1. "It underscores the importance of subglacial methanogenesis," Skidmore said.

2. Intense research has shown that the subglacial environment plays an important role in the evolution and dynamics of ice sheets.

3. But Vostok and the other subglacial lakes were thought to be natural museums, isolated from the rest of the world millions of years ago.

4. Researchers discovered only recently that inaccessible subglacial lakes in Antarctica periodically shed huge quantities of water.

5. At about that same time, suspecting that subglacial lakes could affect ice-sheet stability, I realized that new satellite imagery made it easy to spot such lakes.

6. More than 160 subglacial Antarctic lakes have been located so far. Their combined volume is nearly 30 percent of the water in all the surface lakes elsewhere on the planet.

7. The Gamburtsev subglacial mountains are thought to be the birthplace of the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

8. The discovery of subglacial lakes has fundamentally changed the way investigators think about water underneath the ice.

9. The finding is the first time subglacial lakes have been directly linked to accelerated surface flow.

10. The discovery of subglacial lakes has glaciological, geological, and especially(), potential biological implications...

11. US, Chinese and Japanese teams will study the deeper structure under the Gamburtsev subglacial mountains using seismology.

12. By mobilizing international scientific teams and logistics, investigators will be able to deploy a new generation of airborne radar for mapping subglacial water.

13. Based on this report, the NSF will now work with SCAR to involve all Antarctic Treaty nations in developing a management plan for the exploration of subglacial aquatic environments.

14. How a wave could have reached such a height remains speculative, but scientists studying the aftermath observed that a subglacial lake behind Lituya Glacier had dropped 100 feet in depth.

15. Blood Falls, a small, saltwater outflow from Taylor Glacier's subglacial lake in Antarctica's Dry Valleys, offers an alternative.

16. New gravity instrumentation, originally developed for the mining industry, will be adapted to estimate the volume of water in the subglacial lakes.

17. They discovered that during the same 14-month period that 1.7 cubic km of water cascaded through subglacial waterways, the 75-km long glacier downstream pick up speed, moving about 10 percent faster.

18. And ever since scientists discovered Antarctica's dark and mysterious subglacial lakes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they've wondered if microbes could make a life for themselves there too.

19. The understanding of water in the ice sheets and subglacial lakes has changed dramatically in the past two years. But that understanding is by no means complete.