Though unseasonably warm weather over the weekend may have been a blessing on sun-starved Philadelphians, similar balmy temperatures a century ago would have sent businessmen in Montgomery County into a deep fret.

A century ago, Pennsylvania was one of America's top ice-making states. Workers would wait for a winter freeze and then cut blocks of ice out of lakes, streams and rivers.

That’s because the Perkiomen Creek was home to a lucrative ice-making industry that — long before Freon — supplied the city and its suburbs with refrigeration.

Ice makers set up shop there in the 1890s, when Pennsylvania was the third-largest ice-producing state in the country. At the industry’s peak, Pennsylvanians used more than one million tons of ice annually.

Because of industrial activity and water pollution, “the banks of the Schuylkill River back in that period had pretty much been laid to waste,” said Larry Roeder, a Montgomery County historian who edits the Town and Country community newspaper in Pennsburg.
Thus, massive icehouses — several stories tall and capable of holding up to 28,000 tons of ice — were built along the more pristine waterways, snaking from Schwenksville through lower Lehigh County, in the Upper Perkiomen Valley.

The location afforded easy access to Philadelphia by rail, and many of the icehouses employed city dwellers during ice-harvesting season. That led to the growth of hotels and restaurants to serve those workers, many of whom traveled there by train, Roeder said.
The workers, along with farmers looking for seasonal work, built huge dams in creeks. In turn, the dams formed ponds that filled and froze; one, in fact, stretched across 46 acres.
To increase production, workers would sometimes drill holes in the ice to allow more water to rise and freeze.

Cutting it up: When enough ice had formed, crews used crowbars and saws to separate blocks of ice that would be floated downstream to the various icehouses.

There, workers with large poles corralled the blocks to inclines, where they were packed together in the warehouses, with layers of sawdust in between to keep them from melding together.

As temperatures rose, skeleton crews shipped ice down to Philadelphia on an as-needed basis, and a single ice shipment could fill eight to 12 boxcars, Roeder said.

Because of the sawdust insulation, the icehouses could supply ice throughout the summer, he added.

Today, almost nothing remains. By the 1930s, modern refrigeration had made the large icehouses unnecessary, and they were all dismantled or destroyed.

Today: The region still isn’t a pushover when it comes to ice manufacturing, however. Now, the region’s ice manufacturing is geared toward selling to convenience stores, with out-of-town companies buying out local ice-making businesses, according to Jason Flexer.

Flexer, who gives presentations with Roeder on the history of ice, sold his ice business, Nolt’s Ice Co., to Home City Ice of Ohio in October.

“I kind of stumbled into it,” he said of the business, where he started working out of high school a couple of decades ago.

Nationally, ice companies these days generate $1.8 billion in revenue. Said Flexer: “Most people don’t realize how big the ice business is.”

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Reported by ANTHONY CAMPISI of The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT). Contact him at 215-854-5015, acampisi@phillynews.com, or @campisia on Twitter. Visit The Philadelphia Inquirer at www.philly.com

There are super-hot chile varieties. And then there’s the sweat-inducing, tear-generating, mouth-on-fire Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.

With a name like that, it’s not surprising that months of research by the experts at New Mexico’s State University’s Chile Pepper Institute have identified the variety as the new hottest pepper on the planet.

The golf ball-sized pepper scored the highest among a handful of chile breeds reputed to be among the hottest in the world. Its mean heat topped more than 1.2 million units on the Scoville heat scale, while fruits from some individual plants reached 2 million heat units.

“You take a bite. It doesn’t seem so bad, and then it builds and it builds and it builds. So it is quite nasty,” Paul Bosland, a renowned pepper expert and director of the chile institute, said of the pepper’s heat.

Researchers were pushed by hot sauce makers, seed producers and others in the spicy foods industry to establish the average heat levels for super-hot varieties in an effort to quash unscientific claims of which peppers are actually the hottest.

That’s something that hadn’t been done before, Bosland said.

“The question was, could the Chile Pepper Institute establish the benchmark for chile heat?” he said. “Chile heat is a complex thing, and the industry doesn’t like to base it on just a single fruit that’s a record holder. It’s too variable.” The academic institute is based at the university’s agriculture school and is partially funded by federal grants, as well as some industry groups depending on the project.

