A team of Russian scientists have successfully reached a buried lake in Antarctica. The team drilled through more than two miles of ice to reach Lake Vostok, which hasn’t seen daylight in more than 14 million years.

Last week it was reported that the team had disappeared but several Russian sources reported today that the team has successfully drilled through the ice to reach the buried lake.

The newspaper Ria Novosti quoted an unnamed source saying:

“Yesterday, our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters (12,362 feet) and reached the surface of the sub-glacial lake.”

Live Science reports that the news about the Russian team’s success may come from an unreliable source. Rio Novosti also claims that the Nazis built the lake in secret in the 1930s. Hitler and Eva Braun were reportedly brought their via submarine following Germany’s surrender at the end of World War II so that they could be cloned.

John Priscu, a University of Montana microbiologist and veteran Antarctic researcher, said:

“There are a lot of rumors going around about penetrating the lake, and we need the Russian program to make the official announcement. If they were successful, their efforts will transform the way we do science in Antarctica and provide us with an entirely new view of what exists under the vast Antarctic ice sheet.”

So far there has not been an official announcement about the discovery.

A British team and an American team of researchers are getting ready to embark on their own mission to uncover some of the buried lakes in Antarctica. If the Russian’s have not succeeded, it could be a close race to the buried lakes. The British will start drilling at Lake Ellsworth this Fall and the Americans will be drilling at Whillans Ice Stream at the start of next year.

Do you think the Russians have drilled through to Lake Vostok?

Buried Lake Vostok Reached by Russian Research Team? Some Still Skeptical is a post from: The Inquisitr

This isn’t funny in the least but you can almost hear the movie scripts being written right now, everything from horror to suspense – oh wait, they’ve done those already haven’t they.

So this is more a case of life imitating art as word comes from the Antarctica that a team of Russian researchers that were drilling through the two-mile-thick layer of ice that covers Antarctica’s Lake Vostok have been out of radio contact for the last five days.

This is the lake that scientists have been drooling over because they believed it would give them an incredible look into the past as the lake hasn’t been exposed to the air for more than 20 million years.

Of course there could be any number of reasons for them losing contact but with only days to go before they have to winterize the station the other scientists are understandably very concerned for their missing colleagues.

One of their American colleagues, Dr. John Priscu of Montana State University, says he has no way to reach the drilling team, and they’re coming up on the deadline to winterize their station before Antartica’s summer season ends.

“Temps are dropping below [minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit] and they have only a week or so left before they have to winterize the station,” he told Fox News. “I can only imagine what things must be like at Vostok Station this week.”

via TDW

Here’s hoping that they haven’t woken something up eh.

Let the movie scripts begin – Russian drilling team at the Antarctica go missing is a post from: The Inquisitr

A team of British engineers is looking for alien life.  No, not for the kind in flying saucers.  These aliens are right here on Earth.  2 miles beneath the Antarctic Ice Plain is a hidden lake know as Lake Ellsworth.  The lake is 7 miles long, a mile wide, and 500 feet deep.`

“We expect to find microorganisms, because there’s water and where there’s water on planet Earth, there’s life.”

Scientists To Explore For Organisms In Hidden Antarctic Lake is a post from: The Inquisitr

In a sea of tuxedo penguins, one bird stands alone. A rare white penguin was recently spotted by tourists at the edge of one of the South Shetland Islands.

The initial reports sparked the interest of National Geographic, who just sent down a team of researchers to Antarctica to study and photograph the rare white penguin.

National Geographic reports that the penguin may look like an albino penguin, but it actually appears to have isabellinism, which dilutes the pigments of the bird’s feathers. But despite this condition, naturalist David Stephens says that the bird is perfectly healthy. Stevens said:

 ”Many wondered about this unusual bird’s chances of success. While odd coloration may make fishing a bit more difficult, leucistic birds are regularly found breeding normally.”

Here’s a video from National Geographic about the white penguin.

According to Penguin expert P. Dee Boersma of the University of Washington in Seattle, the white penguin may appear healthy but it may also be in danger. Boersma said that chinstrap penguins rely on their black feathers to hide themselves from predators in the water.

Boersma says that finding a white penguin is extremely rare because they normally get picked off by predators at a young age.

Rare White Penguin Found in Antarctica [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr

The anti-whaling group aboard the Sea Shepherd Society’s Steve Irwin were dealt a blow on Wednesday when a rogue wave smashed into the groups  Brigitte Bardot vessel cracking its hull and severely damaging one of the vessels pontoons.

The Sea Shepherd Society sets out each year in an attempt to disrupt the Japanese fleet and their murdering of more than 1,000 whales for what the fleet calls “research purposes.”

