Drilling Begins At Lake Hidden Beneath Antarctic 131
New submitter stonetony writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "A team of 12 scientists and engineers has begun work at remote Lake Ellsworth. They are using a high-pressure hose and sterilised water at near boiling point to blast a passage through more than two miles of ice. The aim is to analyse ice waters isolated for up to 500,000 years. The team of 12 scientists and engineers is using sterilised water at near boiling point to blast a passage through the ice to waters isolated for up to half a million years. The process of opening a bore-hole is expected to last five days and will be followed by a rapid sampling operation before the ice refreezes."
How are they doing this... (Score:4, Funny)
Questions from the summary (Score:5, Funny)
Great summary (Score:4, Funny)
Indeed; using sterilised water at near boiling point.
Re:How are they doing this... (Score:3, Funny)
i would say there is a good chance that they're using sterile water heated to almost the boiling point to melt a passage through ice to get to water isolated for up to 5e5 years
Re:How are they doing this... (Score:5, Funny)
You're all missing the point that they're using water near 100C to bore through ice to get at water that's been isolated for as much as 500 millennia.
Re:Questions from the summary (Score:5, Funny)
1) Yes
2) Almost boiling!
3) 500,000 years
4) Indeed
5) Nearly 100 degrees celsius
6) 500 millennia
Re:How are they doing this... (Score:5, Funny)
/s
Temp? (Score:1, Funny)
From the summary I understand they are using water to bore the hole. I didn't see the temperature of the water that is being used. Shouldn't they also use sterile water to prevent contamination?
Re:Mayans (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it's not a drill bit at all, but some sort of really hot water. I'm not really sure though.
Re:How are they doing this... (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed, however, this is a dupe of this post: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/12/13/2126234/drilling-begins-at-lake-hidden-beneath-antarctic [slashdot.org]
oblig (Score:4, Funny)
in soviet russia the summary repeats the summary ..
oh wait a seco...
Re:How are they doing this... (Score:5, Funny)
Let it be known that I was actually moderated "-1 Redundant" on this. The irony is palpable.
Title arriving: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How are they doing this... (Score:3, Funny)