Hot plants: The team planted about 125 plants of each variety — the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, the Trinidad Scorpion, the 7-pot, the Chocolate 7-pot and the Bhut Jolokia, which was a previous record-holder identified by the institute and certified by Guinness World Records in 2007.

Randomly selected mature fruits from several plants within each variety were harvested, dried and ground to powder. The compounds that produce heat sensation — the capsaicinoids — were then extracted and examined.

During harvesting, senior research specialist Danise Coon said she and the two students who were picking the peppers went through about four pairs of latex gloves.

“The capsaicin kept penetrating the latex and soaking into the skin on our hands. That has never happened to me before,” she said.

Hotter and cooler: Chile peppers of the same variety can vary in heat depending on environmental conditions. More stress on a plant — hotter temperatures or less water, for example — will result in hotter fruit.

The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion’s new notoriety is already making waves in the industry and among those who love their hot, spicy foods.

“As with all the previous record holders, there will be a run on seeds and plants,” said Jim Duffy, a grower in San Diego who supplied the university with seeds for four of the super-hot varieties. “Like Cabbage Patch dolls right before Christmas or Beanie Babies, it’s like the hot item.”

Not even Duffy or the researchers would dare to pop a whole Trinidad Moruga Scorpion in their mouths, but there are plenty of videos on social networking sites where heat-loving daredevils have tried.

The blood flow increases and the endorphins start flowing. Their faces turn red, the sweat starts rolling, their eyes and noses water and there’s a fiery sensation that spreads across their tongues and down their throats.

using the scorpion: Pepper experts said there are a handful of people who are crazy enough to subject themselves to the pain, but the rest just want to try out these super-hot peppers on their friends or make killer hot sauce — and it doesn’t take a whole pepper to do that.

More bang for the buck is how Bosland describes it. He said a family could buy two of the super-hot peppers to flavor their meals for an entire week.

The beauty of the peppers is they’re not only the hottest in the world, but they’re also some of the most flavorful peppers, Duffy said.

“You can make a barbeque sauce or a hot sauce at a mild to medium level using small amounts of these peppers and it will be so darn addictive that you won’t want to put your spoon down,” he said. “You’ll want to eat and eat and eat.”

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Reported by SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN of the Associated Press from ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Follow her on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanmbryanNM

John Glenn fever gripped Cape Canaveral last week, just as it did half a century ago when America was on the verge of launching its first man into orbit.

Hundreds of NASA workers jammed a space center auditorium, three days before the 50th anniversary of Glenn’s historic flight, to see and hear the first American to circle the Earth. Then journalists got a crack at Glenn, ever patient at describing his momentous flight aboard Friendship 7 and the decades since.

The 90-year-old Glenn was joined at both events by Scott Carpenter, 86, the only other survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, as the weekend of anniversary festivities began.

Glenn said he recollects the flight so often it seems like it took place just a couple weeks ago. He and Carpenter visited their old launch pad, Complex 14; it was from the blockhouse there that Carpenter called out “Godspeed John Glenn” before the rocket ignited.

The national attention then was “almost unbelievable,” Glenn said, adding that he and his colleagues learned to live with the acclaim “or tried to anyway.”

Former U.S. Sen. John Glenn talks, via satellite, with the astronauts on the International Space Station, before the start of a roundtable discussion titled "Learning from the Past to Innovate for the Future" Monday, Feb. 20, 2012, in Columbus, Ohio. Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth, piloting Friendship 7 around it three times in 1962, and also became the oldest person in space, at age 77, by orbiting Earth with six astronauts aboard shuttle Discovery in 1998. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)

Magical time: The early 1960s were a magical time in Cape Canaveral and adjoining Cocoa Beach, Carpenter said. “Everyone was behind us. The whole nation was behind what we were doing,” he said.

Glenn’s Friendship 7 capsule circled Earth three times on Feb. 20, 1962. Carpenter followed aboard Aurora 7 on May 24, 1962.

Not the first: They were the third and fourth Americans to rocket into space. Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom flew short suborbital missions in 1961, the same year the Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts into orbit on separate shots.

The Cold War was raging, and America was desperate to even the score. Glenn could have died trying if the heat shield on his capsule was loose as flight controllers feared. But the protective shield was tight, and Glenn splashed down safely.

