Antartica 2012

This is one of the most exciting things happening on Earth right now, in my personal opinion. They estimate Lake Vostok is temperate, enormous and with a large and equally temperate air pocket above it. Further, they have estimates running out into the millions of years this environment may have been 100% totally isolated.

So...We may find things down there that evolved separate from even animals we think of as Dinosaurs. It's hard to say... There is something else they may find though, and it's why they've slowed WAYYY down about what they're doing.

They HAVE discovered proof of life, as I understand the reading. The very limited sampling of the air and environment indicates the markers for biological processes happening down there...so it isn't just a dead pocket like a crevasse or ice cavern would be. That brings contamination concerns in BOTH directions.

Not only could we pull a small pox blanket type screw up by just dropping a piece of equipment someone with a case of the common cold handled....but likewise, a blast from the past in airflow could carry with it a truly ancient or even never seen virus that could be lethal to us.

I can't blame the caution..and it's as good a place as any to work on getting it right. There are moons in our own Solar System that cry out for a close look under Icy surfaces....so what is learned here could matter SO much more in those other more distant places.

reply to post by TruthIncarnate


Well here's hoping they find some Valve coders working on Half life 3 down there

reply to post by TruthIncarnate


Good read thanks. I'm always interested in the Antarctica. Couldn't get the wiki links at the moment, but will come back. I remember reading a while back that they where about to drill through around now, and then where going back in December to get some ice samples of the lake water that had frozen up the drill hole thing.

Microbial life forms....how boring .Any one of us here on ATS knows that Europa is most likely teeming with life like that. It will come as no shock when after spending hundeds of millions of dollars years down the line, they find this.

Intelligent life ..... Now there's something worth going after. Who gives a toss about microbes. They are probably on every planet in existence.

The Brits are also drilling in antarctica in Lake Ellsworth,
link -

www.bbc.co.uk...

p00hbear

To breach into the lakes would also mean that they will contaminate what they intend to study. So study fast, because soon the sites will be changed forever. First one to skinny-dip in one is the winner.

Excellent thread! Nice to see something different. Did anyone mention the Piri Reis map? There was a time, about 10,000 plus years ago when Antartica was not covered in two miles of ice. It was green and a fun place to be. I think that is why that metal disk is so interesting to them, they know that because of the map, that someone had to have had information about an aerial view of Antartica when supposedly no one was supposed to have had that kind of information or ability.

reply to post by bwcawaterbear


The Piri Re'is map shows South America. 10,000 years ago Antarctica had more extensive ice cover than it does today. And the ice sheets have been there for around 40 million years.

Oh, and there's no massive circular metallic anomaly under Vostok.

Or is there?

www.phils.com.au...

(warning: not all sci-fi stories are real. )



Oh, btw, magnetic variations across Vostok do however indicate the presence of a proterozoic tectonic boundary. Quite interesting if you're a geologist specialising in that area, but not of much interest to anyone else.

www.mendeley.com...

If you look at the magnetic anomaly chart (top right in link below) you can see the feature quite well. And it's clearly linear, not circular!

www.nature.com...

reply to post by wWizard


I was thinking a Stargate. In the series it's where they found it, along with two Jaffa of course. But even though that's just a science fiction film/tv series, I do think of the possibilities. I've even thought as far as some of the comments people posted about the show just being kind of like a cover up.

Check out this thread here on ATS about stargates. It's quite amazing and one of my bookmarked threads. Right now it has 308 pages.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Essan


Very interesting post ! The data in one of your links show some nice evidence for a linear formation of magnetic rock, if this is the case as you say it is likely that it is a result of sea floor spreading.

But the geological and evolutionary implications are still astounding, if we could measure the Proterozoic subterranean boundary accurately we could determine if a pole shift occurred during the Mesoproterozoic era when oxygen was 'flooding' the atmosphere. It could help us understand how our earth truly does act as a 'open system' and how a natural equilibrium will always be established (the development of eukrayotic organism's is in my opinion a reflection of a equilibrium among earth systems)

If we obtained microbial life which was born from the beginning of the Proterozoic era it would be a breakthrough in biology, it would be amazing to see if they had developed a way to function without mitochondria or if the mitochondria relationship is still established in such an early organism, they could literally be a vital link the 'plant - microbe' chain of development, not to mention how valuable the genetic structure would be...

The geological make-up of our planet is significant to all sciences imo, we are born from this place so it is only logical to assume our nature reflects the nature of this planet, if we can discover any new data about Antarctica and its future path (maybe becoming two separate continents ?) it could help us understand the workings of our own micro-systems.

Originally posted by Jace26
Firstly, dinosaurs and or mesozoic sea life could not survive under 2 miles of rock and ice. These animals lived during an extremely warm period of earths long history, meaning that without sunlight the dinosaurs could not survive and without warm, tropical seas the sea life could not survive. It would be easier to look for them at the equator not the coldest continent.
Also, you state dinosaur fossils have been found in Antartica, but also realise that Antartica was not at the current polar circle that it is today. In fact, 200 million years ago, Victoria in Australia was at the Antartic circle.

Secondly, you do realise there is a southern hemisphere and that it has different seasons than the north. December is the easiest time to explore Antartica since that is the height of summer in the southern hemisphere.

Ah sorry my bad (or rather sloppy) writing has caused some confusion here, i didnt mean to state that there would be dinosaurs swimming about under Antarctica, rather i wanted to demonstrate to the reader (you among others) that the microorganisms or geography discovered might actually be a reflection of life that lived millions of years ago.

