A Brief History of Antarctic Drilling Russian scientists have
just reported that they have successfully drilled into Lake
Vostok, a vast, tepid body of water that rests under kilometers
of ice beneath Antarctica’s glacial surface. Most news reports
make mention of the long-duration drilling effort that it took
to make it down to Lake Vostok, but I’ve yet to see an account
of the on-again, off-again relationship between scientists and
these mysterious subglacial lakes. A few months ago, I had the
pleasure of interviewing Martin Siegert about his recent book,
Antarctic Subglacial Aquatic Environments for the American
Geophysical Union‘s members-only newspaper, Eos. Martin is the
head of the UK-led mission to drill into another Antarctic
subglacial lake, Lake Ellsworth, later this year. The full
interview I feel is well worth reading (though unfortunately it
is behind a paywall), but at one point the interview turned to a
discussion of the convoluted history of the scientific endeavour
to reach beneath the ice.