slouching toward antarctica

It’s not exactly a luxury destination.  Kind of cold for that.  But Lake Vostok, Antarctica, may turn out to be one of the most interesting places on earth this year.

Haven’t heard of it?  Neither had I, until I read Luke Dittrich’s piece in Esquire a few months ago.  (I can’t confess to being a regular Esquire reader; there was a copy laying around at the salon I go to, and I glanced through it while waiting to get my hair cut.)

lake vostok

Lake Vostok isn’t even visible, unless you’ve got ice-penetrating radar.  It’s a freshwater lake the size of Lake Ontario trapped four kilometers under glacial ice, and people are calling it the last virgin wilderness on Earth.  For a little while, anyway.  At least until the team of Russian scientists drilling toward water break through the last meter of ice protecting the free water.

That water’s been around for twenty-five million years, and hasn’t seen the light of day since the ice cap sealed it half a million years ago.  It’s absolutely pristine, and what it has to tell us about life on earth in the distant past is an exciting prospect. The water there is more oxygen-rich than any other terrestrial lake environment, and the microbes scientists expect to find living there will undoubtedly show some unique and startling adaptations to their unusual environment.  In fact, the lakes most resembling Vostok in scientific models are those found on Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons.  If there’s life in Vostok, could there be life on Europa or Enceladus?

Here’s the rub: the equipment used to drill the nearly 12,000-foot-long ice core is contaminated with lubricants and other chemicals, and the hole itself has been filled with diesel fuel to prevent it from refreezing.  Presents a bit of a problem, as you might imagine.  Yes, breaking through to fresh water would doubtless yield exciting and important scientific discoveries… but introducing that gunk to the pure lake environment would corrupt and endanger the entire ecosystem.

I’m staying tuned to find out what happens next.  Meanwhile, I’ll stick to the topic of Antarctica in literature for the next few posts.  Come back Monday for a look at the white continent in Michael Chabon’s fiction.

Wherever you are, try to stay warm.  It’s -62 at Vostok Station, with forecasters predicting snow. 

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