Scientists managed to get core samples from the ice-covered lake East 
Photo from open sources PHOTO: NASA Russian scientists were able to extract the first sample of transparent ice from the water of Lake Vostok in Antarctica. The success of drilling operations of specialists is reported today RIA “Novosti” with reference to the press service of the Arctic and Roshydromet Antarctic Research Institute (AARI). The complexity of the work was that they were carried out on a depth of almost 3 thousand meters, according to the release of AANII. “At a depth 3406 meters January 10, the first core from a transparent lake was received ice, 2 meters long, inside which there is a vertical channel, filled with white bubbly ice, “the agency quotes the document. The first ice tests showed that traces of microorganisms they practically do not contain, but scientists do not lose hope that their research will help science understand the nature of changes that occurred with terrestrial climate in recent millennia. As said Head of the logistics center of the Russian Antarctic Expedition (RAE) Vyacheslav Martyanov, physical properties of ice and its process formations can differ significantly from ordinary ones. “First in completely unknown ice went to the well – opaque, porous, bright white. But after 20 meters went transparent ice, inside which a channel of white ice “froze”. Ice formation under such conditions, with crazy pressure in the well has not yet been physically studied, “he said. Drilling in subglacial lake lasted about 30 years. At the beginning of February last years scientists from the detachment of the 57th Russian Antarctic expedition For the first time they were able to penetrate the space under the ice. Lake The east is the largest subglacial lake of Antarctica, located in the area of the station of the same name. Its area is about 15 thousand square meters km, and the depth is about 1200 meters. Uniqueness East is that it was completely isolated from Earth’s surface for several million years.
Arthur VESELOV
Antarctica
