Antarctic Subglacial Lakes May Not be Isolated

core plexus writes "Plans to drill deep beneath the frozen wastes of the Antarctic, to investigate subglacial lakes where ancient life is thought to exist, may have to be reviewed following a discovery by a British team. In a Letter to Nature they report that rivers the size of the Thames have been discovered which are moving water hundreds of miles under the ice. The finding challenges the widely held assumption that the lakes evolved in isolated conditions for several millions years and thus may support microbial life that has evolved 'independently'. It has been suggested that if microbes exist in the lakes, they could function in the same way as those in the subsurface ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa or within subsurface water pockets on Mars."

Re:"hundreds of miles under the ice?"

[MichaelSmith]

Hundreds of miles would be through the earth's crust, surely?

It means hundred of miles horizontally from pond to pond.

Re:"hundreds of miles under the ice?"

[Silver Sloth]

From the TFA (the first one) describing Lake Vostok

The 4-kilometer-thick ice sheet goes afloat as it crosses the lake, just as ice sheets become floating ice shelves at the grounding line

From TFA (the second one)

In a Letter to Nature they report that rivers the size of the Thames have been discovered which are moving water hundreds of miles under the ice.

It goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you read in the press, even if it is on line - or should that be especially when it's on line

Re:Life on Europa & Mars already an establishe

[MichaelSmith]

Perhaps this is an oblique reference to an SF novel?

Or several, perhaps. The Europa reference would be Arthur Clarke. The Mars reference would be Kim Stanley Robinson.

Either way, neither of these things is science fact.

Laterally..

[NevarMore]

Its moving water hundreds of miles under the ice in the same way a normal river moves water hundreds of miles.

40,000 Leagues Under The Sea wasn't about diving deep, it was about going far.

Fascinating

[deuterium]

I've always been fascinated with the great subglacial lakes. The residence time of the water is about a million years. Now that's some stale water. It's also under enormous pressure, and contains 50x as much oxygen as a typical freshwater lake. More can be read here [wikipedia.org].