The Dark and Mushy Side of A Frozen Continent

摘要

Big sky, montana—Wetlands might seem incongruous in Antarctica's frozen wastes. But recent expeditions have uncovered a hidden landscape of lakes, marshes, and apparent rivers sandwiched between ice and rock. These vast wetlands, imprisoned under the ice, may even be teeming with life.rn"There's water everywhere under there," says John Priscu, a microbiologist at Montana State University in Bozeman. At a meeting* here last month, Priscu and other experts compared notes on the latest tantalizing cluesrnto what this unparalleled and largely unplumbed world might be like—and laid plans for exploring it.