After weeks of drilling with an environmentally safe hot water drill, scientists have found that Whillans Lake, a 60-square kilometer body of water underneath the Ross Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, is home to about 1,000 bacteria per millimeter of water. That's approximately one-tenth the amount in the oceans, but what stands out about these microbes is that they require no sunlight to live.
Photosynthesis requires light, which does not occur in Whillians Lake, so scientists speculate that the bacteria could be getting their nutrients from hydrothermal vents, decaying bacteria from the ice melt, or from the chemical reactions between Antarctic bedrock and carbon dioxide dissolved in the water.
Researchers believe that Europa, one of Jupiter's 67 confirmed moons, has similar conditions on its surface: a thick layer of ice with ocean underneath, and could be hospitable to life.
A team of scientists planned the WISSARD (Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research In Drilling) Project over a decade ago, then spent the last three years preparing to drill, according to its website.
After an intense period of drilling, the team reached the surface of the lake on January 28. Once they confirmed that materials could be safely excavated from the hole, researchers pulled up 30 liters of water and eight sediment cores from the lake's bottom.
The ice shelf is 800 meters deep, though the lake was only about 2 meters — much shallower than the expected 10-25 meters, though scientists have not ruled out the possibility of some areas being deeper than others. Whillans was only 800 meters below the ice, far shallower than similar drilling attempts at other lakes.
John Priscu, a leader of the expedition who works at Montana State University, told the New York Times that the team took every precaution to prevent contamination of water or sediment from the borehole.
Another lake that had undergone drilling is Lake Vostok, but the drill bit used might have contaminated the sample. A British team called off a drilling effort on Lake Ellsworth, which sits about a mile under the surface, because of equipment issues, the Times reported.
