Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Apr 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003eaeja.....5285l&link_type=abstract
EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6 - 11 April 2003, abstract #5285
Mathematics
Logic
Scientific paper
Lake Vostok is now viewed as an isolated ecosystem featured by extreme life conditions similar to those expected for icy planets. Indeed, up to now, no confident findings of revived microbes are reported for the deep glacier ice at Vostok, which implies the biota of the lake if existing does not originate from the ice above. In contrast, ~15 kyr old re-frozen lake water (accretion ice) originating from a shallow bay upstream Vostok and containing sediment inclusions showed signatures of unexpected thermophilic-like chemolithoautotroph-related bacteria. Cold-living bacteria are not yet found in the accretion ice whereas the observed marine diatom skeletons look polished as if they were specially treated with aggressive chemicals. Therefore it seems that the major water body of the lake does not contain living biota probably due to high concentration of dissolved oxygen supplied from melting ice. Lake Vostok represents an old (Late-Jurassic-Early Cretaceous) inactive rift structure bounded by deep faults. Rare seismotectonic events can periodically disrupt the crustal continuity, enhance penetrativity of fractures and cause uplift of hot solutions within faults which bring deep-seated ‘crustal’ bacteria from stratal waters up to the lake floor where they may be incorporated in the accretion ice. In addition, fluids delivered from crust can reside at the bottom of the lake making the water body locally stratified and providing a habitat for cold-living not yet discovered microbes. Thus, we conclude that the likelihood of having living biota in subglacial lakes with no rift geological setting is quite low. The only two lakes, Vostok and its recently discovered still unnamed brother, both featured by rift structure can advance our knowledge on life in subglacial environments. Further drilling at Vostok would provide us with younger lake ice accreted at the maximum water depth and the anticipated sampling of near-bottom waters and bottom sediments at this site would give us more direct information about biota expected to exist in Lake Vostok.
Bulat Sergey A.
Leitchenkov G. L.
Lipenkov Vladimir Y.
Lukin Vladimir
Masolov Valery N.
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