NYT: Ice-Fishing in the Deepest Depths

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/opinion/ice-fishing-in-the-deepest-depths.xml

"The Russian mission in Antarctica has had for years an astonishing goal: to explore the remotest ecosystem on earth, lying directly beneath the most extreme climate on earth. The ecosystem is Lake Vostok, an enormous freshwater lake more than two miles beneath the ice-covered surface of the Antarctica landmass. The water remains liquid because it is trapped between the enormous, insulating pressure of the ice sheet above it and the geothermal energy below it.

After years of drilling, Russian scientists reached the lake surface last Sunday, just in time to close up shop and fly home before the weather worsens as the Antarctic winter approaches. This is, by any measure, an extraordinary engineering feat and a major scientific accomplishment. When drilling season comes again, scientists will be probing subglacial lakes all across Antarctica. The Russian team will begin sampling water from Lake Vostok, and American and British teams will begin their own drilling work elsewhere.

What makes Vostok the prize is that it is both the largest of Antarctica's lakes and astonishingly ancient. It has been sealed off from the outer world for some 15 million to 34 million years. Scientists hope that it will contain undiscovered life-forms that tell us more about our planet's past - and give a hint of what life might exist in lakes beneath the icy surface of other planets. When the Antarctic summer comes again, we will see what the scientists, like patient ice fishermen, manage to catch."