Lakes found under more than 3 kilometers of ice may reveal the very beginnings of life.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scot ... 191687.stm
Quote:
An Edinburgh scientist's study of a 15 million-year-old lake buried under the ice of Antarctica could yield clues on climate change and the origins of life. .......<snip>......He said: "For example, because water acts as a lubricant to the ice above, they may influence how the ice sheet flows.
"Their potential for unusual life forms could shed new light on evolution of life in harsh conditions; lake-floor sediments could yield vital clues to past climate."
He added the lakes could also help to give insight into the extraterrestrial environment of Europa - one of Jupiter's moons.
I have other stories about these lakes but I wanted to mention that i watched "An inconvenient truth" today and his section about the water rushing out from eastern canada into the ocean and the threats from Antarctica and Greenland are similar. i saw a show on how Icedams break and it is started underneath the ice in small ways that start this kind of flow Gore described. As examples, thwer ewere the ones in the west that created strange formations in Idaho during successive dam breaks and another was an incident in Iceland recently. These lakes and streams under glaciers are powerful forces as they sometimes fill with waterand then empty in Antarctica at measured 30 foot heights. That is how they found these lakes.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/di ... akes_x.htmQuote:
The lakes were detected under 2,300 feet of ice by satellite data gathered in 2003 and 2006. The satellite bounced laser measures off the same patches of ice to measure precise changes in elevation, according to a presentation made by the researchers at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Francisco.
The lakes gave away their positions by rising and falling — by as much as 30 feet in one case. The researchers, expressing surprise at how quickly the lakes drain, think they fill until they bust, sending their contents cascading under the ice sheet.
