Lake Vostok: A Lake Sealed Under 2 Miles of Ice

Lake Vostok lies under nearly four kilometres of Antarctic ice, close to the coldest place on Earth. It is about 250 kilometres long, roughly the size of Lake Ontario, and may have been sealed from air and light for millions of years. On 5 February 2012, at a depth of 3,769 metres, a Russian drill finally touched it. This video explains how a lake stays liquid at around minus three degrees under 340 atmospheres of pressure, why its water is supersaturated with oxygen, how sixty tonnes of kerosene and Freon in the borehole created the contamination problem, how the team let the lake push its way up and freeze into a sample, and why scientists still argue over whether the DNA they found came from the lake or from themselves. Chapters: 0:00 A Lake Never Seen 1:13 The Echo Under the Ice 2:28 Why It Stays Liquid 3:39 Pressure Meets Rock Heat 4:54 Water Loaded With Oxygen 6:14 Sixty Tonnes of Kerosene 7:30 Letting the Lake Sample Itself 8:38 The DNA Argument 9:59 Whisper in a Crowded Room 11:14 Four Hundred Hidden Lakes 12:26 Drill Again or Leave It? Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vo... https://www.science.org/content/artic... https://www.science.org/content/artic... https://www.nature.com/articles/natur... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/sc... https://www.livescience.com/planet-ea... Should we drill into Lake Vostok again, knowing the risk of contaminating something sealed for millions of years, or leave it alone until we can do it clean? Tell me in the comments.