With all the speculation about life on Mars, I have a question: a few years ago, i read that an expedition to the “dry valleys” of antarctica found these perpetuallly-frozen lakes in the valleys. they cut through the ice, and found that these lakes were quite warm near the bottom-some heat storage effect keeps the water on the bottom warm. Anyway, they also found algae and other plant life in these lakes. Has any more exploration of these lakes been done? Any fish in them as well?
Was this the lake you were thinking of?
BBC - Antarctic lake disappoints, but they are still hopeful.
If you’re interested, here’s a site about life on Antarctica: http://library.thinkquest.org/26442/html/life/
This is only tangentially related to the OP, but I read a wonderful book a few years ago, Water Ice & Stone : Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes by Bill Green (info from Amazon). The author is a geochemist who was working on a research project in the lakes in the Dry Valleys, taking water samples for analysis. I’m sure a lot of work has been done since then, but the book is still well worth reading both for the description of their methods and the author’s beatiful use of language. It’s out of print now, but I imagine you’d be able to find it in the library.