What's Hidden Under Antarctica?

TL;DR

Antarctica hides subglacial lakes, ancient mountain ranges, and microbial ecosystems sealed under miles of ice for 15 million years.

Key Points

• 1.Antarctica's ice conceals a dramatic hidden landscape. Radar-mapped surveys reveal a trench deeper than the Grand Canyon, a mountain range rivaling the Alps, a massive impact crater, and the largest volcanic region on Earth — all buried under ice nearly as tall as Mount Kilimanjaro.
• 2.Ice cores are a time machine through Earth's climate history. Layers of compressed snow preserve atmospheric bubbles, volcanic ash, and seasonal bands like tree rings; a European team recently extracted a 1.3-million-year-old core, the longest climate record ever obtained.
• 3.Lake Vostok, discovered after 28 years of Soviet drilling, is a world-record subglacial lake. Sealed for 15 million years, it sits under 350x sea-level pressure, which keeps water liquid despite sub-zero temperatures; it is the sixth-largest lake in the world by volume.
• 4.Three nations raced to drill into separate ancient lakes, with mixed results. Russia's Lake Vostok sample was likely contaminated by kerosene drill fluid; Britain's Lake Ellsworth team ran out of fuel; only the American team drilling Lake Whillans successfully retrieved uncontaminated water using UV-sterilized hot water.
• 5.A full microbial ecosystem was discovered thriving without sunlight in the subglacial lakes. The American team found bacteria colonies and tiny organisms in Lake Whillans; Dr. John Priscu's forthcoming research from a 2018 expedition reveals genuinely novel viruses and life forms unlike anything else on Earth.
• 6.Hundreds of active subglacial lakes form a connected plumbing system, lifting the ice sheet up to 10 meters. Dr. Helen Fricker first spotted this using satellites; the discovery also has direct implications for searching for life on icy moons like Europa, using identical drilling and decontamination technology.