OT: Cool science, Barb T, and Cthulu

**sydnie7** · 12th February 12, 09:40 AM

Just hope it's not a rerun of Geraldo and Capone's vault

Seriously, this is so cool as to be absolutely cold!

**starbkjrus** · 13th February 12, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by Mickey

I really geeked out when this story broke. Seriously, a lake in liquid form 2 miles below ice? How cool is that? And to think of what they could find in there. Could be nothing, could be very scary. I'm extremely interested in the sampling.

+2

Beware of waking the evil that lurks in the deep!

**Panache** · 13th February 12, 02:06 PM

Any really tall blind penguins seen near the site?

Cheers

Jamie

**Pleater** · 13th February 12, 05:22 PM

They do seem to be taking precautions - having just broken through to the water below the ice, they had arranged for the gloop in the bore hole to be at a reduced pressure so that as it broke through the water was sucked up rather than the gloop being released into the lake.

Now they will wait for a year for the sucked up water to freeze and then they will take a core from the bore, not breaking through again.

Sensible both from the point of keeping the lake free from contamination and allowing anything that they disturbed settle down again rather than it deciding to claw its way up through eons of ice to complain about the noise.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

**Father Bill** · 13th February 12, 07:04 PM

"Gloop."

Technical term?

**AKScott** · 13th February 12, 09:11 PM

Originally Posted by Father Bill

"Gloop."

Technical term?

I think she meant "glop."

Neat stuff, they ought to be able to figure out when it froze over by checking the isotopic weight of the oxygen in whatever water they recover.

**sydnie7** · 13th February 12, 09:39 PM

Originally Posted by AKScott

I think she meant "glop."

Neat stuff, they ought to be able to figure out when it froze over by checking the isotopic weight of the oxygen in whatever water they recover.

Actually if you check dictionary.com, it's either gloop or glop. Same substance.

**Barb T** · 14th February 12, 07:50 AM

Hi all,

Sorry I missed this thread until this morning. Will be very interesting to see what they find when they sample the ice that freezes in the drill hole.

The drilling itself has been the subject of enormous controversy. Lake Vostok (which is similar in area to Lake Ontario but has 3X the water volume....) was discovered by remote sensing decades ago, and the Russians started drilling core in the 90s. Hard rock drilling (e.g., drilling for oil) is done with a water-based coolant/lubricant to control formation pressure and to carry cuttings out of the hole, but that obviously wouldn't work for drilling ice unless the water could be heated. The Russians have been using a drilling fluid consisting of a mixture of kerosene and freon, and this has alarmed the other countries who are part of the Antarctic Treaty. Hot water drilling has been advocated as a more environmentally friendly alternative (although there is still the issue of introducing surface water into a system that has remained isolated for at least half a million years), but the Russians have argued that they don't have the power currently to do that at Vostok Station.

So, anyway, the Russians stopped well short of breaking through into the lake a couple years ago and eventually got permission from the Antarctic Treaty system's environmental protection committee to drill the rest of the hole with a new thermal drill head with a silicone oil drilling fluid (not hot water drilling, so their plan was still highly controversial). Their plan was to stop drilling as soon as free water was detected (rather than dropping the drill bit into the lake) and pull the drill stem up the bore, drawing water from the lake into the drill bore, where it would freeze and supposedly protect the lake from all the contaminants that are in the drill hole. Many people are still worried about chemical contamination - it's the same borehole that the Russians have used for years, so there are still contaminants from the old drilling fluid left in the hole. Anyway, they say that they reached the Lake and have pulled the drill up. They can't hang around this season, because they need to get everyone off the ice for the winter. Next Austral summer season (i.e., next fall), they will start drilling the ice plug for sampling.