Return to space: Glenn, a U.S. senator for Ohio for 24 years, returned to orbit aboard shuttle Discovery in 1998, becoming the world’s oldest spaceman at age 77 and cementing his super-galactic status.

“Flying in space at age 77, you’ve given me hope. I’ve got a few good years left, and I’m ready,” Kennedy Space Center director Robert Cabana, a former shuttle commander, told Glenn. Another retired shuttle commander, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., shared how the Mercury astronauts “really lit up the world for me in terms of probability or possibility of things that we could do.”

Glenn recalled how the Mercury astronauts traveled during their training to Cape Canaveral to watch a missile blast off. It was a night launch, and the rocket blew apart over their heads.

“That wasn’t a very good confidence-builder for our first trip to the cape,” Glenn said. Improvements were made, and Glenn said he gained confidence in his Mercury-Atlas rocket, a converted nuclear missile. Otherwise, he said he would not have climbed aboard.

No launch:Glenn and his wife, Annie, for the attempted liftoff of the newest of the Atlas rockets, an unmanned booster that NASA contractors hope one day will carry astronauts. Windy weather forced a scrub of the Navy satellite launch.

Astronaut John Glenn climbs into the Friendship 7 space capsule atop an Atlas rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla. for the flight which made him the first American to orbit the earth in 1962. (AP Photo/NASA)

“Scrub! Welcome to the space program,” Glenn said at the news conference held in the old Mercury Mission Control, now located at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. “Not anything brand new to me.” Lousy weather spoiled Friday night’s launch attempt as well.

It took 11 tries for Glenn to get off the pad in 1962. He boarded three times before finally taking off, which he believes created even more of a public frenzy over his flight.

Reunion: On Saturday, Glenn and Carpenter will reunite with more than 100 retirees who worked on Project Mercury. And on Monday, the actual anniversary, Glenn will be feted at Ohio State University; its school of public affairs bears his name.

Glenn said he’s uncertain how he’ll mark the exact time of liftoff — 9:47 a.m. — come Monday. He admitted sometimes forgetting to mark the precise moment in the past. But not for this golden one, “for sure.”

What’s next? Besides reminiscing Friday, Glenn and Carpenter spoke of the future of space travel. When asked by Cabana “given where we’ve come, where are we going,” Carpenter had a one-word response. “Mars.” The crowd applauded.

Glenn had more to offer, stressing the importance of exploration as well as scientific research. He criticized the previous administration for promoting lunar bases and Mars travel, but providing no funds, and for canceling the space shuttle program. “A big mistake,” he said.

Glenn noted how NASA is relying on the Russians to transport American astronauts to and from the International Space Station, now that the shuttles are retired. That will continue until private U.S. companies have spacecraft ready to fly crews, an estimated five years away.

“What a big change that is from the days when there were the depths of the Cold War … fueling a lot of the interest in the space program,” he said.

Carpenter said he deplores the fact that America seems to have lost its resolve to press ahead in space exploration, as evidenced by NASA’s small share of the federal budget.

“I really miss my citizenship that was once in a can-do nation,” he said.

Another change in five decades: Glenn pointed out how cellphones have “more computing capacity than anything back at the time when we were flying in ’62.” Society has become so accustomed to new things, he said, that it will be difficult for NASA to generate the kind of excitement that Project Mercury or Apollo’s moonwalks did.

Repeatedly Friday, Glenn and Carpenter paid tribute to their five deceased Mercury colleagues: Shepard, Grissom, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper and Deke Slayton.

“We need five more chairs here,” Glenn told the NASA crowd.

The two pioneers received standing ovations.

Here’s a look at Glenn’s launch: http://youtu.be/8T0i0YkxGOU

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Online:

NASA:http://www.nasa.gov/

Ohio State University: http://glennschool.osu.edu/
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Reported by MARCIA DUNN of the Associated Press from CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.

Every February Yosemite waterfall turns to lava.

The firefall from Glacier Point at Yosemite National Park can only be seen for a window of time .Photographers wait, as if for an eclipse, until the moment when the sun and earth align to create a fleeting phenomenon. (AP Handout Photo/Yosemite National Park Service)

A window of time just opened in Yosemite National Park when nature photographers wait, as if for an eclipse, until the moment when the sun and earth align to create a fleeting phenomenon.

