Two salty lakes found deep below the ice cap in Canada’s Arctic have the potential to solve mysteries about life in space.
Researchers at the University of Alberta who were using radar-sounding measures to map the topography beneath the glaciers on Devon Island in Nunavut were surprised to find lakes underneath more than 700 metres of ice. The water is estimated to be about -10 C but it remains liquid because its salt content is between four to five times higher than sea water.
All of that is similar to conditions found on Mars or Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, Mark Skidmore, an associate professor of geology at Montana State University, told CTV’s Your Morning Monday. The Nunavut lakes are cold and salty, get no energy from sunlight and scientists estimate the ice cap has kept the lakes isolated from their surrounding environment for as many as 120,000 years.
These are the first subglacial lakes found in the Canadian Arctic. More than 400 have been found in Antarctica and the Greenland ice sheet but they are believed to be fresh water.
Skidmore is hoping to get funding to use hot-water drilling to reach the lake water, where he’s equally hopeful about finding microbial life.
“If so, it will probably be unlike anything that we have found on Earth.”
