In a modern iteration of the great age of Antarctic exploration of the 19th and 20th centuries, three teams of scientists are rushing to reach not the South Pole like Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, but lakes deep below the surface of the Frozen Continent believed to hold scientific treasures.

The sciences website EurekaMag.com publishes insights into specific subjects of all areas of natural science.

After two decades of on-again, off-again work, a team of Russian scientists claim to have successfully drilled through the frozen crust of Antarctica and into a gigantic, subglacial body of water that had been buried beneath the ice for millions of years.

After years of drilling, Russian scientists have finally managed to reach down to reveal a unique sub-glacial lake. The scientists drilled 12,362 feet to reach the sub-glacial Antarctic lake, Vostok, which has been sealed for the past 20 million years.

In what sounds like the opening scene to a bad monster movie, a team of Russian scientists are on the verge of drilling down to a lake buried under more than two miles of ice that hasn’t seen the light of day for over 20 million years.