All 10 crew members aboard the vessel are save and the group says the boat is in no danger of sinking.

At the time of the freak accident the Brigitte Bardot was chasing the Japanese ship Nisshin Maru when 20-foot swells smashed a rogue wave into the port side of the vessel.

At the time of the accident the Steve Irwin was approximately 12 hours away from the damaged vessel. Once the Steve Irwin reaches the boat it will be escorted 1,500 miles to Fremantle, Western Australia, for repairs. Once the damaged is fixed the boat will return to the water off Antarctica where crew members will continue to fend off the Japanese fleet.

While the vessel is out of commission the Bob Barker crew continued to hunt for the whaling fleet on Thursday morning.

Under an International Whaling Commission ruling the Japanese fleet is allowed to kill 1,000 whales per year for research purposes, however animal rights activists have long stated that killed whales are ending up in various products around Japan and other regions rather than being used for research purposes.

The hunting season run from December through February.

This isn’t he first time the Sea Shepherd Society has had boat issues, in 2010 a Japanese vessel sheered off the bow of an anti-whaling ship during a collision.

Do you think the International Whaling Commission needs to revise their rules so Japanese “research” vessels can no longer kill ways for less than altruistic purposes?

Anti-Whaling Vessel Damaged By Wave As Crew Battles With Japan Fleet is a post from: The Inquisitr

When the Gamburtsev mountain range was first discovered in the 1950s in Antarctica, it came to a shock to scientists. It was previously believed that the terrain buried under the massive sheet of ice would be flat and featureless, but that was proven not to be the case.

Why there’s a mountain range buried deep below an ice sheet has been a mystery to scientists for years now, but the National Scientific Foundation claims that the mystery behind the Gamburtsev mountain range has been solved.

According to findings from the NSF-funded project to understand the Gamburtsev subglacial mountains, the mountain range is possible because it began forming about a billion years ago, when the continent of Antarctica was still part of the massive supercontinent, Gondwana.

This means that the Gamburtsev mountain range didn’t form in the same way that just about every other mountain range on the planet did. Instead, its formation was kicked into the gear by continents clashing with each other, which pushed up the ground in the region.

The process is believed to have taken several hundred million years to complete, and at one point it’s believed the tips of the mountains began to erode. However, around 100-250 million years ago, when the continents started to separate, the crust began to pull apart, resulting in a warmer “root”, which provided enough buoyancy to create uplift, resulting in continued formation of the mountain range.

“This research really solves the mystery of how you can have young-looking mountains in the middle of an old continent,” US principal investigator Dr Robin Bell from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University told BBC News.

“In this case, the original Gamburtsevs probably completely eroded away only to come back, phoenix-like. They’ve had two lives,” she said.

Source: NSF.gov

[Image credit: Shutterstock / Vitaly Korovin]

Gamburtsev mountains mystery “resolved” is a post from: The Inquisitr

Japan is still recovering from the major earthquake and its follow-up tsunami that struck the country back in March 2011 but the effects of that natural disaster is having far wider effects than just the nuclear reactors that are still a threat to the country.

Not only have scientists found that the earthquake may have affected the earth’s axis but it seems that it may have had a detrimental effect on the ice fields of Antarctica.

Scientists at NASA have discovered that by looking at before and after satellite images that the earthquake had enough force that the waves cause icebergs to break loose from Antarctica’s Sulzberger ice shelf.

The scale of the event is truly staggering: the waves traveled some 8,000 miles striking Antarctic ice 18 hours after the quake, eventually breaking off 50 square miles of ice. One of the icebergs was apparently the size of Manhattan. Amazingly, scientists were able to find imagery of the ice mass in a photo taken of the ice shelf in 1965. This showed that the ice had been intact for nearly 50 years.

via Geekosystem

Here is an amazing video from NASA showing the changes.

Scientists discover that Antarctica ice shelf badly damaged by Japanese earthquake is a post from: The Inquisitr

One wouldn’t think that in the Antarctica it would be too hard to find emperor penguins given that is their home turf and really how the hell to hide is all the great white expanse?

Well apparently it is harder than you think since Antarctica is about 1.5 times larger that the United States there is actually lots of places to hide. This has made it harder for scientists trying to locate all the penguin colonies on the continent.

Then totally by accident the scientists at the British Antarctic Survey were looking over satellite images of their bases discovered how to find them. Look for the penguin shit. Seriously, I’m not kidding. It seems that because the penguins stay on the same ice for months their excrement leaves a large reddish-brown stain on the ice.

Look for the stain – find the penguins.

Just something for you to file away for that trip you might take to the Antarctica.

picture via DiscoveryNews

How to find penguins – look for the brown stain is a post from: The Inquisitr