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In the middle of Antarctica lies a sub glacial lake known as Lake Vostok.
A huge sheet of ice 4000m thick covers the lake itself.
But at the very bottom of the ice sheet is a pool of liquid water.
The body of water has been completely cut off from the rest of
the world for over 15 million years due to the thick block of ice.
No sunlight can get through, not even microbes in the air.
Scientists hypothesized that there could be organisms living
inside the pool of water, organisms that are new and have never
been seen before. Russian scientists then began drilling into the
sheet of ice, and in 2012, they managed to drill all the way through.
As soon as they pierced through the ice, water began gushing out,
and in 2013, scientists withdrew their first ever ice core, which
remains yet to be analyzed.
On Europa, Jupiter’s moon, there exists a similar situation.
A thick layer of ice covers the whole moon, but at the bottom of the ice
is liquid water. What’s in that water remains a mystery, but some
people think there might be fish or other creatures that live there.
Future missions have been proposed by NASA that involve sending
a space probe to Europa and drilling through the ice, yet some of the
public think we should preserve the planet instead and don’t do anything to it.
As for now, what lies underneath Europa will remain a mystery.