WATER that has been completely sealed off by ice for nearly 3000 years has been discovered in the Antarctic. The lake is one of the most extreme environments on Earth, but may harbour life.
Until now, Lake Vida was thought to be just one of the many completely frozen lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. But when Peter Doran of the University of Illinois at Chicago and colleagues explored the lake using radar, they discovered that its centre is still liquid. As the top and edges of the lake progressively froze, the remaining water became more and more salty. The lake is now seven times saltier than the ocean, which allows it to stay liquid below 鈭�10 掳C while buried beneath 19 metres of ice.
Doran鈥檚 team took cores from the top 16 metres of ice, and 12 metres down found organic matter that was 2800 years old. So the water below has been sealed off from the rest of the world for at least that long.
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The team plans to return to Lake Vida to drill the rest of the way through the ice and sample the water and sediments below, taking care not to contaminate this pristine environment. Despite the super-salty conditions, sub-zero temperatures and complete lack of sunlight, Doran is hoping to find signs of life. 鈥淚鈥檇 be surprised if there鈥檚 nothing living down there,鈥� he says. 鈥淥n Earth, pretty much everywhere you find water you find life.鈥� The sampling mission could become a blueprint for future attempts to discover life on other planets.