Secret rivers found in Antarctic

[Nihil]

(Apologies if this was posted earlier - I didn't see it on a
quick look down thread titles)

<snip>

> Antarctica's buried lakes are connected by a network of rivers
> moving water far beneath the surface, say UK scientists.

<snip>

> Any attempts to drill into one body of water risks contaminating
> others.

<snip>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4908292.stm


Maybe this throws some light on why glacier transport rates
are sometimes higher than predicted?

[northzax]

1. this is old news

it's been postulated for at least five years, connecting Vostok to the rest of the SALEGOS areas. And it's one good reason to delay Vostok until we have a better grasp on how to do it sterilely. this is a one-off deal, you can't put the genie back into the bottle, so what's the rush? (well, besides the need of the Russian program to generate results and prestige to keep their money coming from the Kremlin, that is.)

[Nihil]

2. It wasn't to me!

I hadn't read that before so last week's BBC article struck
me as an interesting new piece of information provided by
recent measurements rather than just more speculation.

Sorry.

[northzax]

3. I used to critique this for a living

writing commentary on things like Environmental Impact Statements for the Vostok Project and others. A couple of years ago I was pretty wired into the community, which is where I got it from.

Worth noting that we're talking about thousands of years of travel time between some of them, this is water that hasn't seen the surface of the Earth, or been exposed to anything, since the last ice age, absolutely remarkable.