Lake under Antarctic ice bursts with life

Multitude of microbes thrives in the icy waters

HOT WATER Steam billows from an ice-melting machine. Scientists pumped the warmed water into the Antarctic ice sheet to burrow to a life-filled subglacial lake 800 meters below.

Reed Scherer

By Thomas Sumner

August 21, 2014 at 8:30 am

In January 2013, researchers pulled the first water samples from a dark, frigid lake sealed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Within hours, they announced they had found live cells in the water (SN:

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