|
1.
Lake Vostok
| 2. New Life Forms | 3. US Base at Lake
Vostok? | 4. Fact and Fiction: Bluring the Line
| 5. Censored News? | 6. Anomaly?
| 7. Military? | 8. NASA & the NSA?
| 9. Seismic Activity in East Antarctica | 10. Oldest
Man-made Structure? | 11. Ozone Layer | 12. Ozone
Hole | 13. Three Times Larger than USA | 14. Many
Years of Depletion | 15. Ozone Measurement | 16.
Getting Larger | 17. Less Ozone = More
UVB | 18. Humans: Skin Cancer & Blindness
| 19. Plankton: Population Reduction | 20. Fish,
Seafood & Other Animals: Less Food for Us | 21. Humans
(& Animals?): Immune Suppression | 22. Humans:
Look Old | 23. Plants: Many Problems | 24. What
Can You Do?
Lake
Vostok
First, there's the discovery in 1974 of a liquid lake beneath the ice
roughly the size of Lake Ontario. Named Lake Vostok after the nearby
Russian outpost, it is the largest of at least 76 sub-glacial lakes.
Lake Vostock
(77°S 105°E) is about 143 by 31 miles in area, up to 1,640 feet deep.
It has been sealed off from the rest of the planet from between 12,000
and 40 million years ago(1) by an ice sheet roughly 12,300 to 13,450
feet thick (that's over 2 miles of ice!) - BBC
| PenguinCentral
New
Life Forms
Russian scientists drilled to within a few hundred feet and based on
ice core samples it seems very likely that Vostock will contain life,
entirely new forms of life.
"In the December
10, 1999 issue of Science, University of Hawaii and Montana State University
scientists wrote about the hidden lake in a number of articles. One
of these was entitled "Microorganisms in the Accreted Ice of Lake Vostok,
Antarctica." Written about were the many types of bacteria found in
some ice 11,700 feet below surface level. The bacteria had managed to
survive millions of years in the dark and cold. Their existence bids
well for the probability of life in Vostok itself." - strangemag
Some on the
net have reposted a fictional(?) news report intended to promote a book.
US
Base at Lake Vostok?
Remember, this is just fiction: "The U.S. has steadfastly denied the
existence of a secret military base or weapons testing on the "peace
continent," although it now admits that its National Science Foundation
(NSF) is using American military  personnel
to construct a new base deep inside the Antarctic interior at Lake Vostok."
The fiction
continues: "Earlier
this month, however, a classified spy satellite image of Antarctica
revealed a physical anomaly two miles beneath the ice that could be
a man-made structure and not just the magnetic phenomenon the NSF claims
to be studying at Lake Vostok. Furthermore, the anomaly appears to be
located 300 miles away from Lake Vostok, near the epicenter of a recent
quake in East Antarctica (see seismic map). That quake, its origins
still under investigation, may have caused a huge chunk of ice twice
the size of Delaware to break away from the Ross Ice Shelf." - chemtrailcentral
| lantis.tv
Bluring
the Line Between Fact and Fiction
Some parts of this story are true (see below) but the "@lantis.TV" site
claims "ALL DEPICTIONS OF NEWS EVENTS ARE FICTIONAL AND INTENDED FOR
ENTERTAINMENT ONLY, despite claims to the contrary by subscribers, government
agencies, archeologists and other interested parties.
The book
"Raising Atlantis" is by Thomas Greanias latg1110@aol.com
of @lantis Entertainment based in Los Angeles. I find it interesting
that his wife is Laura Greanias a Foreign News Editor for the Los Angeles
Times(2).
Censored
News?
Perhaps the book results from some real news that was censored. Or it
may be intended to fog a real discovery. Could just be a way to make
money preying upon strong desires for truth from our government
and the popular belief of a vast conspiracy to hide evidence of past
advanced Earth civilizations. The Greanias web site is proud that it
blurs fiction and reality. Oh yeah, like we need more of THAT around
the web!
Anomaly?
