This Drill Will Expose an Antarctic Lake Buried for 500,000 Years

Lake Ellsworth is seven miles long, a mile wide, and 500 feet deep. It's one of 387 such sub-glacial lakes already discovered in Antarctica and is thought to be completely pristine, having been isolated under the ice sheet for as long as 500,000 years. The microbial life that a team from the British Antarctic Survey hope to find may have taken a radically divergent evolutionary approach to their extreme environment. So, in order to protect the lake's environment while exploring it, the team is utilizing a specialized water drill—the largest of its kind—to bore through the ice without contaminating it with modern bacteria.