Lake Vostok

Lake Vostok (Russian: озеро Восток, romanized: ozero Vostok) is the largest of Antarctica's 675 known subglacial lakes and the 16th largest lake in the world by area. Lake Vostok is located at the southern Pole of Cold, beneath Russia's Vostok Station, under the surface of the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is at 3,488 m (11,444 ft) above mean sea level. The surface of this fresh water lake is approximately 4,000 m (13,100 ft) under the surface of the ice, which places it at approximately 500 m (1,600 ft) below sea level. The lake is named after the Vostok Station, which derives its name from Vostok (Восток), the name of a sloop-of-war, which means "East" in Russian (the lake is also located in East Antarctica). The existence of a subglacial lake was first suggested by Russian geographer Andrey Kapitsa based on seismic soundings made during the Soviet Antarctic Expeditions in 1959 and 1964 to measure the thickness of the ice sheet. Continued research by Russian and British scientists led to the final confirmation of the existence of the lake in 1993 by J. P. Ridley using ERS-1 laser altimetry. The overlying ice provides a continuous paleoclimatic record of 400,000 years, although the lake water itself may have been isolated for 15 to 25 million years. Because Lake Vostok may contain an environment sealed off below the ice for millions of years, the conditions could resemble those of ice-covered oceans hypothesized to exist on Jupiter's moon Europa, and Saturn's moon Enceladus. On 5 February 2012, a team of Russian scientists completed the longest ever ice core of 3,768 m (12,400 ft) and pierced the ice shield to the surface of the lake. The first core of freshly frozen lake ice was obtained on 10 January 2013 at a depth of...