Lake Whillans is a

subglacial lake A subglacial lake is a lake that is found under a glacier, typically beneath an ice cap or ice sheet. Subglacial lakes form at the boundary between ice and the underlying bedrock, where gravitational pressure decreases the pressure melting point ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

. The lake is located under the

Whillans Ice Stream Whillans Ice Stream () is a glaciological feature of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, formerly known as Ice Stream B, renamed in 2001 in honor of Ohio State University glaciologist Ian Whillans. Research Whillans Ice Stream is one of about a half-do ...

at the southeastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf in the west of the continent. The lake surface is beneath the surface of the ice and the lake covers an estimated area of . Lake depths measured thus far have been around . Its temperature is −0.49 °C, below 0 °C because of the high pressure. Lake Whillans, like the Whillans Ice Stream, is named for

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

glaciologist Glaciology (; ) is the scientific study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice. Glaciology is an interdisciplinary Earth science that integrates geophysics, geology, physical geography, geomorphology, clima ...

Dr. Ian Whillans.

Discovery

The lake was first described in 2007 by Helen Fricker, a glaciologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Satellite laser altimeter data from NASA's

ICESat ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite) was a NASA satellite mission for measuring ice sheet mass balance, cloud and aerosol heights, as well as land topography and vegetation characteristics. It operated as part of NASA's Earth Obs ...

had revealed the ice at that location rising and falling, leading her team to conclude the presence of the lake.

Research

On 28 January 2013, the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) team announced that they had reached the lake surface having drilled through the ice above. Drilling was accomplished using a hot-water drill to create a borehole in diameter. Over the following days the team collected water samples and also sediment cores from the lake bottom. Initial analysis of water and sediment has revealed that they contain more than 3,900 kinds of microbial life. Bacteria are surviving in this environment without

photosynthesis Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that, through cellular respiration, can later be released to fuel the organism's activities. Some of this chemical energy is stored i ...

. The ecosystem is apparently based on the oxidation of

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous wa ...

and

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Ea ...

from sediments laid down at least 120,000 years ago. According to WISSARD, the project “marks the first successful retrieval of clean whole samples from an Antarctic subglacial lake”. Similar efforts have been undertaken at

Lake Vostok Lake Vostok (russian: озеро Восток, ''ozero Vostok'') is the largest of Antarctica's almost 400 known subglacial lakes. Lake Vostok is located at the southern Pole of Cold, beneath Russia's Vostok Station under the surface of the cen ...

, where samples have yet to yield any discoveries, and at Lake Ellsworth, where drilling had to be abandoned. These projects may yield insights into the search for life elsewhere in the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

. In particular, the moons Europa (

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

) and

Enceladus Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn (19th largest in the Solar System). It is about in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most refle ...

( Saturn) have large amounts of liquid water beneath icy crusts. In January 2015, drilling near the grounding line (transition point from fresh water to sea water) revealed a colony of fish, crustaceans, and jellyfish inhabiting the dark, frigid waters below the ice shelf. Images taken with a remote camera showed fish and amphipods.Bizarre Antarctic fish lives below 2,500 feet of ice
Becky Oskin,

Christian Science Monitor Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρισ ...

, 23 January 2015, accessed 26 January 2015

References

External links

Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whillans Lakes of Antarctica Subglacial lakes

Discovery

Research

See also

References

External links