Russians drill into 20 million years old Lake Vostok under Antarctica's surface in search of Life

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Scientists are taking the search for life in extreme environments to the ends of Earth and beyond. On Wednesday Russian scientists announced they had reached Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake under Antarctica. As AP reported: Russian researchers reported Wednesday that they had reached Lake Vostok, a pristine body of water untouched by light or wind for about 20 million years. They want to know what type of microbial life — bacteria too small to see — might exist there. Finding microbes may not sound like much. But they were the first form of Earth life eons before plants and animals existed.

Russian scientists reach the sub-glacial Lake Vostok, which has been buried under miles of Antarctic ice for millions of years (at least 20 million years).

If scientists find these tiny germs in Lake Vostok, it bolsters already strong hope that elsewhere in our solar system, life also might exist where once it didn’t seem possible. There are plenty of examples of life forms existing in the most improbable of places:

• A tiny shrimp was captured on a NASA video floating under thick ice sheets in a different part of Antarctica.
• Tubeworms somehow get needed energy from violent hydrothermal vents in the deepest Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
• A germ called “the world’s toughest bacterium” by the Guinness Book of World Records and also termed “Conan the Bacterium” was found 55 years ago in a can of meat. It survives and even repairs itself in radiation that would be deadly to cockroaches.

Some in the scientific community expressed concern that the drilling techniques used to reach Lake Vostok could contaminate the pristine lake. As Marc Kaufman explained:
The long effort has met with controversy over some of the chemicals and techniques used in the drilling. Many have been concerned that pristine Lake Vostok — which hasn’t felt the wind for more than 20 million years and may well be home to previously unknown life forms — could be contaminated by the kerosene, Freon and other materials used in the drilling. John Priscu of Montana State University, an Antarctica specialist who has been in periodic contact with the Russian team, said rumors are flying that the lake was indeed pierced but that no information has been formally announced.

“If they were successful, their efforts will transform the way we do science in Antarctica and provide us with an entirely new view of what exists under the vast Antarctic ice sheet,” he said in an e-mail. Many scientists see Vostok as not only a last frontier on Earth but also a potential gold mine for learning about possible conditions on Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Encedadus. Each is covered by a thick shell of ice with liquid water below, warmed by either the inner heat of the moon or by tidal forces. The United States of Zionism and Britain will begin drilling later this year into small subglacial Antarctic lakes. Scientists estimate that there are about 200 of these lakes beneath the ice sheet.
 
Reports emerged as the drilling effort continued that Lake Vostok had been the site of a secret Nazi base. As Elizabeth Flock reported:
When state-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti released a report Monday that said Russian scientists had drilled into the deep, dark and previously untouched Lake Vostok, a curious detail was buried farther down in the story. Ria Novosti reported that near the end of the World War II, the Nazis moved to the South Pole and began constructing a base at Lake Vostok. The agency quotes German Grand Admiral Karl Dontiz, who apparently said in 1943: “Germany's submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other end of the world,” in Antarctica.

Is there any truth to the Russian rumors? Or is this a case of a news agency implementing Godwin’s law — the longer a discussion goes, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis approaches. Taken another way: Why isn’t it enough to relish in the sheer awe of reaching 2.2 miles below the surface of Antarctica to explore a hidden lake? Discovery News scoffs at the idea of a Nazi base there, calling it “Nazi paranoia” and “World War II conspiracy theories” from Moscow. The Moscow Times dismisses the idea as just “rumors.” Most news sites, including The Post, ignored Ria Novosti’s theory.

(Washington Post)

Edited by Enticing Fury

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The System of Universe originates in the SELF (Khudi)!

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THE form of existence is an effect of the Self,
Whatsoever thou seest is a secret of the Self,
When the Self awoke to consciousness.
It revealed the universe of Thought.
A hundred words are hidden in its essence:
Self-affirmation brings Not-self to light.
By the Self the seed of opposition is sown in the word:
It imagines itself to be other than itself
It makes from itself the forms of others
In order to multiply the pleasure of strife.
It is slaying by the strength of its arm
That it may become conscious of its own strength.
Its self-deceptions are the essence of Life;
Like the rose, it lives by bathing itself in blood.
For the sake of a single rose it destroys a hundred rose gardens
And makes a hundred lamentation in quest of a single melody.
For one sky it produces a hundred new moons,
And for one word a hundred discourses.
The excuse for this wastefulness and cruelty

Is the shaping and perfecting of spiritual beauty.
The loveliness of Shirin justifies the anguish of Farhad.
One fragrant navel justifies a hundred musk-deer.
'Tis the fate of moths to consume in flame:
The suffering of moths is justified by the candle. 

The pencil of the Self limped a hundred to-days
In order to achieve the dawn of a single morrow.
Its flames burned a hundred Abrahams
That the lamp of one Muhammad might be lighted.
Subject, object, means, and causes—
All these are forms which it assumes for the purpose of action.
The Self rises, kindles, falls, glows, breathes,
Burns, shines, walks, and flies.
The spaciousness of Time is its arena,
Heaven is a billow of the dust on the road.
From its rose-planting the world abounds in roses;
Night is born of its sleep, day springs from its waking.
It divided its flame into sparks
And taught the understanding to worship particulars.
It dissolved itself and created the atoms
It was scattered for a little while and created sands.
Then it wearied of dispersion
 And by re-uniting itself it became the mountains.
'Tis the nature of the Self to manifest itself
In every atom slumbers the might of the Self.
Power that is expressed and inert
Chains the faculties which lead to action.
Inasmuch as the life of the universe comes from the power of the Self,
Life is in proportion to this power.
When a drop of water gets of Self's lesson by heart,
it makes its worthless existence a pearl.
Wine is formless because its self is weak;
It receives a form by favour of the cup.
Although the cup of wine assumes a form,
It is indebted to us for its motion.
When the mountain loses its self, it turns into sands
And complains that the sea surges over it;
The wave, so long as it remains a wave in the sea's bosom.
Makes itself rider on the sea's back.
Light transformed itself into an eye
And moved to and fro in search of beauty;
When the grass found a means of growth in its self,
Its aspiration clove the breast of the garden.
The candle too concatenated itself
And built itself out of atoms;
Then it made a practice of melting itself away and fled from its self
Until at last it trickled down from its own eye, like tears.
If the bezel had been more self secure by nature,
It would not have suffered wounds,
But since it derives its value from the superscription,
Its shoulder is galled by the burden of another's name.
Because the earth is firmly based on itself,
The captive moon goes round it perpetually.
The being of the sun is stronger than that of the earth
Therefore is the earth fascinated by the sun's eye.
The glory of the red beech fixes our gaze.
The mountains are enriched by its majesty
Its raiment is woven of fire,
Its origin is one self-assertive seed.
When Life gathers strength from the Self,
The river of Life expands into an ocean

(بابا اقبال رح)



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