BBC Focus Magazine

[M Paul Lloyd]

I don't know if anyone on here has noticed (and given the sort of trivial pap they put in the mainstream news I quite understand why you would not) but we are currently engaged in a race (of sorts) with the Russians to be the first to drill down to a lake deep under the Antarctic ice. Thing is the Russians claim to have succeeded, but it would seem that their victory may be premature.??

It is not yet clear whether Russian scientists have succeeded in their quest to drill into Lake Vostok.
National media on Monday reported a breakthrough into the lake, the largest of more than 300 bodies of liquid water buried under Antarctica's ice.
But Valery Lukin, the Russian Antarctic programme director, has told Nature journal that the claim is premature.
He said data from a number of sensors monitoring the drilling had yet to be analysed.
"Only when I will have this I can say we penetrated [the lake]," Nature quoted him as saying. "We want to be sure we have really reached the surface of Lake Vostok."
Russian, British and US researchers are in a race to see who will be first to reach down into the waters of an Antarctic subglacial lake.

More here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16907998

Please note that this 'competition' is, as most scientific endeavours are, an entirely friendly one.

[Lateralman]

We will see how friendly the race is when the big bad virus escapes from that hole.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Well it would seem that the Russian claims are well founded and, I have to admit Lateral that was my first thought on hearing the news.

[Shadowwolf]

I suppose it's an outside possibility but them's the risks, never taken we'd never have ventured anywhere and probably be extinct by now.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Very true Mr.S and I am eagerly waiting to learn about what they find, but for a fleeting moment I did wonder if anything down there might be harmful to us.

[Lateralman]

Did we ever figure out in previous thread discussions what killed the dinosaurs?

[M Paul Lloyd]

No-one is entirely sure what killed of the Dinosaurs Lateral although the Chicxulub impact probably didn't help any. However I very much doubt that after being so very successful for so very long that the Dinosaurs succumbed to a simple virus.
Although I will concede that pathogens to which they had developed immunity might prove dangerous to humans and that such microbes may have survived in this previously isolated lake.
IO rather hope the scientists involved have taken adequate precautions to prevent anything 'escaping'...?

Personally I think we will be doing little more than contaminating one of the few pristine environments left on our planet.

[Shadowwolf]

Although I will concede that pathogens to which they had developed immunity might prove dangerous to humans and that such microbes may have survived in this previously isolated lake.

I wouldn't be entirely worried about pathogens to which dinos had or had not developed immunity to as we are not reptilian - bar the royals of course - and thus those pathogens are unlikely to be able to do anything deleterious without mutation. Besides, such microbes are as likely to be anywhere else on the planet as they are down an isolated lake so it's a risk that's been taken time and again I'd think.

Personally I think we will be doing little more than contaminating one of the few pristine environments left on our planet.

I tend to disagree with such sentiments, what matter is the pristine-ness - taken to mean completely free of human presence - of a place if we never go near it? It may as well not exist in that case and hence being pristine is an empty quality, just an ephemeral notion that somewhere over there is something 'pristine'.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Actually not all Dinosaurs were reptiles Mr.S, you are forgetting that many were more closely related to Birds and I'm thinking avian influenza as a specific pathogen.....?

But I'm not suggesting it is worth preserving these Antarctic 'lakes' solely on the basis of them being pristine I just suspect that we may spoil something that future technology might make better use of?

[Lateralman]

Then again, how do you know that there is no Dino's still living in the lake?

[M Paul Lloyd]

Well for something to survive in such a finite space for 60 odd million years..............?

I don't think so.

[Lateralman]

The Loch ness monster!

[M Paul Lloyd]

Exactly Lateral, a myth of Elephantine proportions.

[Shadowwolf]

...I'm thinking avian influenza as a specific pathogen.....?

I think that was as a result of mutation and not to forget, it's one we've been around for quite a while and not something we blundered into in a cave or unexplored land.

I just suspect that we may spoil something that future technology might make better use of?

Perhaps, but the risk is always that the future technology may always make better use and nothing ever gets done.