Tweet

For today’s Geo Quiz, we’re looking for a very big and very cold lake. This lake is roughly the size of New Jersey and it lies 2 miles below the ice sheet that covers east Antarctica. And scientists are trying to reach it by drilling down through ice.

“The lake has been isolated probably 10-30 million years eversince Antarctica turned into an ice cube and the question is will there be microbes?”

So that’s one question: will there be microbes deep in the lake? The other question, of course, is, what’s the name of this hidden body of water? It’s nicknamed the lake in the east. Translate that into Russian and you have the answer.

---

Geo Answer:

The answer is Lake Vostok. It’s not easy to find on the map. It lies 13,000 feet below the surface of the East Antarctica ice sheet. Robin Bell, a scientist at the Lamon-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University tells anchor Marco Werman about the Russian scientific mission that’s now underway to drill down to Lake Vostok.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3