The Challenge of Drilling into a Previously Untapped Sub-Antarctic Lake, without Contaminating It — Caution, Recklessness, and Philosophical Balance in Science

© 2011 Peter Free

 

24 January 2011

 

 

The Russians are going for it — never-touched Lake Vostok is about to be

 

Russian scientists, who passed the 3,650 meter ice depth on 2 January 2011, are just a few meters from core drilling into the surface water of Lake Vostok, the biggest sub-Antarctic freshwater lake.  According to Nature, the lake has been isolated for 15 million years.

 

The Russian non-contamination effort illustrates the difficult balancing of caution and necessary recklessness in science.

 

The team hopes that a sensor attached to the drill head will signal contact with liquid water in the next few weeks.

 

At that point, the drill will be stopped and extracted from the bore hole, thereby lowering the pressure beneath it and drawing water into the hole. This should prevent any of the silicone drilling lubricant from entering the lake, explains Lukin.

 

The rising water will rapidly freeze in the borehole, where drillers can extract it without penetrating the pristine lake. "If everything goes according to plan, we will re-core the hole in December and retrieve the frozen sample without polluting the lake water," he says.

 

Scientists contacted by Nature acknowledge Russia's right to proceed as planned, but remain unconvinced that the sampling technology is as clean as is claimed.

 

"From our experience there is no such thing as clean drilling," says Jean Robert Petit, a glaciologist at the Laboratory of Glaciology and Environmental Geophysics (LGGE) near Grenoble in France.

 

© Quirin Schiermeier, Race against time for raiders of the lost lake, Nature 469(7330): 275 (20 January 2011) (paragraphs split and partially rearranged)

 

 

Reckless Russians or seeking scientists?

 

Let’s assume — with Dr. Petit (whom I think is correct) — that there is no such thing as uncontaminated drilling.  Are “we” supposed to let Lake Vostok sit forever untouched?

 

Philosophical and scientific perspective is useful.  Practically speaking, it is impossible to exist without altering the environment in which one lives.  I suspect that there is an analogue to physics’ Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that applies to most everything we do, even in the macroscopic world.

 

The Russians will just have to probabilistically  figure out what’s contaminated and what isn’t.  More or less like we always do, when we examine supposedly pristine environments or non-Earth materials.

 

But I could be wrong.

 

Little boy excitement may be running away with my brain.