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Lake Vostok, a new At The Mountains Of Madness?

Ah! A favourite story from when I was fourteen or so! I've been waiting for this ever since I first discovered Lovecraft...

Mick
 
How did they avoid contaminating the lake? Anything they put into it to extract samples will itself be contaminated and therefore transfer contaminants to the lake won't it? :eek:
 
Time Audio said:
How did they avoid contaminating the lake? Anything they put into it to extract samples will itself be contaminated and therefore transfer contaminants to the lake won't it? :eek:
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FTA
So, the authors of this paper took a rather extreme measure to eliminate it: they chilled some bleach and dipped the ice cores in that to wipe out anything that might have accumulated on the surface. They also froze some sterile water and treated it identically to the their ice core samples.
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I expect contamination came from the lab.

From the WIKI
In January 2011, the head of the Russian Antarctic Expedition, Valery Lukin, announced that his team had only 50 m (200 ft) of ice left to drill in order to reach the water.[7] The researchers then switched to a new thermal drill head with a "clean" silicone oil fluid to drill the rest of the way.[46] Instead of drilling all the way into the water, they said they would stop just above it when a sensor on the thermal drill detected free water. At that point, the drill was to be stopped and extracted from the bore hole. Removal of the drill would lower the pressure beneath it, drawing water into the hole to be left to freeze, creating a plug of ice in the bottom of the hole.[47] Drilling stopped on 5 February 2011 at a depth of 3,720 m (12,200 ft) so that the research team could make it off the ice before the beginning of the Antarctic winter season. The drilling team left by aircraft on 6 February 2011.[48]

By plan, the following summer, the team was to drill down again to take a sample of that ice and analyze it.[7][49] The Russians resumed drilling into the lake in January 2012 and reached the upper surface of the water on 6 February 2012.[10][50] The researchers allowed the rushing lake water to freeze within the bore hole and months later, they collected ice core samples of this newly formed ice and sent to Russia by boat for analysis. The ice samples are currently on the research vessel Akademik Fyodorov, which will return to St. Petersburg from the Southern hemisphere in May 2013. Analysis of the samples will then start, with results published in late 2013 or early 2014.[51][13]

In the Antarctic summer of 2012–13, the Russian team also plans to send an underwater robot into the lake to collect water samples and sediments from the bottom. Sediments on its floor should give clues to its long-term climate, and isotopes in its water are expected to help glaciologists determine how and when subglacial lakes such as Lake Vostok form. An environmental assessment of the plan was submitted at the Antarctic Treaty's consultative meeting in May 2012.[49]
Controversy
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
 
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