What is a relict lake? Discovery of a relict lake in Antarctica

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:48

In Antarctica at the end of the last century, a large subglacial lake was discovered near the Vostok station. Its area is about 20,000 sq. km., the volume of water - 5400 thousand cubic meters. km. Scientists of the world rank such a geographical discovery among the largest in the 20th century.

Unexpected for everyone was the ice sheet, which has a thickness of 4000 meters, which until now hid this huge relic lake. In total, more than 140 such reservoirs have been discovered in Antarctica to date. East remains the largest among them.

What is a relic lake?

This is a reservoir that continues to exist on the site of a retreating sea, communicating with it through channels or remaining isolated.

Such a phenomenon occurs as a result of tectonic processes or in the formation of any accumulative forms (bar-bars, spits). There are many of these in the world. This article presents a story about one of the most unique lakes, relatively recently discovered in Antarctica.

About the opening

As discoveredrelic lake in Antarctica? In the middle of the 20th century, Andrei Kapitsa (a Soviet polar explorer) studied the ice sheet near the Vostok station. In the process of studying the signals reflected from the ice, he noticed that something else was hiding under the thick layer of the glacier. Only after 40 years, after numerous studies, he was able to find out the following: under the huge ice mass in Antarctica there is an unknown lake.

For the first time, drilling of a well called 5G-1 was started in 1989 during a joint expedition of scientists from France, the USA and the USSR. In the process of drilling at a depth of 3539 meters, the surface of ice was reached, which in its structure represented the frozen water of a subglacial reservoir. By 1999, a depth of 3,623 meters had been reached, where ice samples were approximately 430,000 years old.

Features

Lake Vostok is located in the very center of Antarctica. Its maximum depth is about 1200 meters. It occupies the 3rd place in the world among the deepest lakes. A powerful dome of ice can only be compared with the highest mountains. If Elbrus were at the bottom of the relic lake Vostok, then it would be completely blocked by an ice layer.

Today, the ice cap, striking in its scale, is a laboratory. In the thickness of the ice, particles of the atmosphere that were in these places many centuries ago are preserved. With the available data, it will be possible to judge the level of greenhouse gas content in the past, as well as to obtain information on the quantitative change in climate properties and on the factors that have becomecause this.

What did scientists discover?

The lake, which was isolated from the biosphere and atmosphere of the Earth for 4-25 million years, has almost all the factors important for living organisms to live in it: fresh water, the oxygen content is 50 times higher than in ordinary water, as well as high temperature, which is most likely due to the presence of geothermal underground sources. But there are some difficulties for microorganisms, mainly due to the huge water pressure created by the giant ice shell, as well as the absence of light and any organic matter.

In 2013, Russian scientists managed to detect previously unknown microbial life in samples of frozen water extracted from the lake by DNA analysis. This bacterium has not yet been identified or classified. Such a discovery can significantly change some ideas in the world of science. It turns out that the relict Lake Vostok today is the only platform on the planet Earth for practicing methods of searching for extraterrestrial life forms, since the conditions in the lake resemble data on some planets in which life can most likely exist.

Russian polar explorers were able to get to the depths of Lake Vostok by drilling about 4,000 meters deep. The ice in the lake has a completely unique structure. These are single giant crystals that have been discovered for the first time.

Further work

Metal water, extracted from a relict lake in Antarctica, is now in a museum,located at the Mining Institute. A sample of less than one liter was obtained through the work of many people over 50 years.

The goal of the work carried out by scientists in this direction is to learn how to extract clean water in an unfrozen state. Today, at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of St. Petersburg, a facility is being designed that allows special devices to be lowered into Lake Vostok.

In closing

There are many similar lakes in the world. Among them, Lake Inari, which was formed during the Ice Age and is one of the many natural reservoirs in Finland, can be especially distinguished. It belongs to the relict lakes. Reviews of tourists who have visited this mysterious place are enthusiastic.

Russian lakes belong to such types: Ladoga, Onega. Also, such formations include the Caspian, Aral Sea, etc.