On June 23, 1961, The Antarctic Treaty System was officially put into force. Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, The Soviet Union, The United Kingdom, and The United States were the twelve original signatories.
Essentially, the treaty ensures that Antarctica will always be a place that all nations have free access to the continent in order to conduct scientific study, as long as all research has peaceful purposes. The treaty forbids any sort of military action, such as weapons testing, but not the presence of military personnel.
It is thanks to this treaty that Vostok Research Station exists. It sits about 800 miles from the geographic South Pole on an Australian piece of territory. Research conducted at Vostok consists of aerometeorology, actinometry, geophysics, medicine, climatology, and magnetometry. Due to its position on the globe, it is the most isolated research station in existence.
Vostok is likely most well known to the public for two things. One, being the site of the lowest reliably recorded temperature on Earth. (-128.6 F) And two, the climate research they conduct by drilling massive core samples of ice out of the sheet they are situated on.
By analyzing the hundreds and hundreds of layers in these core samples, they are able to study Earth's bygone climates. To date they have drilled through approximately 414,000 layers. This puts them about two miles deep in the ice.
However, once they reached this depth, the layers stopped. The samples that they began to pull from the hole at this point were clear and pretty much devoid of information. Scientists were baffled as to why this might be. In search of answers, the Russians drilled on.
It was not long until the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) used airborne radar and satellite altimetry to try to discover what was lying over two miles beneath the ice and causing the anomalies in the core samples. When the men and women at SCAR realized what could be seen using those imagery techniques, they urged their Russian colleagues to halt all drilling immediately.
As improbable as it was, it appeared that deep under Vostok there was a liquid freshwater lake. The core samples that the Russians had recently pulled from the ice were from where the liquid freshwater came in contact with the ice above it and froze. The hole they had bored stopped within a mere 300 feet of the surface of the lake.
The satellite and radar images showed that the lake had a surface area approximately equivalent to that of Lake Ontario but was more than three times as deep as the great lake. The temperature is estimated to be about 26 degrees Fahrenheit but due to the enormous pressure of the ice slab above it, the water remains in liquid form. It is also suspected that geothermal heat provides some ambient warmth at that depth.
If it's difficult to picture, Columbia University has published this diagram of the lake.
The clear samples at the bottom of the Russian most recent cores provided some insight into the conditions of the lake. We know the lake is made up of freshwater because there is no salt present in the samples. We also know thanks to these samples that there is an incredible amount of oxygen in the water. Oxygen dissolves much more readily into water under enormous pressure.
If the Russians had continued drilling for much longer they may have encountered a geyser of unheard of proportions thanks to the astonishing amount of pressure the lake was under. Also, had they actually drilled into the surface of the lake, it would have been contaminated by the sixty tons of kerosene and freon they had filled their borehole with to prevent it from re-freezing and all hopes of studying this entirely untouched environment would have been lost.
Of course, as soon as the lake was discovered, a huge debate arose concerning the likelihood of finding life under such conditions. Because of the frigid temperature, the absence of sunlight, and the toxic levels of oxygen in the water, many scientists are certain that the lake is sterile. That would be a breakthrough discovery in its own right since there are presently no completely lifeless bodies of water known to mankind.
Others suggest that it is not unreasonable to expect life of some form to be discovered there. After all, extremophile organisms had been discovered in the most unlikely of places on our planet. There are some that live in the volcanic vents on the ocean floor, others that have been found living in the frozen arctic soil, and even some that have been found living in the rocks deep within the earth's crust. With this evidence, it is not ridiculous to assume there could be creatures suited to life under such conditions.
Another interesting point that scientists have made is that the conditions of Lake Vostok are remarkably similar to the ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter's ice moon, Europa. Analyzing such a similar environment on our own planet could have interesting extraterrestrial complications.
Presently, researchers are still contemplating the best method to investigate the lake without contaminating it. The introduction of any chemical or even a single microorganism from the surface could irreversibly pollute the ecosystem. There are also some scientist who advocate avoiding the lake altogether. Millions of years of evolutionary isolation could have resulted in bizarre organisms that may present a very real danger to humans
It has also been reported that the Russian researchers very much intend to reach the lake before anyone of their rivals. If something prompts them to restart their drilling, little can be done to stop them.
Very interesting. I'm curious as to why you chose this subject. Well done.
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