Lake Ellsworth Antarctic drilling project called off

An ambitious mission to drill through 3km (1.8 miles) of Antarctic ice to a lake that has been sealed off for thousands of years has been cut short

The team at Lake Ellsworth decided to call off the mission in the early hours of Christmas Day UK time. They were unable to join the main borehole with a parallel hole that was to be used to recover drilling water. The team is now "weatherising" the equipment and it is unclear when they will be able to resume the project. The £8m ($13m) project, headed by the British Antarctic Survey (Bas), aimed to drill carefully down using near-boiling water to pierce the lake, which has been untouched for as much as half a million years. The hope had been to find hints of simple life forms existing in the extreme conditions of pressure and temperature, and to find a record of climate in the lake's sediments.

. my other threads on it can be found here.
link 1
link 2

www.bbc.co.uk...



uk.news.yahoo.com...

I have a question. What do you think of them drilling into this lake? What is the gain? A few new microbes or some unknown. It is interesting but all this poking and prodding we do to the earth, maybe we should leave some areas alone. My son maybe they will discover a microbe that will cure cancer but if so then the whole place would be ruined while they harvest it.

thanks for bringing this to my attention, just not sure what to think about it.

reply to post by AuntB


i think they are searching for new life even at microbial levels one to find new species and if they find things down there (i hope there not viruses that could be bad for humanity) to see if there is a possibility that there could be life on Europa (one of jupiter's moons the frozen one).
en.wikipedia.org...

Slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and probably has an iron core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is composed of water ice and is one of the smoothest in the Solar System. This surface is striated by cracks and streaks, while cratering is relatively infrequent. The apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath it, which could conceivably serve as an abode for extraterrestrial life. This hypothesis proposes that heat energy from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives geological activity similar to plate tectonic

thats my theory so dont take that as fact.

I think they did very similar experiments recently at Lake Vostok, Antartica they found microbial life existed but if I remember correctly they think the drilling equipment might have contaminated the samples.

Apparently they were using boiling water to drill the hole and managed to get 300m down and then they say the water started seeping sideways into the ice surrounding the hole area.

I am surprised that drilling a 2 mile hole down through the ice isnt easier! Surely there are numerous techniques and toolsets that could be applied!

or wearing a conspiracy hat their is a more sinister reason.

Strange nonetheless

reply to post by haven123


Some say that under the lake New Berlin had been established, of course they had to stop drilling otherwise these massive fleets of Haunebu's will bring destruction to her Majesty

I have no evidence of this, but the television was on in the background earlier and I'm sure they said that they were 'on the verge' of breaking through to the lake. Anyway, the day went by and I got on with things only to catch the news a couple of hours ago that it'd been called off and they only managed 300 meters.

Like I said I have no proof but I swear I heard that.

Originally posted by AuntB
I have a question. What do you think of them drilling into this lake? What is the gain? A few new microbes or some unknown. It is interesting but all this poking and prodding we do to the earth, maybe we should leave some areas alone. My son maybe they will discover a microbe that will cure cancer but if so then the whole place would be ruined while they harvest it.

thanks for bringing this to my attention, just not sure what to think about it.

Mankind, all in the name of science, won't stop until they've gone too far...one of these times. I agree with you, sometimes they should just leave ole' Mother Earth alone. There's been so much poking and prodding that now we have sink holes, gas releases, unexplained booms and flashes, sky noise and what else, but hey, let's go dig another couple of miles in to see if there are any microbes!