Living it up below the ice sheet?
A recent earthquake at the bottom of the world suggests that Antarctic ice might hide an active, heat-generating fault, reports Robin E. Bell of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. The energy released at such a geologic boundary could power hot springs feeding into subsurface lakes, enabling microbial life to flourish miles beneath the top of the ice sheet, she speculates.
The epicenter of the mild Jan. 5 earthquake lines up with the centers of three older quakes near Lake Vostok. A body of water about the size of Lake Ontario, Lake Vostok’s been under 2 miles of ice for perhaps millions of years.