For the first time, circles on the lake were recorded in 1999. At that time, no one paid attention to the abnormal patterns. What kind of circles are these, and where did they come from?
Mysterious Polar Patterns
On April 5, 2010, the International Space Station from a height of 350 kilometers takes fantastic pictures. The photographs clearly show that the ice lake Vostok in Antarctica has two seemingly imprinted circles of almost perfect shape. In the images they seem small. But the diameter of each of them is almost four kilometers.
First scientific assumptions
The fact that life can exist under many kilometers of ice is the first to suggest Academician Andrei Kapitsa. He conducted seismic studies and found out that in central Antarctica, under a four-kilometer-thick ice layer, there is an incredible lake with an area of 20,000 m². This is ten times more than the Principality of Monaco. It is located directly under the Soviet research station. This icy Vostok lake in Antarctica is still one of the most interesting puzzles for mankind.
Is there life in Antarctica
During the study, Soviet scientists found that under the ice is a hemisphere filled with oxygen, which has its own climate and unique ecosystem. Temperature fluctuations of water in the lake are +10 ... +18 º, as in spring in the Black Sea. This can only mean one thing - life exists under the multilayer stratum of Antarctic ice many kilometers long and it differs radically from everything we are used to.
Ice helper
For almost 20 years, Russian scientists, together with French colleagues and specialists from the United States, have been studying the icy Lake Vostok in Antarctica. To find out which organisms have been living there for millions of years, they created a special ice transport vehicle - a cryobot (or a hydro-robot). With the help of jets of hot water, he must drill a well of 3.5 km, and then wait until the space above it freezes. After that, the robot sterilizes itself and continues drilling. Having melted the lid of the ice dome and descending into the lake, it transfers information to the surface for further study.
New discovery of Lake Vostok in Antarctica
In March 2011, when the drilling rig needed to drill another 120 meters, due to insufficient funding, the unique lake in Antarctica was no longer explored and the project was closed. And this despite the fact that literally six months before this, scientists made a fantastic discovery. They found that Lake Vostok is not at all the largest homogeneous ice formation. Natural areas of Antarctica, in contact with ice, form ice islands. It turned out that there are hollow subglacial formations, the so-called pocket cavities, in which water reaches different deep levels. In addition, the unique underwater relief of Antarctica in some places has formations with a depth of more than a thousand meters, that is, two times more than previously thought. But the most amazing thing is that near the southeastern part of Lake Vostok there is a large magnetic anomaly.
The polar host of the lake
In other words, someone or something is causing a disturbance under the four-kilometer ice layer. Scientists do not yet know who can cause magnetic anomalies under the ice. The most daring researchers suggest that some rational creatures do this, and in their opinion there is evidence for this. The relief of Antarctica was photographed directly from space only two months after the research work on the mysterious lake was suspended. Copies of photographs depicting circles on the surface of a frozen Lake Vostok were studied by specialists at a London research institute. British scientists carefully analyzed the entire area of Antarctica around the water body and put forward a sensational version. The drawings are drawn from the inside of the ice cover, which means that the circles on the ice of the lake may appear due to the fact that an unexplored underwater civilization lives under the water column. Perhaps there are some bases under water, and this, you see, is a very interesting fact. Humanity knows less about the depths of the oceans than about the lunar soil. So we still have to study our planet for a long time.
Mysterious Antarctica
Russian scientists do not agree with the opinion of their British colleagues. They believe that the area of Antarctica, taken from outer space, with its mysterious patterns on the lake, is not at all traces of underwater civilization, but simply freaks of nature, and they were formed due to the warm undercurrents. Experts assure that if intelligent life existed at the bottom of the lake, they would have discovered it long ago. Many people think that the situation is the same as with circles on earth's fields, they say, this is the work of man. Someone deliberately falsifies such drawings, while someone considers them to be one of the forms of contemporary art. It is believed that such meteorological features of Antarctica are caused, for example, by insignificant temperature fluctuations. After all, the sphere and the circle are natural forms that form in nature by themselves. Four-kilometer circles on the surface of the under-ice Antarctic lake could indeed turn out to be some kind of natural phenomenon, if not for one but. The natural zones of Antarctica are such that in order for proparins to form, the current must literally boil - this is the law of physics. But in places where mysterious prints were found, the thickness of the ice reaches three kilometers. To date, the scientific world does not know any underwater current that can erode such dense ice.
