Lake Vostok - Discovery

Discovery

Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin first proposed the idea of fresh water under Antarctic ice sheets at the end of the 19th century. He theorized that the tremendous pressure exerted by the cumulative mass of thousands of vertical meters of ice could increase the temperature at the lowest portions of the ice sheet to the point where the ice would melt. Kropotkin's theory was further developed by Russian glaciologist I.A. Zotikov, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on this subject in 1967.

Russian geographer Andrey Kapitsa used seismic soundings in the region of Vostok Station made during the Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1959 and 1964 to measure the thickness of the ice sheet. Kapitsa was the first to suggest the existence of a subglacial lake in the region, and the subsequent research confirmed his hypothesis.

When British scientists in Antarctica performed airborne ice-penetrating radar surveys in the early 1970s, they detected unusual radar readings at the site which suggested the presence of a liquid, freshwater lake below the ice. In 1991, Jeff Ridley, a remote sensing specialist with the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, directed the ERS-1 satellite to turn its high-frequency array toward the center of the Antarctic ice cap. The data from ERS-1 confirmed the findings from the 1973 British surveys, but these new data were not published in the Journal of Glaciology until 1993. Space-based radar revealed that this subglacial body of fresh water is one of the largest lakes in the world, and one of some 140 subglacial lakes in Antarctica. Russian and British scientists delineated the lake in 1996 by integrating a variety of data, including airborne ice-penetrating radar imaging observations and space-based radar altimetry. It has been confirmed that the lake contains large amounts of liquid water under the more than 3-kilometer (2 mi) thick ice cap. The lake has at least 22 cavities of liquid water, averaging 10 kilometers (6 mi) each.

The lake is named after Vostok Station, which in turn is named after the Vostok (Восток), the 900 ton sloop-of-war sailed by one of the discoverers of Antarctica, Russian explorer Admiral Fabian von Bellingshausen. The word Bосток means "East" in Russian, and the name of the station and the lake also reflects the fact that they are located in East Antarctica.

In 2005 an island was found in the central part of the lake. Then, in January 2006, the discovery of two nearby smaller lakes under the ice cap was published; they are named 90 Degrees East and Sovetskaya. It is suspected that these Antarctic subglacial lakes may be connected by a network of subglacial rivers. Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling glaciologists Duncan Wingham and Martin Siegert published in 2006 that many of the subglacial lakes of Antarctica are at least temporarily interconnected. Because of varying water pressure in individual lakes, large subsurface rivers may suddenly form and then force large amounts of water through the solid ice.