Interesting news of late about Lake Vostok, which is thousands of feet below the surface of an ice sheet in Antarctica. It's believed to contain liquid water due to hydrothermal vents that warm it, but probably hasn't seen the sun for millions of years.
Nevertheless, it is believed that there may be life there -- bacteria that probably exists at extremely low concentrations, if it's there at all.
It will be very interesting to see what if any life the Russian team finds, and how closely it might be related to bacteria on the surface.
I wrote about Lake Vostok several years ago, for Astrobiology Magazine, an online source sponsored by NASA. My story was about a researcher named Craig Cary who was studying ice samples just above the surface of the lake -- ice that is believed to be Lake Vostok water that accreted near its surface. Dr. Cary developed techniques to clean the sample in preparation for analysis to ensure that no contaminating surface bacteria were introduced. The techniques could also be useful for in the search for life in ice samples returned from Mars, Europa, or other locations in the solar system.
