Sustainability

The Vostok lake

The Vostok Lake is the biggest of the glacial lakes identified within the Antarctic ice-sheet. On the basis of radar surveys, carried out as far back as 1970, its presence was hypothesized, but its existence was confirmed in 1996 on the basis of data obtained from satellite radar altimeter measurements. The lake is enormous : it is 240 km long, 50 km wide, 600 m deep and has a surface area of 12,000 km2, it is as big as the Campania region. Its surface is situated at a depth slightly over 3,700 m. It is found just under one of the most important drilling point carried out in Antarctica, by a French and Soviet project; it is here that the longest core ever extracted was obtained allowing the study of 420,000-year-old ice. The drilling has reached a depth of 3,623 m, 120 m away from the lake’s surface, and there are no technical obstacles to its continuation. However, scientists hypothesize that the lake, whose age is estimated around 1.5 million years, could contain particular forms of life that evolved in extreme conditions and in complete isolation, without light, at a temperature of 1-2°C below zero and at a pressure of 350 atm. The opening of a connection with the surface, together with pollution produced by drilling oils, could pollute and damage this incredible ecosystem irreversibly. The scientific world has, therefore, decided to stop drilling until a method is found to carry out the researches without the risk of pollution or damage to the lake’s ecosystem : it would be senseless and ethically incorrect to destroy a delicate system just to get to know it better and to study it!