Did you know that the ice of Antarctica and other cold regions of our planet was formed millions of years ago? Within these tons of frozen water, the icy remains of ancient animals and even microscopic viruses could well have survived. This, at least recently, was convinced by a group of scientists from the United States from China, which in 2015 conducted an expedition to Tibet in the hope of obtaining samples of the ancient ice of the Earth. During a trip to this extremely cold region of China, they found ice floes formed more than 15,000 years ago. Researchers have recently discovered dozens of viruses inside them, most of which are so ancient that scientists still do not know anything about them. So what happens - if perennial ice continues to melt due to the planet's temperature rise, we may face an epidemic of ancient diseases?
According to the archive of scientific documents bioRxiv, several years ago an international team of scientists went to Tibet and drilled a 50-meter hole in one of the glaciers. Having found ice samples formed more than 15,000 years ago, scientists studied the composition of the water for the presence of microbes and identified 33 groups of viruses in it. Among them were 28 infectious agents that scientists had never encountered before.
Ancient viruses may well survive in perennial icing.
In the future, people may contract ancient diseases
For several years in a row, the world has seen an increase in temperature. Summer periods have become so hot that large-scale fires occur in many regions of our planet and glaciers in the cold regions of the Earth begin to melt. More recently, the scientific publication Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the results of a study that say about the catastrophic rate of ice melting in Antarctica. According to scientists from the United States and the Netherlands, in 2017 alone, the Antarctic ice sheet lost more than 250 billion tons of ice and continues to collapse.
Due to the fact that ancient viruses can be immured in the Antarctic and other ice of the planet, scientists believe that in the future they can cause human disease. The development of diseases with what symptoms ancient microorganisms can provoke is still unknown, but scientists intend to carefully study the detected viruses. Perhaps they will manage to develop cures for ancient diseases before they can be restored and spread.
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Also, scientists fear that due to the melting of ice, humanity may lose the remains of ancient animals and microorganisms that have not yet been found. The fact is that under the ice remains can be stored for thousands of years, having studied which researchers can tell a lot about the past of our planet. And if they are destroyed during the melting of glaciers, mankind will have even more unsolved mysteries.
There is no doubt that under the thick layers of ice in the icy regions of the Earth there are objects that are very interesting for scientists. For example, in early January 2019, the SALSA research team drilled a kilometer-long hole over the isolated Lake Mercer. In the course of scientific work, it turned out that there are remains of life in the so-called "lost" lake in Antarctica.
Ramis Ganiev