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Russia poised to breach mysterious Antarctic lake
- ddlatham 16y ago"It's minus 40 (Celsius) outside," Turkeyev said. Celsius, Fahrenheit, what's the difference?
- burgerbrain 16y agoWeird part is this quote precedes that quote in the article: "It was here that the coldest temperature ever found on Earth -- minus 89.2 Celsius (minus 128.6 Fahrenheit) -- was recorded." So it seems the writer wasn't simply just writing from a Celsius perspective and felt the need to clarify a quote (from no units to units).
- metageek 16y agoMaybe the writer was actually quoting, and the speaker felt the need to say "Celsius" because they couldn't tell whether they were speaking to an American. (Satellite phones probably have low sound quality, right?)
- Swizec 16y agoOkay, I have to admit, your post is bloody brilliant. -40 is exactly where the two scales meet. Astounding.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- StavrosK 16y agoI came here to say that. It appears that we are both smartasses.
- iwwr 16y agoReamur, Kelvin... what's the difference :)
- Retric 16y agoNegative 40 Kelvin has no meaning ;)
- sliverstorm 16y agoThat's what you think. Who says there can't be a -1 degree Kelvin? Just because it doesn't make any sense sense to us whatsoever right now doesn't mean it couldn't exist. Do I know how to reach -1 degree Kelvin? No. But 1920's physicists didn't know how to destroy entire cities in Japan with a hunk of metal, either.
- mchouza 16y agoIt has some meaning. It's hotter than any positive temperature: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature :-D
- gus_massa 16y agoActually, there are systems that have negative (absolute) temperature, and "a system with a truly negative Kelvin temperature is hotter than any system with a positive temperature". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature These are strange systems that can absorb only a finite amount of energy. When they are almost "full" of energy, their temperature is negative. (For simple systems the negative temperature appears when they have more than the 50% of the maximal energy, but it depends on the system.) This can not happen in normal systems. For example an ideal gas can absorb infinite energy, because the molecules can go faster and faster.
- iwwr 16y agoNo, but +574 is the same in Kelvin or Fahrenheit :)
- adolph 16y agoThe borehole, pumped full of Kerosene and Freon to keep it from freezing shut, hangs poised over the pristine lake. That is all.
- lukev 16y ago"The borehole, pumped full of Kerosene and Freon to keep it from freezing shut, hangs poised over the pristine lake. The explorers now face the question: How do we go where no one has gone before without spoiling it [...]" Oh, I don't know... how about start by not dumping in thousands of gallons of _freon_?
- sfphotoarts 16y agothat jumped out at me too, but one has to think that a bunch of clearly dedicated scientists (I'd have gone home at -10) would have given thought to pumping CFC's into a pristine lake. Let's hope so
- btilly 16y agoActually CFCs are not at all bad. They are incredibly stable chemical compounds that won't normally react with anything else. The problem with CFCs is that you get a stable compound by reacting really reactive things together, and now they can't find anything they want to react with more. So when they get into the upper atmosphere and get broken apart by hard radiation, you now have really reactive stuff mixed in with the fragile ozone layer. And they act as a catalyst to break down ozone. But you can breathe them all you want, and (assuming you got enough oxygen) will suffer no ill effects.
- noilly 16y agoI wouldn't be so hopeful. One of my professors who works in Antarctica and drills lots of ice cores was bemoaning the Russian mismanagement of the Vostok drilling project.
- radicaldreamer 16y agoI think this was the old borehole, they specifically didn't penetrate the lake so as to not contaminate it. They're using a different method or an adjacent hole with a sanitized drilling apparatus now. This is based on stories I've read about Vostok over the years, I don't have any extra knowledge on the situation there today.
- jordanb 16y ago
- btilly 16y agoWhat caught my eye is this. It was here that the coldest temperature ever found on Earth -- minus 89.2 Celsius (minus 128.6 Fahrenheit) -- was recorded. That's cold enough that it starts snowing dry ice!
