The Long Way to Anywhere

woodsmaiden:

coming up roses

i was given 3 gallons of organic antique roses this weekend + had no problem putting them to use!

rhamphotheca:

Russian Scientists Breach Antarctica’s Lake Vostok—Confirmed

Team is first ever to probe a subglacial lake.

by Christine Dell’Amore

(Feb. 08, 2012) - Russian scientists have confirmed that they have penetrated Antarctica’s Lake Vostok, an event that may “expand the limits of life on Earth,” a U.S. scientist says.

At 8:25 p.m. Moscow time on Sunday, drillers hit lake water at a depth of 12,355 feet (3,766 meters)—making them the first ever to probe a subglacial lake, according to a statement provided by Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. Mahlon C. Kennicutt II, a professor of oceanography at Texas A&M University, said that the confirmation appears to be accurate.

That’s because the Russian scientists recorded an increase in pressure at the bottom of the borehole—an “obvious clue” that they broke through the ice.

“There’s no other reason you would run into a pressure kick like that unless you’d broken into a seal, which would be the surface of the lake,” said Kennicutt, who is also the president of the nonprofit Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

This “should be celebrated,” Kennicutt emphasized. “Fifteen years ago we couldn’t imagine the day there would be penetration of one of these lakes.”

ndeed, “penetrating Lake Vostok culminates more than a decade of planning,” Montana State ecologist John Priscu told National Geographic News by email.

“The success of my Russian colleagues proves, from an engineering standpoint, that we can sample an environment beneath 4,000 meters [13,000 feet] of ice. It also opens the doors for ensuing subglacial science”—including how life might have evolved in such an extreme environment…

(read more: National Geographic)    

(images: T - NASA; B - Nicolle Rager-Fuller, NSF)

meredithamaple:

Awesome doors in Quito.