Life found in Lake Vostok ice

John Priscu found microbes in an ice core taken from just above Lake Vostok in Antarctica. Such microbes could exist on Jupiter's moon Europa.

December 10, 1999
Web posted at: 2:12 p.m. EST (1912 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

Microbes have been found in ice just above Lake Vostok, a freshwater lake buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, researchers announced in three separate studies in Friday's issue of Science.

"The ice we found the microbes in is refrozen water from Lake Vostok. Hence, our data strongly imply that there is life in the lake-water itself," said John Priscu, a biologist at Montana State University and lead author of one of the studies.

Lake Vostok ice is among the deepest ever explored for life and is the closest earthly analog to Jupiter's moon Europa, which scientists believe may also contain the elements necessary for life.

The researchers based their studies on an ice core, 18 inches long and four inches wide, that was taken from about 11,800 feet below the surface of the ice sheet and about 495 feet above Lake Vostok.

Scientists believe that if life can live in Lake Vostok it may be able to live on Jupiter's moon Europa.

Lake Vostok is deeper than California's Lake Tahoe with a maximum depth of about 1,640 feet and has a surface area similar to Lake Ontario, one of North America's Great Lakes.

The bacteria are related to common soil microbes and may have blown on bits of soil from the Patagonian deserts onto the ice sheet and then been buried. The other possibility is that the microbes originated in the lake and became trapped as the lake water refroze to the glacier bottom.

Jean Jouzel, a scientist at the Centre Nacional de la Recherche Scientifique in France found evidence that the ice core sampled by the researchers indeed came from Lake Vostok water that refroze to the glacier.

"Jouzel et al did a beautiful job of showing that the deep ice below Vostok Station was accreted from liquid water below it. Their information lets us extrapolate our deep ice results to Lake Vostok," said Priscu.

Multimedia Buried Lake Vostok likened to Jupiter moon Requires RealPlayer

The extrapolation that Priscu and his colleagues make is that Lake Vostok contains all the elements required for an active, microbial ecosystem.

Scientists have not acquired a water sample from the lake itself out of a concern that they might contaminate one of the last pristine ecosystems on Earth.

"We, as scientists, have to realize that we must be the stewards of the Antarctic environment. Until we are satisfied that we will not contaminate the system, we will not penetrate the ice to the lake," said Priscu.

Scientists plan to use the same techniques they develop to acquire a water sample from Lake Vostok when they search for life on other planets, such as Jupiter's moon Europa, added Priscu.

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