Prague, May 21 (CTK) – Czech scientists have discovered three lakes below the ice of Antarctica without even visiting the continent but only using information from satellites and topographic data from radars, the Academy of Sciences’ (AV CR) Astronomical Institute said in a press release on Monday.
A similar success was scored by a team of Jaroslav Klokocnik, from the Astronomical Institute, last year, when it discovered two volcanos below the Antartic ice.
This time, Klokocnik cooperated with Jan Kostelecky from the AV CR’s Research Institute of Geodesy, Topography and Cartography and Vaclav Cilek, from the Institute of Geology.
They applied the same method like before, which is an analysis of the gravitation anomalies registered by satellites and enabling to find out differences in the mass density or material of the localities on the Earth surface that are invisible, due to an ice layer, for example.
Radar topographic data, on their part, show the thickness of the ice above the surface of the newly discovered lakes.
As the discoverers, the Czech scientists can give names to the three lakes. They have proposed to name them after their family members.
Last year, Klokocnik named the newly uncovered volcanos after his wife and daughter, Dana and Zuzana.
The Czech scientists also found out that the three lakes are interlinked with the Vostok lake under the ice.
They published an article on the discovery on May 9.
The Czechs also apply the above method to search for possible oil deposits. They previously verified their method on the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia.
