Lake Vostok, 240 km long and 50km wide, is the largest of about 400 sub-glacial waterbodies in Antarctica. A subglacial lake is a lake found under a glacier, often below an icesheet. The ice above Lake Vostok is nearly 4-km thick. These lakes are said to be in a liquid state due to heat rising from the rockbed and from the pressure of ice pushing down.
Most scientists believe that the lake is the product of volcanic activity that melted a portion of the ice overhead. Some scientists maintain that the lake was isolated from Earth’s atmosphere after the EAIS formed more than 30 million years ago. Other scientists argue that the water making up the lake may be much younger, perhaps only about 400,000 years old. Most scientists, however, agree that Lake Vostok might harbour a unique freshwater ecosystem made up of organisms that evolved independently from other forms of life on Earth. The base of the lake’s food chain would need to derive its energy from chemical sources rather than from photosynthesis, and each organism in this environment would need to endure the pressure of 350 atmospheres (about 5,150 pounds per square inch) brought on by the weight of ice sheet above.
Several scientists have remarked that the effort to reach Lake Vostok could be a valuable planning and implementation tool for future space missions designed to search for life on worlds containing ice-covered oceans, such as those that occur on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Credit : Britannica
Picture Credit : Google
