Alien Life ?

Last night while sitting at the picnic table outside my workplace, eating my enforced salad diet, I had an eyeopening experience. Reading the Toronto Sun, there was an anonomous article (April 19th 2006) called “Climate Secrets in Ancient Ice”. Peeking over a frozen cylinder was a Japanese scientist. He held this ice core bored from 3 kilometers beneath the Antarctic. It is they say, the coldest, dryest and windiest continent, a really lethal place to visit.

The scientists keep their ice samples in a room that holds a constant temperature of minus 20 and by examining the ancient air pockets they are able to surmise a lot about the atmosphere of a million years ago. Now thats a long time ago and there seems to be a pretty liberal interpretation of all figures pertaining to this subject. One million years by one source could well be ten million by another. Keep an open mind and bare with my figures.

Down deep the ice does not flow quite as readily as it does closer to the surface. Internet sites say that the average snowflake that falls in the middle of the Antarctic takes around 50 000 years to reach the ocean. The frozen crust creeps slowly outward in a radial pattern. The Antarctic is said to be the Southern Ocean’s iceberg factory; cleaving off in great pieces once the ice hits the ocean. One huge island floated off in dimentions equavalent in size to the state of Delaware.

From my perspective I had no idea that the Antarctic was so heavily overlain by ice, nor had I any idea of its age. Apparently the Antarctic’s ice averages around 7000 feet in thickness and beneath the Polar Plateau it has accumulated to a depth of 15 000 feet. It is said that this immense weight pushes the crust down below sea level and if it were to melt, the land would rebound in some places to a height of 1500 feet.

The discovery that I find most exciting was made by Soviet scientists a few years ago. By way of ariel surveys and the analysis of magnetic data they revealed the presence of two great lakes sealed beneath the ice. Because of their depth and size they surmised that the lakes are fissures in the earth’s surface. Depressions of tectonic origon. Some claim that entrapped water is 400 million years old, others say that the lakes were sealed off 35 million years ago. Whatever the case, it is a most incredible find.

Though it has long been known that there are many small lakes trapped beneath the Antarctic ice few had imagined such immense resevoirs. Both Lake Vostok and Lake Sovetskaya lie parallel to each other blanketed by over 2 miles of ice. Vostok’s depth is estimated at around 900 metres however there is an alternate view that suggests a depth of between 10 and 500 metres. The surface area is quite indisputably mapped out by the ariel survey findings at around 10 000 square kilometres.

So the first question that pops into my mind is, If the water has been trapped down there for so long, is there any life and how has it evolved? By adaption, extremophiles can live almost anywhere. A case in point was the journey into Movile Cave in Romania. The cave had been sealed off for 2 million years and when scientists entered, they found a bizarre evolution of water scorpians that fed on bacteria that floated on frothy rafts of methane bubbles. Could this have been the inspiration for the recently released movie, “The Cave”?

Some suggest that this entombed world of ice might harbour some evidence of earth’s past alien visitations. Others think that there might be viruses and bacteria better left untouched. At this time scientists debate over the wisdom of penetrating these buried lakes with a probe. To do so would immediatly contaminate that world with our surface micro-flora and fauna. Whatever the case it is a buried environment that leaves one marvelling as to natures fantastic processes and still hidden secrets.