Update from Lake Vostok: Russian Scientists Discovered New Life After All

UPDATE (March 12): Oh brother. Officials now say that Bulat and his colleague Vladimir Korolev, head of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute were misinformed. When the scientists talked to the press, they hadn't been updated on the latest research and were referring to the tests from last fall. In fact, they had discovered an unknown form of life. More to follow. Confusion guaranteed.

Original Post: A team of very durable Russian scientists have been drilling miles deep into Antarctica's icy surface for about a year. And last week, they thought it had finally paid off. Nearly two and a half miles down lies the ancient subglacial Lake Vostok, which has been a focus of research for scientists looking for what life it may be hold preserved in its depths.

The Russian researchers announced on Thursday that they'd discovered evidence of a new form of life in water samples taken from the lake. "After excluding all known contaminants, bacterial DNA was found that does not match any known species in world databases," Sergei Bulat of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute told the press at the time. "We are calling this life form unclassified and unidentified."

There's only one problem. By the weekend, Bulat and his team admitted that they had not, in fact, excluded all contaminants. In fact, the new "unclassified and unidentified" life form looked so mysterious because it was a contaminant itself.

It's not exactly clear why Bulat jumped the gun, especially given the undeniably dramatic nature of the would-be discovery, but Gawker blames it on increased pressure to be the first time find something strange in subglacial lakes, because apparently all the countries are doing it.

That may be, but Vostok samples have turned up contaminated before. When researchers from the Russian Arctic and Antarctic first drilled in Lake Vostok a year ago, their first samples were tainted with drilling fluid. While it's not clear what the newest contaminant is, the problems highlight just how hard it is to take samples from a lake locked miles underneath the Antarctic surface.

The funny thing is, taking samples of microbes from extremely harsh environment isn't easy for anyone. Two years ago, NASA made a splash when it announced the discovery of a new kind of bacteria that survived in arsenic. Found in California's Mono Lake, that bacteria was supposed to redefine "life as we know it," but the NASA scientists turned out to have been mistaken. In 2012, two papers were released that refuted the scientists' earlier claim that the bacteria could substitute arsenic for phosphorous at the DNA level, which means those bacteria weren't so different after all.

The appeal of finding something actually living in spots like Lake Vostok is a little bit intoxicating. The water where the Russians found their samples has been under ice for 14 million years, so anything found within is a great glimpse into prehistoric life. Scientists also believe that it could provide some insight into what alien life might look like. Bulat compared his newly discovered life form — when he still thought he had discovered it — to something from Mars. At the very least, finding life surviving in such extreme conditions offers more hope that there is life on other planets. However, such a discovery remains elusive.

There's no doubt Bulat and his team are a bit chagrined. Not only did they fail to discover anything, they've also left the world second-guessing their methods. But hey, those guys deserve major props for flying to the bottom of the Earth and drilling through over two miles of ice to get the samples in the first place.