By Dasha Afanasieva LONDON (Reuters) - An ambitious British plan
to search for minute forms of life in an ancient lake beneath
Antarctica's ice has been suspended because of technical
problems, the scientist leading the project said on Thursday. In
a move that clears the way for U.S. and Russian teams to take
the lead, Professor Martin Siegert said technical problems and a
lack of fuel had forced the closure on Christmas Day of the
7-million-pound ($11 million) project, which was looking for
life forms and climate change clues in the lake-bed sediment.
"This is of course, hugely frustrating for us, but we have
learned a lot this year," said Siegert of the University of
Bristol, principal investigator for the mission, which was
headed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). "By the end, the
equipment was working well, and much of it has now been fully
field-tested," he said on the BAS website. Experts from
Britain's Lake Ellsworth mission had expected to find minute
forms of life in the lake three km (two miles