above the continent's layer of ice, the BBC reported. If all that ice were suddenly taken away, the sea would pour into the dark blue troughs shown on the BEDMAP picture. The light blue area on the graphic indicates the Antarctic continental shelf.

"In many areas, you can now see the troughs, valleys and mountains as if you were looking at a part of the earth we're much more used to seeing, exposed to the air," Pritchard told the BBC. Such imagery has helped scientists trace the roots of the Gamburtsev Mountains, a range of peaks buried two miles (3 kilometers) below the surface of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

In the picture above, the Gamburtsev range is the deep-red area just to the right of the continent's center. "It's fascinating to see the Gamburtsevs in the context of the other big mountains in Antarctica," Pritchard said.

BEDMAP Consortium / BAS

This graphic provides a sidelong perspective on the Antarctic bedrock, looking inward from the Antarctic Peninsula toward the center of the continent.

This survey of the naked continent, which follows up in far greater detail on an earlier BEDMAP scan, wasn't done merely to fascinate scientists (and the rest of us). Understanding Antarctica's rocky foundation could help climate researchers get a better sense of how the polar ice cap may respond to future climate change.

The key observations included radar soundings that penetrated the ice and bounced off the underlying rock, which told researchers how far down the ice went. Still more airborne surveys need to be made to flesh out BEDMAP's view in detail.

These pictures serve as today's offerings from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features views of Earth from space every day from now until Christmas. Check back on Tuesday for the next "treat," and check out these links for previous entries as well as other space-themed Advent calendars:

• Dec. 4: The monster of Madagascar
• Dec. 3: Santa's shrinking domain
• Dec. 2: The masses in Mecca
• Dec. 1: An ornament in outer space
• The full Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, going back to 2010
• Hubble Advent calendar, presented by The Atlantic's In Focus
• 2011 Zooniverse Advent calendar

Anyone who's watched "The March of the Penguins" knows that Emperor penguins huddle together to cope with the harsh temperatures and winds of the Antarctic winter. It's a great deal for the birds inside the tightly packed scrum, but how do the penguins on the periphery get their turn?

Researchers spent a whole winter in 2008 tracking the movements of an Emperor penguin colony at Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica, and they present their answer this week in the open-access journal PLoS ONE. It turns out that the penguins engage in a series of continuous, coordinated shuffles that cause the birds on the outside to shift toward the interior, and push other birds toward the outside.

"Every 30-60 seconds, all penguins make small steps that travel as a wave through the entire huddle," the researchers write. "Over time, these small movements lead to large-scale reorganization of the huddle."

That's right: Penguins know how to do the wave.

The dynamics are so subtle that they're hard to interpret just by looking at the huddle. But when they're recorded on high-definition time-lapse video, the scientists say they can see a "striking analogy" to the movement of fluids such as soft glasses and colloids.

The challenge for the penguins is to huddle together closely enough to conserve body heat, but keep loose enough to avoid "colloidal jamming." That's the physical phenomenon you encounter when you try to pour ketchup out of a jammed-up bottle. (Ketchup is just one of the tasty colloids you might find in your kitchen; others include pudding and ice cream, peanut butter and jelly.)

The researchers say that penguins avoid getting permanently jammed up or squished by doing those little shuffle steps every 30 to 60 seconds. The penguins on the periphery push inward, which is like tapping the side of the ketchup bottle. Inside the huddle, the steps cause the birds to shift around, and the mass starts moving forward. Some penguins who join the huddle at the trailing edge. Others leave the huddle at the leading edge. Separate bunches of the birds flow together into bigger bunches, creating a critical mass. In a news release, the process is compared to kneading dough.

"This is an essential process in condensed matter physics, penguins included," the researchers write. "In further support of the phase transition analogy, we note that when the huddle breaks up, it occurs very rapidly, similar to the sharp jump in densities between ... a gas and liquid state."

Studying the dynamics of the Antarctic huddle could conceivably help scientists develop better models for other types of mass behavior, ranging from fish schools to traffic jams. The researchers note that the physics of traveling waves can be applied to the pushy interactions of panicky humans as well as the subtler shuffles of Emperor penguins. 

"Why these waves are uncoordinated, turbulent and dangerous in a human crowd but not in a penguin huddle remain an open question but may possibly depend on the shape and magnitude of the interaction potential, and on the distance of the system from an effective temperature characterizing a critical point," they write. Here's another issue yet to be studied: whether the actions of particular penguins trigger the emergence of the wave, similar to the collective behavior observed in flocks of pigeons.

You just might hear more about huddling penguins in the years to come: The leader of the research team, physicist Daniel Zitterbart from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, is setting up a remote-controlled observatory in Antarctica to study penguins all year round. Who knows? Maybe one of these days we'll be watching a sequel to the earlier documentary, titled "The Wave of the Penguins."

More about penguins:

• Naked penguins baffle scientists
• Gay penguin pair raising chick
• How the penguin changed its feathers
• How penguins survive those deep dives

In addition to Zitterbart, co-authors of "Coordinated Movements Prevent Jamming in an Emperor Penguin Huddle" include Ben Fabry from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, James Butler from Harvard University and Barbara Wienecke from the Australian Antarctic Division.

You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.