What do we know about the South Pole
The geographical coordinates of Antarctica are determined by its highest point, Cape Sifre (63 ° 14 ′ S and 57 ° 11 ′ W). This continent is the most isolated of all the surfaces of the globe. By area, Antarctica can be compared with the South American continent. All approaches and approaches to the ice "monster" are blocked by huge icebergs and ice fields. In winter, it is impossible to get to the ice continent. Apart from moss and lichen, nothing grows here anymore. Constant cold stormy winds make this frozen continent almost impossible for human habitation. The entire vital infrastructure of its few inhabitants (polar explorers) is supported from the mainland. The extraction of natural resources, the import of weapons and military equipment, by international agreement, is strictly prohibited. Antarctica cannot belong to anyone. But every year ships and planes with new polar scientific expeditions, which have certain tasks, go to the southern crown of the earth's surface. What are they looking for here and what secret do rivers and lakes of Antarctica hide?
Mastering the polar continent
On July 1, 1957, sixty-seven countries agreed to conduct research on a single program around the globe. It was an unprecedented experiment. A grand attack on Antarctica began. Thirteen ships rushed to its shores. Each country had to build its wintering station in the sector strictly allocated to it. The Soviet Union inherited a section between 80 and 105 eastern meridians. The flagship of the first Soviet expedition, the diesel electric ship Ob, arrived here in January-1956. Soviet polar explorers first saw Antarctica. An interesting fact: it was noted that the coldest air temperature on Earth was recorded precisely in the vicinity of the Vostok station. Here, on May 21, 1983, polar meteorologists recorded -128.56 degrees Fahrenheit, or -89.2 degrees Celsius.
World resonance from unusual finds
The discovery of Russian polar explorers excited the entire world scientific community. In particular, ichthyologists and jewelers watched the events surrounding the expedition to Lake Vostok in Antarctica closely. Gold samples and traces of fish unfamiliar to science, which can literally be called golden, were found in water samples taken at a depth of 4000 meters.
Golden water of Antarctica
When lifting ice rods from Lake Vostok, scientists discovered in it, in fact, gold metal. Micro-spectral studies of ice and water of a unique ice lake showed that the density of the concentration of gold ions in them is 80%. That is, it turns out that the content of gold ions in water corresponds to a gold bar of the 700th sample. Another thing is that the metal in water is in molecular form, and with the naked eye it is almost impossible to see. One of the main tasks for polar research is the mystery of sterile water, in which so many metal impurities are found. There is an assumption that Lake Vostok is the largest gold-bearing residential, and space surveys confirm this. The ridge, containing precious metal inclusions, may be a continuation of the underwater deposit Yanococha, which originates in the South American Andes, off the coast of the Republic of Peru. The alleged gold-bearing polar vein is not homogeneous in its chemical composition. In its various parts, precious metallic inclusions have different molecular structures. The South Pole in this sense manifests itself as a magnet of planetary proportions. It turns out that part of the gold-bearing metals simply mixes with water mass at the level of molecular diffusion. From the outside world Lake Vostok in Antarctica is completely blocked by a thick layer of ice, therefore, for hundreds of millions of years, the content of the precious metal can not go anywhere. This earthly treasure is stored, as in an armored safe of a reliable bank, exactly under the Russian Vostok station. Antarctica, East (lake) is a territory of science. It does not belong to any state. But now a number of countries have indicated their position: they are seeking access to the wealth that Russian scientists have found.
Goldfish in the ice world
It turned out to be a sensation that Lake Vostok in Antarctica is inhabited. Polar scientists found an unusual object in one of the samples of ice samples, namely, the scales of a fish unknown to science and humanity. Scientists unofficially call it gold, which is justified. Precious metal, dissolved in deep waters, completely covers this mysterious fish with a thin layer. Judging by the size of the scales, this polar individual has a length of the order of ninety centimeters. Such a unique Antarctic find can revolutionize all fundamental science. It becomes obvious that in the twenty-first century, the tale of the goldfish still exists. One can only hope that she is still alive and has not lost her fabulous and such seductive abilities to fulfill any human desires ...
The mystery of polar nature
The question of the age of Lake Vostok remains open. At least 400,000 years, and maybe a million. How did it come about? According to the first hypothesis, from the friction of a multi-kilometer glacier with the surface of the earth. He began to melt, and from high pressure the ice turns into water at a lower temperature, according to the law of thermodynamics. The second hypothesis suggests that there has always been a subglacial lake. However, when it got colder, the mainland shifted to the pole, it began to become covered with a crust of ice. For thousands of centuries, he completely isolated water from the cold air.
Scientific hypotheses and further discoveries
What do these Antarctic studies give to world civilization? Scientists call these findings extraterrestrial life on the bacterial planet Earth. If a further examination of the lake shows that there is no life, then this will also be an important discovery. Since this will be the first ecological niche in which bacterial life is impossible. In both research scenarios, this will be useful for searching for extraterrestrial life on other ice planets, for example, such as Europe, the satellite of Jupiter.