Question

project ideas for revival of lakes?

Answer 1

THE popular image of Antarctica as a frozen, almost lifeless desert needs a makeover. For the first time, water from a lake beneath the ice has been found to harbour a vibrant microbial ecosystem.

“Our discovery proves that water is habitable space, even if it’s at sub-zero temperatures and there is no sunlight,” says John Priscu of Montana State University in Bozeman. He co-led the US team that drilled into Lake Whillans, 800 metres beneath the west Antarctic ice sheet.

The finding is good news for astrobiologists hoping to discover life elsewhere in the solar system: in the ocean beneath the frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, for instance, or clinging on under the Martian polar ice caps.

Antarctica is home to about 400 subglacial lakes, many of which are linked in drainage basins. Priscu calls it “the planet’s largest wetland”.

Lake Whillans (see map) is one such lake. As it fills up with water from inland, the ice above swells. About every three years, the pressure builds up so much that water rushes out into the Southern Ocean, like fuel being siphoned from a car’s tank.



Priscu’s team broke into Lake Whillans in January 2013, using hot water to melt a 60-centimetre-diameter hole through the ice. The water used was kept sterile using filters, heating, ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide. That should lay to rest any suggestion that the microbes found were contaminants from the surface.

Such doubts have dogged claims about life in Lake Vostok in eastern Antartica. A Russian team took samples from the lake in 2012, but they used non-sterile kerosene as the drilling fluid.