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Antarctica’s Frozen Lake Vostok, Isolated for 20 Million Years, Breached By Russian Drills

The Russian scientists drilling into ancient buried Antarctic Lake Vostok have reached their destination, the Russian news agency Ria Novosti reported today. The team is apparently alive and well despite a week of suspicious radio silence, but more details are to come about what they’ve found buried under two miles of ice.

“Yesterday, our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the sub-glacial lake,” the source reportedly said in a story posted Monday, Feb. 6.

» via Popular Science

Holy shit I’m excited to find out what’s down there…

Having seen The Thing several times, and read a lot of sci-fi and horror fiction, I’m nervous about what they find down there. Though in most seriousness, this is pretty cool. The Wikipedia article has more interesting info about the lake:

Lake Vostok is located beneath Russia’s Vostok Station under the surface of the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is at 3,488 metres (11,444 ft) above mean sea level. The surface of this fresh water lake is approx 4,000 m (13,100 ft) under the surface of the ice, which places it at approx 500 m (1,600 ft) below sea level. Measuring 250 km (160 mi) long by 50 km (30 mi) wide at its widest point, and covering an area of 15,690 km² (6,060 sq mi), it is similar in area to Lake Ontario, but with over three times the volume. The average depth is 344 m (1,129 ft). It has an estimated volume of 5,400 km³ (1,300 cu mi).^[4] The lake is divided into two deep basins by a ridge. The liquid water over the ridge is about 200 m (700 ft), compared to roughly 400 m (1,300 ft) deep in the northern basin and 800 m (2,600 ft) deep in the southern.