This marvel of celestial configuration happens in a flash at sunset in mid-February — if the winter weather cooperates. On those days the setting sun illuminates one of the park’s lesser-known waterfalls so precisely that it resembles molten lava as it flows over the sheer granite face of the imposing El Capitan.

Every year growing numbers of photographers converge on the park, their necks craned toward the ephemeral Horsetail Fall, hoping the sky will be clear so they can duplicate the spectacle first recorded in color in 1973 by the late renowned outdoors photographer Galen Rowell.

“Horsetail is so uniquely situated that I don’t know of any other waterfall on earth that gets that kind of light,” said Michael Frye, who wrote the book “The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite.”

“How many are perched on a high open cliff? Most are in an alcove or canyon and won’t get the sun setting behind it. Yosemite’s special geography makes this fall distinctive,” he said.

Man-made version: Four decades ago, photographers had only to point and shoot to capture another famous Yosemite firefall — a man-made cascade of embers pushed from a bonfire on summer nights from Glacier Point.

But photographing Horsetail is a lesson in astronomy, physics and geometry as hopefuls consider the azimuth degrees and minutes of the earth’s orbit relative to the sun to determine the optimal day to experience it. They are looking for the lowest angle of light that will paint Horsetail the colors of an iridescent sunset as rays reflect off granite behind the water. It materializes in varying degrees of intensity for the same two weeks every year.

“If you hit it at just the right time, it turns this amazing color of gold or red-orange,” said Frye, a photo instructor with the Ansel Adams Gallery in the park.

Another view of the hard-to-photograph optical illusion at Yosemite National Park. (AP Handout Photo/Yosemite National Park Service, Bethany Gediman)

Adams photographed the fall, but his iconic black and white images do not capture its fiery quality, and it’s unclear whether he ever noted it.

Picture time: To be successful in photographing the watery firefall, it takes luck and timing, and the cooperation of nature. Horsetail Fall drains a small area on the eastern summit of El Capitan and flows only in the winter and spring in years with adequate rain and snow, which is scarce this year. Experts say it doesn’t take a lot of water for the fall to light up.

Most important, the southwestern horizon must be clear, and February is the time of year when storm clouds often obscure the setting sun.

When conditions come together, the scrawny Horsetail Fall is the shining star of a park famed for its other waterfalls — raging Yosemite Fall and Bridalveil Fall. But Horsetail is the longest free-falling one, with a drop of 1,500 feet before it hits granite and spills another 500.

The fire lights up around dusk and lasts for about two minutes. The best views are east of El Capitan along the main roads into and out of Yosemite Valley. Most photographers gather at the El Capitan picnic area, a small pullout marked only by a sign with a table etched on it. But park officials say the inexperienced can look for the hordes of tripods and cameras to find a vantage point.

Recent storms and snowfall mean the finicky fall is flowing again, and park officials are hopeful it will last through February 24, which is generally the last day of the year it can be seen. Once an obscure event, park officials say that Internet discussions have made it more popular in recent years.

A tender shoves the ashes over the side of Glacier Point in Yosemite in the early 20th century. (AP Handout Photo/Yosemite National Park Service)

Park workers do the same: The popularity is reminiscent of an actual fiery fall that entertained guests in the park from 1930 to 1968. Each summer evening as the sun set, employees of the park concessionaire would build a huge red fir bark fire atop Glacier Point. At 9 p.m., as the fire burned down to embers and the Indian Love Song waned, someone would yell, “Let the fire fall!”

With long rakes men pushed glowing coals over the 3,200-foot cliff.

Had visitors looked in the opposite direction at a different time of year they would have seen the watery fire-fall of nature.

“There’s no comparison, and I’ve seen both,” said park spokesman Scott Gediman. “The natural activities and occurrences in Yosemite are far more amazing and more valuable than the human-made ones — everything from a sunset to wildlife to rainbows at Vernal Fall. There are a lot of amazing things, and they’re here year after year.”

Reported by TRACIE CONE of the Associated Press from YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif.

The one thing 14-year-old Moshe Kai Cavalin dislikes is being called a genius.

All he did, after all, was enroll in college at age 8 and earn his first of two Associate of Arts degrees from East Los Angeles Community College in 2009 at age 11, graduating with a perfect 4.0 grade point average.