This may at first seem as strange statement as we are all such reflections, however we are only a 'narrow' or 'small' reflection of 'the big picture', but the life contained within the subterranean lakes of Antarctica would be a totally different 'reflection of the big picture', because it grew up or developed in a completely closed biosphere, meaning it will be highly specialized.

What would be even more interesting is that if the life is confirmed to have originated in the Proterozoic Era yet has developed along the same lines as life which was born after such an era, it would show that there is a 'universal perfection' to which all biological mechanisms strive to become.

Hope i cleared up some of those issues, just in case it wasn't clear here's the short and simple explanation : I used dinosaurs in my original post because they are the only schemata we all possess that could possibly relate to the life under Antarctica, im not saying they are dinosaurs, im saying the only way to comprehend them is to think of them as such .

reply to post by thehoneycomb


After reading your comment i went and read the book you mentioned, recently i have been noticing many pop culture references to such an event (Wolfmother Cosmic egg album being just one), personally i love the symbolism, it was truly beautiful when 'transmuted' into my own personal psycho-sexual and archetypal constructs. However in my opinion there wasn't enough epic symbolism ! At about half way through the paper it starts to talk about our understanding of time dynamics, something completely constructed by the mind (in my opinion) however it seeks to explain it in physical terms, although an admiral attempt at bridging the gap between physical and mental realities, there is only one true way to achieve this link (imo) and this book misses the mark.

However it does function as a vital stepping stone and support structure needed to reach the construction of the bridge between science and art, mental and physical etc.

Originally posted by Essan
reply to post by bwcawaterbear

 

The Piri Re'is map shows South America. 10,000 years ago Antarctica had more extensive ice cover than it does today. And the ice sheets have been there for around 40 million years.

Oh, and there's no massive circular metallic anomaly under Vostok.

Or is there?

www.phils.com.au...

(warning: not all sci-fi stories are real. )

Oh, btw, magnetic variations across Vostok do however indicate the presence of a proterozoic tectonic boundary. Quite interesting if you're a geologist specialising in that area, but not of much interest to anyone else.

www.mendeley.com...

If you look at the magnetic anomaly chart (top right in link below) you can see the feature quite well. And it's clearly linear, not circular!

www.nature.com...

..it shows both south america and antarctica..

..."One striking thing about this map is the level of detail of the coasts and interiors in South America. Although the scale is somewhat off, a long, high mountain range is shown as the source of the rivers flowing to the coast of South America.

However, the best-known feature in the Piri Re'is map (and other pre-modern maps) is the Antarctic coastline. In Hapgood and others' opinions, this represents the outline of the coast of Antarctica without glaciers.

Our modern knowledge of the coastline under the ice was obtained using seismic sounding data from Antarctic expeditions in the 1940s and 50s. Sonar is one way to map the coast under the Antarctic glaciers. The other way would be to have surveyed them when they were ice-free. According to Hapgood, who based the claim on 1949 core samples from the Ross Sea, the last time the particular area shown in the Piri Re'is map was free of ice was more than 6000 years ago. More recent studies show that this may be off by a couple of orders of magnitude. In any case, this geography should have been unknown to the ancients. If this is correct, there are some big mysteries to explain...."


www.sacred-texts.com...

It reminds me of John Carpenter's THE THING from 1982

reply to post by 12MoonCats


It does NOT show Antarctica - as would be quite obvious if you looked at it yourself (and read the anotations on it). The bit bending off to the right is Tierra del Fuego (the entrance to the Straits of Magellan are shown, but as a bay since at that stage the through passage had not been discovered).

That navy idiot Hapgood showed the map to in the 50s has a lot to answer for! Since ALL claims it shows Antarctica go back to his mistake,

Anyone considered that they might release a super virus that has been locked up in the lake down there that will wipe us out???

Not sure if it's already been mentioned (can't be bothered reading everyone's replies, sorry) but Russian Scientists already found life within the ice of the last few meters of the hole that they dug up. The only question is, have these organisms been unintentionally migrated by the diggers or have they migrated from the lake??...

To read the wiki contents in OP's article, while it's down, just right-click the (blacked-out) wiki page and select 'view source'.
Select the entire source page (CTRL+A) and copy to clip board.
Create a new file on your PC with a htm extension. (eg.: newfile.htm)
Open it with notepad.
Paste the contents of your clipboard.
Save.

Profit!

Originally posted by Aleister
To breach into the lakes would also mean that they will contaminate what they intend to study. So study fast, because soon the sites will be changed forever. First one to skinny-dip in one is the winner.

You're right on the money.

With 30 Meters left to drill....

Just 96 feet short of their goal, scientists had to put their tools away and wait out the rapidly approaching Antarctic winter. But they don’t want to lose the progress they’ve made so far, so they’re pouring kerosene down the borehole to keep it from freezing.

“If Russia continues to drill the lubricants and anti-freeze present in their borehole may taint the microorganisms they are trying to discover,” the coalition argues on its website.

As far as Im aware the Russian team are waiting for better fair weather conditions to resume drilling. Im not entirely sure where the latter part of the OP's post came from it was un-sourced and talked about Vostok being classified or something. Drilling should resume pretty much any time now.

Britain also has research teams out there drilling. Its basicaly a race, or at least being touted as a race between Britain and Russian science teams, whoever has the best drilling technology wins. They are something like 50 metres left to drill through, however weather is a the biggest concern.

Its all pretty well documented. Doesnt seem very classified, infact they are quite vocal about who can study any potential microbial life first. I guess scientists are a bit funny that way.