Re:Lake Vostok Reached
by ronnoles on Wednesday February 08, 2012 @12:36PM
(#3567493)
It'll be exciting to find out what life forms are hiding down there, but by cracking the seal, we've already changed that ecosystem. Pumping hundreds of litres of kerosene into the ice was probably not the best way to introduce ourselves.
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Did you not read the article? They didn't pump any kerosene into the lake. They switched to Freon well before reaching the lake and it sounds like all (or most) of the Freon used was forced up and out of the bore hole by the pressurized water from the lake rushing up and out.
I did read the article, but it's simply wishful thinking to believe that all toxic substances could be flushed from a 3,800m deep hole. They say 1.5 cubic meters of lubricants and antifreeze came to the surface. Where did the rest go?
> They say 1.5 cubic meters of lubricants and antifreeze came to the surface. Where did the rest go?
The lake water, which is under pressure from the ice, forced 1.5 cubic meters out of the top of the hole. The rest of the four kilometer high column of lubricants and antifreeze is still in the hole.
There's no evidence that there is any more. They only need the lubricant at the point of contact with the drill bit.
If this was anything like a typical process, drilling fluid would be pumped under pressure down the drill pipe. Not a few drops - rather hundreds (or thousands) of liters. Obviously, this is not hard-rock drilling so I'd assume the volume of drilling fluid would be reduced. It would still have to be a substantial amount, definitely more that 1.5 cubic meters.
It is not much like a typical drilling process. The article includes a pretty decent infographic abt 2/3 way down, which shows the drilling principle on the last slide. Worth a look.
So now that the drilling hole is flushed of antifreeze and its filled with prehistoric lake water... what's to stop it from freezing and closing off the hole again?
It think it's funny that the liquid water at the bottom is treated as precious, but no one cares about the huge amount solid "water" above it.
liquid water could harbour life. the icepack probably doesn't have too much living in it.
We've found microbes almost everywhere, and they make up the vast, vast majority of life on this planet.
In Lake Vostok's case, the first reports were in 1999,[1] and yeast and fungi have been isolatef from ice cores collected at depths more than 3500 m below the surface.[2] Exciting stuff, no?
*: Posting from school, so sorry if these aren't free.
[1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/286/5447/2144.short
[2]: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1728/474....