International Space Mapping of Lake Vostok Overridden by NSA

Okay, I've a question.
And this may actually fall within the "stupid question" category, so bear with me.

Palmer Station has had all this unusual seismic activity for at least 50 hours, perhaps as long as 72 hours, without a break.

Now, we've thus far determined that actual seismic activity (in terms of true earthquakes) is rare in Antarctica.
We've also determined that the fingerprint of the seismograph seems to be that of mass-scale drilling.

If this is drilling, how and/or why has it been going on for so long without pause?

Is it possible that the fluctuations we see in intensity on the siesmos could be ... like echos?
*drill*drill*drill* for say 12 hours.
Stop for a few hours, but the earth/ice continues to "vibrate" from the incessant drilling?
Drill again, stop again. Repeat.
Is this something possible?

I honestly don't know if that makes any sense. I don't know how else to phrase it, though.
I just keep getting a mental image of a pebble tossed in a pond, and the ripples spreading long after the impact actually happened...


-B.

No, no, no...I'm not taking anybody as a smartass on this. But what I am alluding to is not the power behind this (i.e. nuclear, etc.) but the MECHANICAL side of it that is driven by whatever trick power system you attach to it...and let's face it, bearings wear out, lube has to be replaced, debris has to be moved out of the way. Long story short, the mechanical part of this HAS to have a break.

Banshee, that is not a stupid question at all, it is very legitimate.

I do not know enough about seismology to give a definitive answer, and even if I did, I would want a lot more information about the subsurface structure of the Lake Vostok area.

However, I will guess (and its just a guess) that the drilling is likely continuous. I say this simply because the seismic signature is generally pretty uniform, IE, there are no apparent stops and starts, or drastic fades in intensity which you would expect if the original sound source went away and you were just hearing echos.

Keep in mind, if this is tunnelling, it is going slow. They cant zip through at 30mph... I would imagine at best they are going 1 meter/hour, so in 72 hours they have only gone 216 feet.

hey smalll fry, this for you,

Nothing special about seismic activity in Antarctica
Mysterious as the frozen continent may be, Antarctica is no different from any other landmass when it comes to the frequency of earthquakes, according to Penn State geoscientists.

Antarctica is a huge continent the size of the United States and Mexico combined. In the past, only a few seismic recording stations monitored earthquake activities in Antarctica, compared to the thousands of stations spread throughout the rest of the world. Consequently, the number of recorded earthquakes has always been thought to be paradoxically small, says Dr. Sridhar Anandakrishnan, associate professor of geosciences.

"It was thought that perhaps Antarctica was different," says Anandakrishnan. "That it did not have earthquakes because somehow the ice on top of the rock suppressed the earthquakes and that the cold temperatures also contributed.

"Now we have data to show that that is not true. We did find significant earthquakes in West Antarctica," he told attendees today (May 30) at the spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C.

Anandakrishnan, working with Paul Winberry, graduate student in geosciences, analyzed seismic activity from six seismic stations covering an area a little over 300 miles on a side. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

"West Antarctica is a rift, an area that is pulling apart and regions like that are prone to earthquakes," says Anandakrishnan. "We put listening posts in an area where we expected to have seismicity and we saw a fair number of events."

What the researchers found were a significant number of small earthquakes. While large earthquakes can be detected at seismic stations all around the world, smaller ones are only recordable locally.

Recording and gathering data from seismic equipment in West Antarctica is not easy. Equipment must be able to withstand and operate in the extreme climate of the ice sheet. For three months, the sun shines 24 hours a day and the temperatures are similar to a northern U.S. winter with highs of 5 degrees Fahrenheit. During this time, the seismic stations operate on solar power.

During the winter months, when the wind blows, wind generators charge the batteries that supply the power to heat the stations and operate the equipment.

"One station operated the whole year round," says Anandakrishnan. "All the rest operated all summer and from 60 to 80 percent of the remainder of the year."

But recording the data is not the only problem. While in other parts of the world, data can be sent via satellite from distant locales, in Antarctica researchers must return to the seismic stations to download the information. Satellites do not move in convenient orbits to relay information from the stations to the researchers at home.

"All of the satellites are in the northern hemisphere," says Anandakrishnan."We have to go back every year to collect the data."

The researchers hope that better satellite coverage of the southern hemisphere will help with future work in Antarctica. While electronics do not really mind the cold, all things mechanical are adversely affected by the low temperatures. Regular computer disks do not operate well in the cold, but newer flash disks work better.

"The number and depth of earthquakes in an area are important," says Anandakrishnan. "They provide a lot of information about what is going on beneath the earth, the types of faults and how they are moving."

In an area where a sheet of ice covers the ground, information about tectonic activity could provide information not available in any other way.

