Mammoth 'could be reborn in four years' Russians Will Be First To Explore Untouched Antarctic Lake Vostok, In Hunt For Weird Life Forms. An oxygen-rich lake, unreachable for the past 14 million years and buried beneath a thick sheet of ice, is about to be penetrated by a drill bit from a faraway place. It's possible that special life forms have adapted to live in this extreme environment, and scientists hope to learn more once they can analyze water samples.
No, sorry, it's not on Europa — it's in Antarctica. But the environment of Lake Vostok, which Russian scientists are about to drill open, is very similar to that Jovian moon and to Enceladus, a frozen satellite of Saturn. Astrobiologists are among those eager to uncover Lake Vostok's Miocene-era secrets.
The Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, a body set up to protect the frozen continent, approved a Russian team's process to extract water from the lake while preventing contamination, according to New Scientist. By the end of this month, a team from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St Petersburg expects to hit water. [New Scientist via Wired UK] Communicating at an unknown rate. Solid Gold, Thanks to Bacteria.
An Ant Diversity Sampler. [the following is a repost from Scienceblogs] With 12,000 described species, ants dominate global terrestrial ecosystems. Here are a few of them. Name: Nothomyrmecia macrops Distribution: Australia Famous for: The story of its rediscovery (As told by Bill Bryson) Microbe that eats plastic. It's not your average science fair when the 16-year-old winner manages to solve a global waste crisis. But such was the case at last May's Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa, Ontario, where Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, presented his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic. Daniel had a thought it seems even the most esteemed PhDs hadn't considered. Plastic, one of the most indestructible of manufactured materials, does in fact eventually decompose.
It takes 1,000 years but decompose it does, which means there must be microorganisms out there to do the decomposing. Editor's note: There are two high school students who have discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms. Could those microorganisms be bred to do the job faster? The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them.