What's Hidden Under Antarctica?

the permafrost kingdom is as intriguing as space for researchers it's melting rapidly exposing its centuries-old secrets and dragging us even further into its depths anything could be hiding under the sparkling snow-covered cap of a glacier scientists ask what secrets are hidden from us under the thick layer of ice what if traces of ancient civilizations or unusual creatures are buried under the ice cap or maybe it's where deadly viruses or bacteria are hiding Greenland opened the veil of secrecy at the end of 2019 a group of Japanese and Norwegian researchers reported that the second largest ice sheet is hiding an underground river with a length of about 1.6 thousand kilometers that's a thousand miles the river was discovered using special radars that map the location of the under ice rocks sections of the flat bottom were located at a depth of 300 to 500 meters that's 984 to 16 hundred and 40 feet below sea level and in some places dropped even below 3 kilometers that's 1.9 miles based on these data scientists have built a computer model of the under ice topography if it's a river then the source is located right in the center of the island and its waters flow into the sea on the northern coast under the peeterman fjord scientists nicknames the mysterious body of water the dark River since most of it is completely hidden from sunlight if it really exists I wonder if the existence of life there is possible scientists will be able to answer this question in the coming years in the meantime Lake Vostok in Antarctica remains the most studied some ice body of water the size of the lake is quite impressive Lake Vostok covers an area of 15,700 square kilometers that's 6061 square miles and its depth reaches 1,200 meters or almost 4,000 feet ghosts lakes don't freeze to the bottom due to energy from the rocky bottom and the pressure of ice layers the air temperature above the surface of the lake can reach minus 89 degrees Celsius that's minus 128 Fahrenheit while the average water temperature doesn't go above minus 3 Celsius or 27 degrees Fahrenheit it should be even warmer at greater depth up to 10 degrees Celsius or 50 degrees Fahrenheit due to possible hydrothermal spring activity sunlight does not reach to this depth the pressure is up to 400 bar and the organic carbon content is very low however there is an abundance of oxygen 50 times more than in a typical body of water is life possible there to answer this question scientists had to drill through almost four kilometres or two and a half miles of ice just to get to the lake itself it was highly intensive work a drill broke twice and the research had to be suspended for seven years to find a more advanced and safe drilling technology the work begun in 1989 was completed only after 24 years all for one reason life in the lake was finally found we're talking about the bacteria hydrogen Ophelia's thermal Luciola ste na which was discovered in ice samples in 2004 surprisingly this organism usually lives in hot springs its optimum temperature is between 50 to 52 degrees Celsius that's 122 to 125 Fahrenheit so how did it end up in an ice lake most likely it came from the deep faults near the lake where it's warm with low oxygen and high carbon dioxide levels seismic activity was also recorded in the vicinity of Lake Vostok which could have lifted these bacteria from faults into the upper layers of the water the scientific world was later shocked a big discovery in samples from Lake Vostok American researchers found traces of the genetic material of bacteria often associated with marine mollusks crustaceans and even fish so can an invisible lake really be hiding such a rich ecosystem the unusual finds may only be traces of the lakes remembrance of ancient times when it was filled with various forms of life or maybe these are just traces of contamination from the drilling process scientists have yet to answer this question the latest set of samples was obtained from the lake in January 2015 after cleaning the samples Russian scientists reported finding 49 DNA samples of different groups of bacteria but only two of them caught the researchers interest one type of DNA turned out to be similar to the bacterium Jam phenol bacterium SP the other belonged to an unknown species and had less than 86% in common with the known living creatures of our planet in 2018 a third possible inhabitant of Lake Vostok was found in old samples representatives of the genus lactobacillus so far there are more questions about this bacterium than answers this microorganism feeds on organic matter which is almost non-existent in the ice lake could the bacteria have risen to the surface from the depths the debates about the relict lake discoveries continue but one thing is clear the water in the lake is not sterile and could be hiding many more of nature's mysteries there will be a real breakthrough when a drill hits the bottom of the lake where the waters warmer and richer in mineral nutrients true you'll have to wait until the invention of clean drilling technology which will allow absolutely clean water samples without impurities so if there's still life in the ghost lake then there's definitely a chance of finding its extraterrestrial form of life on the distant icy oceans of Enceladus the satellite of Saturn or Europa the satellite of Jupiter should we open this ice Pandora's box indeed some pretty harmful creatures may be hiding under the ice history knows cases when hazardous bacteria and viruses woke up as ice melted for example in 2016 a 12 year old boy died from anthrax in a remote part of the Russian Tundra on the Yamal Peninsula the diagnosis was confirmed in another 24 people animals were also affected more than 2000 deer died from a disease that hadn't been heard of in the region since 1941 most likely the spread of this dangerous disease started from the carcass of an animal which was buried in frozen soil for many years hot air warmed the earth and the bacteria that had been sleeping for over 75 years came to life the outbreak was quickly suppressed but scientists got seriously worried every year the earth eats up more and more exposing layers of permafrost in 2005 a group of American researchers managed to reconstruct the Spanish flu virus that killed between 50 to a hundred million people in 1918 the viral genes were found in the tissues of a deceased woman who once lived in the Alaskan tundra tests performed on animals showed that the reconstituted virus spread in the body at lightning speed inevitably leading to death it was even possible to revive a previously unknown bacteria from permafrost where it slept in a frozen pond in Alaska for about 32,000 years the microbe Carnall bacterium Pleistocene ium witnessed woolly mammoths roaming the earth during the Pleistocene we gang up after a long sleep the bacterium began to move as if nothing had happened two years later in 2007 scientists revived in 8 million year old bacteria it was found deep underground in the Mullins Valley in Antarctica thanks to this discovery scientists were able to establish a half-life of a genome in ice which amounted to 1.1 million years the latest find by a group of international virologists was made public in early 2020 scientists investigated ice samples from 15,000 to 500 20,000 years ago taken from the Tibetan Plateau in China in the samples they found DNA residues from thirty three groups of viruses 28 of which were previously unknown moreover bacteria from two different layers of ice were very different from each other scientists have suggested that they were formed in completely different climatic periods they have no doubt that this isn't an error urologists studied only clean ice thoroughly cleanse of all contamination it's too early to panic the find is only of scientific interest the DNA of viruses is not the virus itself so it doesn't pose a threat to humans if more than a dozen viruses were found in a small area of ice then how many surprises could all the ice sheets of the earth be concealing in an area of more than 50,000 square kilometers or almost 20,000 square miles sub glacial rivers and lakes mysterious and unknown ecosystems pathogenic viruses and bacteria maybe we shouldn't try to reveal all the centuries-old secrets that nature so carefully hides under the ice gradually with climate change the puzzles will clear up themselves appearing on the surface of meltwater what do you think write to us in the comments don't forget to like the video and some drive to our channel learning about the most frightening finds of nature is not so scary together [Music]

Channel: Ridddle

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Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2020