http://rt.com/news/antarctic-million-secrets-lake-583/

Just came here to post this. The team hadn't been heard from for a few days last week and people were worried that they were dead.

This is bad — good news would have been if the effort had failed somehow. From what I've read in the past, it seems these guys are absolutely terrible at ensuring that they'll keep the lake uncontaminated, so now we'll never know for sure what was there before they broke through.

According to the article, they seem to have spend a lot of time developing and testing a technology that ensures that there's no contamination. Surely they aren't that incompetent?

Again going from what I've read in the past, they actually are pretty incompetent, or underfunded, or some combination of factors. According to this new article they're aware of the issues and stopped for a while to fix them, but given that all it takes is one tiny slip to destroy forever the purity of a unique resource, and that our only source of information on the matter is official Russian sources, I am not pleased.

I guess we'll see.

Bad for 'em, fantastic for us.

Spasiba, Maria.

I have no idea which "us" it would be fantastic for. If what I've heard is right, no one in the world will ever know for sure exactly what was living in that lake before they contaminated it. In what way could that possibly be good for anyone?

Yeah, see, here's the problem. It's one biosphere. The taboo against contamination is quite silly.

I'm fairly sure, however, the team was wise enough to address your very concerns by taking pristine samples before they breached the barrier to atmospheric exposure.

The rest is merely doing a computational model with the existing life in this sample.

(But, look, I get it. All things considered I'd rather preserve everything, but that is simply not possible.)

Maybe there's mermaids in there

I'm a super geek and am totally into stuff like this. There was a terrific show on either Discovery or the Science channel about this dig and how unbelievably difficult it is to work there.

This is the site where the lowest measured (natural) temperature on planet earth was recorded at -126f.

Russian scientists have been digging for twenty years to make their way down the 2.5 miles of ice to the buried lake and it appears as though they have finally made it.

It is believed that the water in this lake has been cut off from the rest of the world for as long as 20 million years so scientists all over the world are very curious to see if there is anything living in it and what an ecosystem that has evolved in total isolation might look like.

I think if there is ANYTHING, even bacteria, living down there it makes a terrific case for finding life on places like Europa. The trick now is to sample the water without contaminating it, which sadly might have to wait until late 2012.

Just for clarification, this isn't your average mud-hole. This lake is roughly the size of Lake Ontario but holds nearly three times as much water.

Super Nerd achievement unlocked.

Already a thread on it... http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/47...tists-1163483/

But pretty cool nonetheless.

The relevant documentary from BBC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APaBqRp27zU

Also remember this thread? lol

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/47...planet-925994/

checking out socotra. ta. o btw, ck w osgoode lib, the latest issue your uni sent out. the vid feed should show what i was looking @ today.

again, ta.

lata.

There will be once we Disney the planet. Walk 'em through, boys.

People like to exaggerate and compare to other areas of solar system or in general planets in other stars and claim it can offer insight for life there etc but the reality is very different, even if there is some relevance when seen from an angle the documentaries and news media havent selected to pursue it.

That lake was probably very active in terms of life many millions of years ago before climate in Antarctica became very cold and ice covered it for good. But this is the big difference now. Even if by now the conditions there are extremely hostile (with 3-4 Km of ice sheet above) for the type of life we are accustomed to, the covering and the extreme pressure and lack of light etc didnt happen overnight , it took possibly thousands of years to complete and what we do know about life is that it tends to adapt to changing conditions remarkably well when forced as long as its not very rapidly. So if we were to find life there it wouldn't be at all necessarily as amazing as finding life in Europa. Because it had a start from a common origin to familiar life at surface when the covering process started. It simply evolved under extreme stress conditions which however developed over thousands of years or more.

What would be remarkable however is to find that a complete different version of life that doesnt have a common origin with the one on the surface has developed there near heat sources. To be able to see a different origin of life under such extreme conditions would be the real treasure. I wonder however if the whatever time period 3 or 30 mil years ago this system closed is enough for the onset of life from a somewhat different origin or even similar to familiar RNA/DNA but provably independent, to have taken place. Maybe the time interval is not substantial for something as rare as life to originate fresh. I always imagined the start is a very low probability event (sequence of events of towering complexity - a probability ladder really) that is facilitated by the passage of substantial time and the existence of a great number of possible friendly "experimental" sites at planetary wide scale for eventually the emergence of life to be likely given enough time (much smaller than the lifetime of the star) , even if locally in a short period it seems unimaginable.

I wonder how fast life on earth started after the conditions were friendly enough? Did it take only a few millions of years or close to hundreds of millions? That very first few steps seem to be the most highly unlikely ones but then the possibilities become rapidly attainable once complex structure makes further more complex structure possible easier than the first few steps were. I mean i think this is true because of the history of life as recorded in fossils. It seems that it takes billion+ years to get to complex enough life forms but still not anything higher than basic multicellular systems and then within a few hundred millions you have a massive explosion rapidly in comparison as if something, very tough initially, now becomes very possible with each new probability barrier penetrated and the opening of new possibilities as a result of more degrees of freedom of synthesis by the established structure. It starts very slow because the conditions are not ideal but as structure develops the path this structure follows to higher complexity becomes a lot more plausible (structure helps further structure) . Evolution itself is accelerating. We might still if lucky be able to see the first steps even in 10-30 mil years period. I imagine however that certain less extreme environments provide a lot faster start. That might be one explanation also of the fact that it seems we are the "first" in our galaxy. Maybe life does eventually start in many different systems but in some of them the start is very slow (vs the lifetime of the star or the climatic stability timeframe of the planet) and the evolution very hard to progress to something remarkable enough within 1-2 bil years. For life to adapt to a changing planet it seems to need to be established well first no? For Earth it seems life changed the planet and vice versa after life got established well first.

An isolated system that at some point was sterilized by natural processes if they took place real rapidly say would present the ideal abiotic conditions for life to restart fresh even under extreme conditions that however make complex organic chemistry possible (if temperature is reasonable). This cannot happen at the surface anymore. Existing life destroys all primitive forms of "new life" that could begin to emerge before they have any chance to develop to anything original from first structures. So if initially sterilized its the ultimate lab experiment that was given say 30 mil years to take place. If only we were that lucky to witness a fresh start to life down there it would be the discovery of the century in biology.


And of course all this maybe totally irrelevant if the pressure at such depth is so enormous that typical organic chemistry is in deep trouble in terms of reaction possibilities and structure formation. On the other hand i dont exactly think the pressure at say 4km depth in the ocean is any radically different than under a 4km ice sheet. And i think we have evidence of life at such pressures in oceans. So maybe within 1 order of magnitude higher is not a big deal breaker.