Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake By Marc Kaufman, Published: January 31 After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, dark lake that hasn’t been touched by light for more than 20 million years. Scientists are enormously excited about what life-forms might be found there but are equally worried about contaminating the lake with drilling fluids and bacteria, and the potentially explosive “de-gassing” of a body of water that has especially high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen. To prevent a sudden release of gas, the Russian team will not push the drill far…