1. Anomaly: Yes. Man-made: Unknown.
There is, according to Kristan Hutchison of the Antarctic
Sun, Feb 4th, 2001, "a huge magnetic anomaly on the east coast of
the lake's shoreline." It is thought, says the article, that the anomaly
is a place where the Earth's crust is thinner. "A tesla is the standard
measure of magnetism. Studinger typically finds anomalies of 500-to-600
nanotesla in places where volcanic material has poured out of the ground"
but with this anomaly "the readings changed almost 1,000 nanotesla from
the normal 60,000 nanoteslas around Vostok."
Military?
2. Military: Yes. Base: Unknown.
According to the National
Science Foundation web site, "With funds provided by NSF, the Department
of Defense (DOD) assists in planning and carries out requested logistics.
This function is presently performed by the Air National Guard and units
of the Air Force. The units of the U.S. Navy, which previously provided
logistic support, was phased out of the program by 1999, and the Air
National Guard assumed the flight operations and some of the Navy’s
support functions. Other support operations were assumed by civilian
contractors."
NASA
& the NSA?
3. The earliest push to drill into the lake came from the US National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) which wants to practice
on Lake Vostok so they could prepare for a mission to one of Jupiters
moons, Europa. ... In a brief announcement on February 21, 2001, it
was reported in Nexus Magazine that NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
had decided to cease studies they had been carrying out on Lake Vostok.
This allowed the NSA to take full control of what had been an international
effort to explore the lake.
"Anomaly"
discovered beneath ice in Antarctica WASHINGTON (AMP) - A spy satellite
image of Antarctica reveals an "anomaly" two miles beneath the ice
that could be a man-made structure, according to Congressional investigators
who are demanding release of the image from the Pentagon.
Seismic
Activity in East Antarctica
The explosive revelation about the anomaly, located at the epicenter
of recent seismic activity in East Antarctica, prompted an immediate
denial from the Defense Department and feverish speculation among members
of the international intelligence and archeological communities.
Oldest
Man-made structure on Earth?
"If it's something the U.S. military has constructed down there, then
they're violating the international Antarctic Treaty," said an aide
to Nicole Fontaine, the European Parliament's French president who in
the past has accused the U.S. of spying on European citizens. "If not,
then it's something that's at least 12,000 years old, which is how long
ice has covered Antarctica. That would make it the oldest man-made structure
on the planet. The Pentagon should heed the calls of Congress and release
whatever it's hiding."
The existence
of the classified satellite image was reported this week by an unidentified
federal agent...."
Greenhouse
Effect
Meanwhile, back in the year 2002, Antarctica provides
a wealth of scientific data. For example, ice cores taken at Lake Vostok,
Antarctica reveal that present-day atmospheric burdens of carbon dioxide
and methane seem to be unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.
Furthermore, over the last 150 thousand years of the earth's history,
changes in atmospheric temperature follow changes in atmospheric carbon
dioxide.
(Recall:
When sunlight strikes the earth's surface, a portion of it is normally
reflected back out of the atmosphere. Gases such as carbon dioxide,
however, prevent some radiation from exiting the atmosphere. Radiation
trapped in the earth's atmosphere and leads to global warming, the Greenhouse
effect.)
CO2
and Global Warming
With industrialization and the burning of larger amounts of fossils
fuels (oil and natural gas) more carbon dioxide is releasted into the
atmosphere. Isotopes of Hydrogen and Oxygen have been used to develop
Earth temperature histories extending over 400,000 years. How is this
done? The paleo-temperature from ice cores at Vostok can be calculated
based on a formula describing the empirical relationship between temperature
and deuterium concentration:
Temperature
(deg-C) = -55.5 + (dD + 440) / 6
Scientists
can compare this data to carbon dioxide data over the past 400,000 years.
