What’s below the ice of Antarctica? Drill down into the Earth’s biggest desert to find out, and you’ll probably come away with the answer “more ice” – and that’s not wrong , exactly, but it’s certainly not the whole story. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

“The surface of Antarctica is pretty harsh. We see very little to no life at the surface – it's too dry, too cold,” John Priscu, now Regents Professor Emeritus in Montana State University’s Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences and one-time Senior Research Scientist in the Polar Oceans Research Group, told The Guardian back in 2012.

But “once you get down to the bottom, it's warmer,” he said. “There's liquid water, it's a much more clement envir

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