Hours decisive for a Russian team at the South Pole under the ice
a habitat for 15 million years ago
There are only five meters. More a hit and a true time capsule will hatch before the eyes of researchers after a sleep that lasted 15 million years.
The object of desire is Lake Vostok, huge expanse of water - more or less like Ontario, the youngest of the five Great Lakes USA - buried in Antarctica by an ice sheet 4 kilometers thick. After months of work the team of Russian scientists led by Alexei Turkeyev is finally about to discover the secret. In fact, nobody knows what is hidden beneath it. The hypothesis is that there are hidden depths in dark new forms of life. "There is only a little bit," whispers Turkeyev the handset of his satellite phone.
"Out there is a temperature of -40 ˚ - says the student journalists reached by the Independent on Sunday -. But we work the same. They were five meters of ice before the surface of the lake, we'll get there soon. " But the brief Antarctic summer is almost over. And it is the Russian Vostok station that was recorded the lowest temperature ever observed on Earth, -89.2 ˚. The Russians will then be forced to abandon their post, perhaps today. It seems certain now that the full exploration of the waters will have to wait another year. Time, observed many in the scientific community, will serve to better prepare the shipment. "It 's like exploring an alien planet where no one has ever set foot before," said Valery Lukin, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg, the institute which is coordinating the mission -. Nobody knows what we can find. "
The comparison is not alien to air unsubstantiated. The living conditions in Lake Vostok would be prohibitive so it can serve as a means of comparison with certain environments of Mars. Even without leaving the planet Earth, there are many reasons to be impatient: the waters of Vostok could shed new light on the conditions of life before the last ice age. In reality, what all students are hoping to find unknown species of microbes or bacteria that have evolved in a world without sunlight. "When it comes to the exploration of our planet and its understanding - said Chuck Kennicutt, oceanographer - Antarctica is the last frontier."
The Russians, however, are not the only ones who work the auger. Two other teams, including one British, are trying to reach the waters of other smaller lakes: the underground reservoirs discovered to date are 150 to the south pole. Martin Siegert, head of the department of geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, is optimistic: "We are talking about extreme environments that might still be habitable. If so we are interested in understanding how possibile».
La prossima sfida, comunque, non sarà tanto quella di superare gli ultimi cinque metri di ghiaccio, ma di farlo senza contaminare in modo irrecuperabile le acque purissime del Vostok. «Credo che in quel lago si scoprirà un’oasi per la vita. Ma sinoa che non saremo sicuri di entrare in modo pulito, dovremo essere cauti», ha detto John Priscu della Montana State University. Opinione condivisa da Massimo Frezzotti, responsabile delle attività di Glaciologia del Programma nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide. «Al momento - spiega - non ci sono garanzie che la perforazione venga fatta nel pieno rispetto ambientale e in modo pulito, ossia evitando contaminazioni». Per questo sono vent’anni che progetti of this type are hampered by the environmental safeguards imposed by the Antarctic Treaty, a reference point for all scientific organizations that conduct their research here. The Lake Vostok drilling project, submitted last November to the Antarctic Treaty Committee for Environmental Protection, was welcomed with caution. Apprehension shared by Russian researchers. "I'm very excited - said Alexei Ekaikin -: once touched, the lake will be broken forever."
fonte.LASTAMPA.
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