Russian Scientists Battled A Seemingly Intelligent Creature Under The Antarctic Ice, Claims This Report
Did Russian scientists encounter some mysterious creature from the deep?
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Russian scientists going to battle with some kind of mysterious organism that escaped from the deep? A “report” has circulated claiming that the Russian drilling crew who historically breached the subglacial Lake Vostok back in 2012 had an encounter with “a bizarre and deadly life form.” It sounds like something out of science-fiction. That’s probably because it is.
This story about these Russian scientists and a creepy creature – who is given the ominous moniker of Organism 46-B – originate from the website of C. Michael Forsyth, a former writer for the infamous and highly fictitious tabloid World Weekly News. This “report” looks to be nothing more than another of Forsyth’s purposefully outlandish tales written in the guise of a news story.
What Russian scientists actually achieved at Lake Vostok in 2012 is far more intriguing (and real) than what Forsyth fabricated for his work of fiction. The subglacial lake had been completely cut off from the surface world for an estimated 14 million years. Naturally, this led to many fanciful tales about potential prehistoric creatures or life forms that could be surviving in the concealed lake. Instead of something that fantastical, researchers are more interested in what this kind of environment could tell us about potential life on other planets.
It is long been hypothesized that some of the moons in our solar system might contain ice-covered oceans with the capacity for life inside them. Both Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus are theorized to have subsurface oceans frozen under plains of ice. Scientists have always wondered if a thriving ecosystem would be possible under such conditions. The research being done by Russian scientists from the samples in Lake Vostok could help researchers learn more about this kind of environment and the potential life it is able to sustain.
Tales about Antarctica holding strange beings is one that we often see in fiction. H.P. Lovecraft’s seminal novella At the Mountains of Madness is likely one of the most monumental stories to be told about unknown creatures living in the Antarctic. Of course, the most popular modern story of Antarctic horror has got to be John Carpenter’s 1982 version of The Thing, a film that we might be seeing more of in the future. And don’t forget that time when the xenomorphs and the Predators had their big showdown in Antarctica as well.
Basically, it makes sense for us to want to believe a story about Russian scientists battling some malicious alien monster from the depths. There is so much about the inner workings of our planet’s oceans that we still don’t know. And if an expedition like this could tell us more about our own planet and the potential for life elsewhere in the universe? That gets the imagination rolling. Unfortunately, there are no crazy monsters leaping out of the depths of Antarctica to come and get us any time soon.
On a related note, Underwater was a really fun movie from earlier this year. If you haven’t seen it, you should do that!
