到達“迷失世界”: 二千萬年久的沃斯托克湖被鑽探
'Lost World' reached: 20 million year old Lake Vostok drilled
After decades of drilling, Russian scientists in the arctic have uncovered a rare piece of nature, an ancient lake buried thousands of feet under the ice. RT's Sean Thomas, toured the frozen continent exactly a year ago, and now explains what this discovery could mean.
經過幾十年的鑽探，南極洲的俄羅斯科學家已發現一塊罕見的大自然片斷，一個古老的湖泊深埋在冰下幾千英尺。 RT的肖恩·托馬斯，整整一年前參觀冰封的大陸，及現在解釋這一發現可能意味著什麼。
In 1957 the Russians established a remote base in Antarctica -- the Vostok station. It soon became a byword for hardship -- dependent on an epic annual 1000km tractor journey from the coast for its supplies. The coldest temperature ever found on Earth (-89°C) was recorded here on the 21st July 1983. It's an unlikely setting for a lake of liquid water. But in the 1970's a British team used airborne radar to see beneath the ice, mapping the mountainous land buried by the Antarctic ice sheet. Flying near the Vostok base their radar trace suddenly went flat. They guessed that the flat trace could only be from water. It was the first evidence that the ice could be hiding a great secret.
1957年俄羅斯在南極建立一個遠程基地 - 沃斯托克站。它很快成為一個困難的代名詞 - 取決於它每年從海岸史詩千公里拖拉機旅程的供應。1983年7月 21日錄得地球有史以來的最低溫度（-89℃），是不可能設置一個液態水的湖。但在1970年代，一支英國隊伍使用機載雷達來看冰層下的情況，測繪埋在南極冰蓋的山區土地。飛近沃斯托克基地，他們的雷達跟踪突然變得扁平，他們猜想扁平踪跡只能來自水中。它是第一件證據，冰裡可能隱藏著一件巨大的秘密。
But 20 years passed before their suspicions were confirmed, when satellites finally revealed that there was an enormous lake under the Vostok base. It is one of the largest lakes in the world -- at 10,000 square km it's about the extent of Lake Ontario, but about twice as deep (500m in places). The theory was that it could only exist because the ice acts like a giant insulating blanket, trapping enough of the earth's heat to melt the very bottom of the ice sheet.
在他們的懷疑得到證實之前20年已過去，當衛星最終揭示有一個巨大的湖在沃斯托克基地下。它是世界上最大的湖泊之一 - 10,000平方千米，約是安大略湖的程度，但卻是兩倍左右的深度（某些地方500米）。理論上說，它只能存在因為冰就像一塊巨大的絕緣毯，捕捉足夠的地球熱量來融化冰蓋的底部。
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