1 2
3 4
5
6
7
8
9 10
11 12
Ozone
Layer
Ozone is a
molecule of 3 oxygen atoms. It is bad at ground level, but good in the
upper atmosphere. Ozone molecules comprise a thin layer found between
approximately 9.5 km (~6 mi)  and
29 km (~18 mi) above the Earth's surface. This protective layer absorbs
harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
Ozone
Hole
The
ozone hole is a well-defined, large-scale destruction of the ozone layer
over Antarctica resulting in the loss of up to 70% of normal levels
each Antarctic spring. As you can see from the image below, each year,
it is getting larger.
3 Times Larger than
the USA
According
to NASA,
on Sept. 8, 2000, Antarctica's ozone hole had expanded to cover an area
three times larger than the United States.
Many
Years of Depletion
Production
of ozone-destroying gases has been curtailed under international agreements,
yet concentrations of the gases in the stratosphere are only now reaching
their peak. "Due to their long persistence in the atmosphere, it
will be many decades before the ozone hole is no longer an annual occurrence,"
according to Dr. Michael J. Kurylo, manager of the Upper Atmosphere
Research Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Ozone
Measurement
A normal range for Ozone is 300 to 500 Dobson units. One Dobson Unit
(DU) is defined as 0.01 mm thickness at standard temperature and pressure.
In other words if the stuff a column of atmosphere were brought down
to earth where the pressure is greater, the ozone layer would be 3 to
5 mm thick, about the height of two stacked pennies! Of course, in the
upper atmosphere the pressure is so low that the ozone spreads out for
miles.
Getting
Larger
Here are a series of images showing the increase in the ozone depletion
over Antarctica.
more here
Less
Ozone = More UVB
UVB is a band of ultraviolet solar radiation of wavelengths from 280-320
nanometers. In the Antarctic, the amount of UVB measured at the surface
can double during the annual ozone hole. -
epa Well, so what? What can this radation do to me? In a nutshell,
kill off your food, give you cancer, make you blind and weaken your
immune system.
Humans:
Skin Cancer & Blindness
Laboratory and epidemiological studies demonstrate that UVB causes skin
cancer (nonmelanoma type) and plays a major role in malignant melanoma
development. UVB has also been linked to cataracts.
Plankton:
Population Reduction
Scientists have demonstrated a direct reduction in phytoplankton production
due to ozone depletion-related increases in UVB. In case
you didn't know, plankton
is the foundation of most of the Earth's life. Unfortunately,
"Damage to plankton would
quickly reverberate through ocean food chains." [NEW
YORK TIMES
March
24, 1988,
pg. A34.]
Fish,
Seafood & Other Animals: Less Food for Humans
Solar UVB radiation damages developmental stages of fish, shrimp, crab,
amphibians and other animals. Severe effects include decreased reproductive
capacity and impaired larval development. Solar UVB radiation, at current
levels, is limits populations at the foundation of the worlds food chain.
More UVB will mean even fewer animals.
Humans
(& Animals?): Immune System Suppression
Scientists
have found that overexposure to UV radiation may suppress proper functioning
of the body's immune system and the skin's natural defenses. Relatively
low doses of UV-B compromise the immune defenses of the skin, limiting
the skin's allergic response to local attacks. Higher doses can lower
an individual's overall immunological response. You can read scientific
papers supporting this if you like.
Humans:
Look Old
UVB exposure also causes premature aging. It can make the skin become
thick, wrinkled and leathery.
Plants:
Many Problems
According to one of many such studies,
solar ultraviolet-B radiation affects seedling emergence, DNA integrity,
plant morphology, growth rate, and attractiveness to herbivore insects.
What
Can You Do?
Invest
in sun screen. Wear it. Store food. Think of some way to get the ground
level ozone up to where it is needed without damaging some other part
of the Earth. Want to save the planet? We need a product millions of
people will use every day that will repair the damage. If we can stop
producing CFCs
for about 200 years things should eventually get better. But how about
finding a way to go up and get the stuff? May be some kind of harmless
balloons that float around and collect CFCs then bring them back down
to Earth?
NOTES:
(1) The huge time variation is due to the diagreement
by scientist over when the last ice age covered the planet.
(2) from at least 1988 up to at least 1992.
|
