Life imitates Gothic, life as pulp fiction, and more Russian polar adventure: Russian scientists are ready to drill into the world's largest body of fresh water, stretching in the darkness under Antarctic ice. Lake Vostok is enormous, about as big as Lake Ontario, and unusual, being extremely cold, containing lots of oxygen, and recycled over millenia. And there may be life, perhaps extremophile forms, in ways strange enough to help us better speculate about life on Europa.
The Russian team will use a specially designed robot, the Cryobot, to explore the new world next year. They paused at nearly 4,000 meters down this year.
Antarctica has long been a favored site for Gothic and pulp fiction. Think of the Poe-Lovecraft stories there, for example, or The Things, or that X-Files episode. But we are assured this is a safe drilling procedure....
Previously on Infocult: life imitates pulp fiction. And the whole category of life imitates Gothic.
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Brilliant!
Posted by: kaminta | December 22, 2010 at 12:09