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Love

TUT

"West Antarctica is a rift, an area that is pulling apart and regions like that are prone to earthquakes," says Anandakrishnan. "We put listening posts in an area where we expected to have seismicity and we saw a fair number of events." Posted by Tut

No disagreement there at all.

As they mentioned, Antarctica is rifted (remember the submarine trench noted on the Piri Ries map, confirmed by the Nazis in 1931?)

Now, on a spreading ridge, small quakes are not uncommon. These are on the order (usually) of Mag 1-2.5 or so, basically on a par with the seismology of the US Eastern Seaboard (same basic principle).

However, even these small quakes are discreet (IE, they happen in discernable defined events)... They DO NOT go on and on for 50+ hours at a slow low rumble.

But thats what we are seeing at Palmer Station and now Scott.

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If this is drilling, how and/or why has it been going on for so long without pause?


Excellent question. Imagine they have three drilling machines like the one utilized at Dulce, New Mexico to drill 2 kilometers below the surface. And onlly 1 out of 3 had to shut down for maintainance. This would result in little if any change in the seismo signature. If in fact this is what is ocurring. You better check with small fry!!!
I'm terrible ain't I

tuttutlol

Multiple drilling machines: A very real possibility as well. If they are expending that much resources to do this job, they would want backups... IE, at least one extra driller.

hmm, I would have to disagree here. If you have say 1 running and then another begins to run you would see either a net increase or decrease in amplitude depending on the harmonics between the two machines. This of course is assuming they are not running "in phase" which I think would be unlikely.
But, then, I have no idea what it actually is that's running for such extented periods so maybe it's the aliens with a kickin' new sound system in thier saucer under the lake.

I found an interesting site on Lake Vostok.

www.ldeo.columbia.edu...




www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu...
This is a good flash animation of the freezing process and the flow of the ice sheet over the lake.

[Edited on 31-7-2003 by ilovepizza]

I think the graphic is a little too small. I can barely make out any detail

Lol, very funny!!! What did you think about the flash animation and the "tiny" picture?

Here is another good site!!
www.cyberspaceorbit.com...

Always good to have more sites!!! I found that one a couple days ago and it had some nice graphics and mostly the same info as the others. By the way, Thanks for shrinking that down, it was a bit umm, HUGE.

I'm very interested in this subject and hope we will get a little bit of disclosure as to what's REALLY going on down there in my lifetime. Unfortunately, it seems, "they" don't want to tell us so we are stuck here speculating

Since we are entertaining all kinds of "different theories" how about this one...

Lake Vostok is the fabled "Fountain of Youth".
Kind of fits with the Atlantis theory and would explain Nazi Germany interest.
I know it's totally off the wall but I think reptoid aliens having a party with the Third Reich in the center of the earth is a little out there as well

I would have to agree also Fry.....it is bad that we must "speculate" as to what is really going on in Antarctica. Its what makes this topic vey interesting. My only gripe to this is the relative lack of information concerning "real-time" current events down there.

None-the-less.......maybe be could 'reason' with Simon to send us all down there to investigate further?

regards
seekerof

[Edited on 31-7-2003 by Seekerof]

Hmmm.... hijack a TR-3B, gather up an ATS strike force and go crash the Vostok Lake Party???? Any takers?

I'll do the driving... I dont do too damn good where the water is f**king solid.

Anyway, the current seismic profile out of Palmer Station is a bit quieter than before.

aslwww.cr.usgs.gov...

I dont know if they have ceased activity, or the machine is just idling. The intensity has obviously died off.

Interestingly, Scott Base Antarctica was starting up with the same kind of signature, but it died about the time it died at Palmer...

aslwww.cr.usgs.gov...

Who wants to talk about Lake Vostok in ATS chat??

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Dragon, Can you corelate,equate, or extrapolate how much Hydraulic Horsepower it would take to equal the amount of seismic activity you are evaluating?
Would be interesting to know, wouldn't it.
Isn't it nice to have a geological Wizard at your call!

Thank You

TUT

Tut,

Ummm.... in a nutshell.... No.

Im not a seismologist, structural geologist, or a miracle worker! Sorry! If I had better data about the bedrock they may be drilling through, I might be able to figure out how much energy is being expended drilling through it however.

If the lake is about 3800 Meters deep how can it not be frozen?

Couple of ways pizza.

First, 3800 meters (about 2-3/8 miles) is a long ways down. You have pressure (which heats things up).

Second, if you're an orange grower in Florida and they say it's about to freeze, what do you do??? You go out and water down your orange trees REAL good. Why? Because the water will freeze, and that water has such a latent heat for freezing that by the time IT freezes, it protects everything below it. SO, your oranges never see anything below 32 deg F, and maybe never sees that...even if it gets down to 12.

SO, it is feasible to have a lake 2-3/8 miles deep under ice, that has not frozen.