Tapping the Ancient Waters of Vostok

If you’re a biology watcher like I am, watch this: (from Scientific American)

Russian scientists, who have patiently suffered the most brutal temperatures on the planet, will soon reach their payoff–the “roof” of a massive underground freshwater lake left undisturbed for perhaps 20 million years.

The risk seems great to me that we might infect or poison the patient in the process of exploratory surgery. But we could also discover dozens or hundreds of new “extremophile” organisms that evolved their own way of doing biology on Planet Earth.

So be prepared fairly soon for what promises to be a ongoing stream of science news from the worst place on earth to do science–and yet, we must. We are a most unusual organism ourselves, and the only one capable of modifying our living conditions–for survival and sustainability, or towards depletion, contamination and extinction.