Dec. 18, 2012

Scientists have spent the past fortnight on the Western Antarctic ice sheet trying to drill down to ice-locked Lake Ellsworth 

They hope to find life forms which have been shut off from the rest of the Earth for at least 100,000 years

However malfunctioning boilers have now pitted them in a race against time to complete the project before their equipment freeze

A British team toiling beneath Antarctica's midnight sun to drill down to a lake buried beneath two miles of ice have had their attempts frustratingly delayed by malfunctions.

Twelve scientists from the British Antarctic Survey have worked around the clock over the past fortnight to bore 10,000ft down to ice-locked Lake Ellsworth to collect samples of water and sediment.

They hope to find unique microbial life forms there which have been isolated for at least 100,000 years - and probably much longer

The team had hoped to penetrate the thick ice cap to reach the lake today, but technical difficulties have knocked them off schedule, pitting them in a race against time to complete the mission before their equipment freezes.

The BAS team have been trying to melt their way down to Ellsworth using a 2 mile-long hose tipped with a brass nozzle that sprays sterile water heated to 90C at a pressure of 2,000lbs per square inch.

However, when the scientists fired up their boiler's primary burner for the first time its controller circuit failed. A secondary burner was fitted and the team worked around the clock to shovel snow to feed the hot-water drill, and in four days they had melted enough to begin drilling the borehole to the cavity. But then, on Saturday afternoon, this secondary burner failed leaving the BAS team with nothing to do but wait for a replacement part as their bore hole - and equipment - slowly begins to freeze shut. 'We are now committed, having gone past the point of no return,' expedition leader Chris Hill told the Independent. 'If anything stops working now, water could freeze in the pipes and the whole programme could come to a halt.' The BAS reports that the replacement components will be with the deep field team in a few days time. They will work with the manufacturers to make sure they install them properly. But if the replacement parts malfunction malfunction again the team will have no option other than to by pass the circuitry and manually 'drive' the burner - an operation that will require skill and a light touch. One of more than 400 sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica, Ellsworth is equivalent in size to the UK's Lake Windermere, measuring 7.5 miles long by 1.8 miles wide, and nearly 500ft deep. Completely cut off from any light from the Sun, any life lurking beneath its waters must endure complete darkness, intense pressure and subzero temperatures. It is only geothermal heat from the Earth's core and the intense pressure exerted by the weight of the ice above that has kept it liquid. Should any organisms be found living in its icy depths, they could offer tantalising clues as to how life might look elsewhere in the solar system, such as in the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa. The BAS team planned first to bore down to 1,000ft, then stop to create a cavity, then drill a second borehole from the surface down through the this cavity and all the way down to the lake. The cavity is what controls the pressure of the liquid being drawn from Ellsworth, stopping a geyser of prehistoric water from bursting back up through the borehole and spilling out over the surface of the ice. Once they reach the waters, they will have just 24 hours to sterilise the entrance to the hole with intense UV light and lower a probe into the lake to collect their samples before the hole refreezes again. Chris Hill, a British Antarctic Survey engineer who is heading the programme, spoke earlier this month to the Guardian by phone from his tent on the West Antarctic ice sheet. 'It's bloody cold,' he said. The team will spent six weeks at the site, where temperatures, according to the BAS, are -25C, with winds of 20 knots. For much of that time they will work around the clock.' Lake Ellsworth Principal Investigator Martin Siegert from the University of Bristol said: 'This British mission is part of an international effort to discover and explore subglacial lake environments. 'We are about to explore the unknown and I am very excited that our mission will advance our scientific understanding of Antarctica’s hidden world.  'Right now we are working round the clock in a cold, demanding and extreme location – it’s testing our own personal endurance, but it is entirely worth it.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2250133/Crisis-ice-B...