- stevenbedrick 16y agoAnybody else hearing H.P. Lovecraft echoes here? Antarctica? Check. Mysterious underground lake? Check. Driven scientists? Check. Extremely isolated location? Check. Here's how I see it going down: Drill pierces lake; eldritch horror escapes or is otherwise unleashed as consequence of scientific hubris; Vostok station's radio transmissions cease suddenly; a team is sent to investigate... maybe they find the sole survivor of the original drill crew (he's gone horribly insane, of course), eking out an existence in what remains of the research station... he warns the investigators not to go down to the drill site...
- Jun8 16y agoAnd don't forget the Antarctic mountain range they discovered in 2008 (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16659-alpine-mountain-range-revealed-beneath-antarctic-ice.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16659-alpine-mountain-...) that exactly fits the description to the mountains of madness Lovecraft described so vividly. But it won't be the Eldritch Horror coming out of the lake, it'll be a Shoggoth (or God forbid, a multitude). These driven scientists never, never listen!
- sliverstorm 16y agoI'm hearing Half Life 2: Episode 3 echoes.
- rdtsc 16y ago> eldritch horror escapes or is otherwise unleashed as consequence of scientific hubris I, for one, welcome our new dark overlords...
- Devilboy 16y agoAlso pretty much exactly what happened in Evangelion's Second Impact.
- steveplace 16y agoand Alien vs. Predator
- 16y ago
- edge17 16y ago"It's minus 40 (Celsius) outside," Turkeyev said. "But whatever, we're working. We're feeling good. There's only 5 meters left until we get to the lake so it'll all be very soon." love it
- Groxx 16y ago>There's only 5 meters left until we get to the lake so it'll all be very soon. They're 5 meters away, and they didn't finish and write an article about that? This seems an unnecessary cliffhanger.
- nonane 16y agoLooks like they will have to wait a year before they actually break the surface of the lake. From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok "The researchers switched to a new thermal drill head with a clean silicon-oil fluid to drill the rest of the way.[17] Instead of drilling all the way into the water, they will stop just above it, when a sensor on the thermal drill detects free water. At that point, the drill will be stopped and extracted from the bore hole, thereby lowering the pressure beneath it and drawing water into the hole and left for quite some time to freeze, creating a plug of frozen ice in the bottom of the hole. Finally, next summer, the team would drill down again to take a sample of that ice and analyse it.[1][18]"
- Groxx 16y agoNice find. That's an excellent reason, almost zero contamination that way. So why didn't the article mention it? If anything, they go backwards: "But until we learn how to get into the system cleanly that's an issue"
- zwieback 16y agoWhy isn't the lake frozen solid?
- sfphotoarts 16y agoI would assume because its very well insulated from above and warmed by the earth's core from below, but I'm not a geologist.
- NickPollard 16y agoIt's also probably due to being under high pressure; the melting point of a substance is dependent on the pressure it is under.
- ChuckMcM 16y agoExcept its water which kinda defines incompressible. Answer is thermal energy from tectonic processes. Cite: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V61-47BX9V7-1&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F10%2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=66844a166df35541b0ce95101bf7e720&searchtype=a http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...
- billswift 16y agoIt doesn't matter how compressible it is, its temperature still rises from pressure. That is why ice is so slippery, pressure (from a tire, foot, or ice skate) melts a thin layer of water on the surface which acts as a lubricant (which is also why ice stops being slippery when its temperature gets low enough that normal pressures can't raise it enough to melt).
- mchouza 16y agoIt's more complex than that: http://lptms.u-psud.fr/membres/trizac/Ens/L3FIP/Ice.pdf http://lptms.u-psud.fr/membres/trizac/Ens/L3FIP/Ice.pdf Even an extremely high pressure cannot melt ice at -25 °C, but skiing is still possible at that temperature.
- jamesjyu 16y agoI love the last few sentences: "I feel very excited but once we do it there is no going back," Alexei Ekaikin, a scientist with the expedition said from Vostok Station. "Once you touch it, it will be touched forever."