After twenty years and 2.2 miles of drilling, a Russian scientific team has reported that they have breached the ice cap above Lake Vostok some 3,768 meters beneath Antarctica. Though many had theorized the existence of lakes beneath the antarctic ice since the 19th century, conclusive proof of one did not exist until 1993 when satellite data confirmed that an ancient fresh water lake did indeed exist. Untouched for nearly 15 million years, breaching Lake Vostok could have wide ranging effects on our understanding of life itself.

A few months ago, the Emperor Penguin that would come to be known as “Happy Feet” came ashore in New Zealand. After it was clear that the penguin was not faring well on his own, rescue workers nursed him back to health and released him with the hope that he would find his way back to Antarctica. Now, the whole world can follow this plucky bird’s progress from the comfort of their own homes through Google Maps.

The whole scheme works thanks to a small GPS tracking device attached to the penguin. Sirtrack, the device’s maker, is keen to point out that it has been specially designed not to impede the penguin’s swimming ability and weighs less than 1% of the bird’s weight. Twice a day, the device activates and broadcasts location data for three hours at a time, presumably to increase the onboard battery life.

So far, Happy Feet seems to be doing quite well on his southward journey, but we can only hope that he doesn’t get thrown off course again.

As Japan continues to rebuild after March’s devastating Tohoku earthquake, the broader effects of the subsequent tsunamis are still being sorted out. One of the most dramatic discoveries comes from scientists at NASA. Hoping to observe the effects of the earthquake on sea ice, researchers noticed several large icebergs floating off the Antarctic coast where there had been nothing but solid ice before. Sifting through their satellite data, it became clear that waves generated by the earthquake broke several large icebergs were loose from Antartica’s Sulzberger ice shelf.

The scale of the event is truly staggering: the waves traveled some 8,000 miles striking Antarctic ice 18 hours after the quake, eventually breaking off 50 square miles of ice. One of the icebergs was apparently the size of Manhattan. Amazingly, scientists were able to find imagery of the ice mass in a photo taken of the ice shelf in 1965. This showed that the ice had been intact for nearly 50 years.

Check out the amazing video below from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center.

Taking turns seems like an easy enough concept (though lets be honest, it’s not.) But for the thousands of Emperor Penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) that call Antarctica’s vast ice sheets home, taking turns to stay warm is a highly complex affair.

A team of researchers, led in part by scientists from the Department of Physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, set up a time lapse camera to track the movements of a pack of penguins near the Neumayer Antarctic Research Station. When sped up, the video showed subtle movements that hadn’t been noticed through observation of the pack with the naked eye. The penguins, in their own way, do a version of the wave with coordinated movements that radiate through the group.

This very neat (and well-soundtracked) time-lapse video packs a Russian academic vessel’s expedition to Antarctica into just under ten minutes.

Following on our widely-discussed post earlier this week on the true size of Africa, we thought it’d be interesting to pass along this NASA-made comparison illustrating the true size of another oft-neglected continent: Antarctica.

(via Information is Beautiful; picture by NASA)

A Lyssianasid amphipod, a shrimplike creature of family Lysianassidae, was found alive by NASA 200 meters below the surface of Antarctica, along with what appeared to be the tentacle of a footlong jellyfish, the Associated Press reports.

Extremophilic bacteria living in extremely cold — or extremely hot, or extremely salty, or extremely anything — environments are nothing new, but for the Lyssianasid amphipod or any other multicellular organism to be found alive and swimming in such a hostile clime means biologists have to revise their theories of livability, and perhaps ups the odds of life on other planets:

A roughly 985 square-mile iceberg — every news outlet seems to have settled on “Luxembourg-sized” to describe it, for some reason —  has broken off of Antarctica. Scientists fear that the break could change global ocean currents, threaten Antarctic biodiversity, and perhaps lead to permanent cold weather on the East Coast and in Europe decades down the road,  Times Online reports.