Now, at 14, he’s poised to graduate from UCLA this year. He’s also just published an English edition of his first book, “We Can Do.”

Moshe Kai Cavalin, 10, strikes a martial arts position as he poses for photos at his home studio in Downey, Calif. At age 11, Cavalin became the youngest person ever to earn an Associate in Arts degree from East Los Angeles College and now, at 14, is poised to graduate with honors from UCLA later this year. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

The 100-page guideline explains how other young people can accomplish what Cavalin did through such simple acts as keeping themselves focused and approaching everything with total commitment. He’s hoping it will show people there’s no genius involved, just hard work.

“That’s always the question that bothers me,” Cavalin, who turned 14 on Valentine’s Day, says when the G-word is raised. “People need to know you don’t really need to be a genius. You just have to work hard and you can accomplish anything.”

And maybe cut out some of the TV.

Although he’s a big fan of Jackie Chan movies, Cavalin says he limits his television time to four hours a week.

Not that he lacks for recreational activities or feels that his parents pressured him into studying constantly. He writes in “We Can Do” of learning to scuba dive, and he loves soccer and martial arts. He used to participate in the latter sport when he was younger, winning trophies for his age group, until his UCLA studies and his writing made things a little too hectic.

Indeed one of the key messages of his book is to stay focused and to not take on any endeavor half-heartedly.

“I was able to reach the stars, but others can reach the ‘Milky Way,” he tells readers.

It was a professor at his first institution of higher learning, East Los Angeles City College, who inspired him, Cavalin says. He didn’t like the subject but managed to get an A in it anyway, by applying himself and seeing how enthusiastic his teacher, Richard Avila, was about the subject.

Avila, he says, inspired him to write a book explaining his methods for success so he could motivate others.

It took four years to finish, in part because Cavalin, whose mother is Chinese, decided to publish it in Chinese, and doing the translation himself was laborious.

Han Shian Culture Publishing of Taiwan put the book in print, and it did well in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, as well in several bookstores in Southern California’s Asian communities. He then brought it out in English for the U.S. market.

Because of his heavy study load, Cavalin has had little opportunity to promote the book, other than a signing at UCLA, where he also lives in student housing with his parents and attends the school on a scholarship.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, the math major plans to enroll in graduate school with hopes of eventually earning a doctorate.

After that, he’s not so sure. He points out that he’s still just barely a teenager.

“Who knows?” he says, chuckling at the thought of what lies ahead in adulthood. “That’s a very distant future, and I’m pretty much planning for just the next few years. That’s too far into the future for me to see.”

Reported by JOHN ROGERS of the Associated Press from LOS ANGELES, Calif.

A bobbing little pompom put on a peak performance at the Westminster Kennel Club.

Malachy the Pekingese, owned by Iris Love of East Berlin and two other people, wobbled off with Best in Show Tuesday night, becoming America’s top dog, much to the delight of an adoring crowd that called his name.

“He saved all his energy for the ring today,” handler David Fitzpatrick said.

The 4-year-old Peke won his 115th overall best in show title. He beat out a Dalmatian, German shepherd, Doberman pinscher, Irish setter, a Kerry blue terrier and a wire-haired dachshund at Madison Square Garden.

Fitzpatrick gave his 11-pound champ a bit of help — he carried him a short way onto the green carpet for the final lineup, shortening the long walk to the ring. Malachy’s pink tongue popped out from his black face, his eyes sparkling like black diamonds as he soaked in the cheers.

“No other dog moves like this,” Fitzpatrick said. It’s true, as a Pekingese is supposed to move with a “slow and dignified” gait.

Malachy chilled out after his win, resting his silver and white coat on a cool pack. He had plenty of time to get ready, having won the toy group Monday night.

“I kept him quiet all day,” Fitzpatrick said.

‘Super dog’: Judge Cindy Vogels chose the winner as fans hollered for their favorites. The No. 2 show dog in the nation this year was clearly the most popular. Malachy had heard it before, having taken the toy group here last February.

“Super dog, and he had a stupendous night,” she said. “There’s a lot of dog in a small package.”

The champion at Westminster wins a coveted silver bowl, but not a cent of prize money. Instead, the prestige of this title lasts a lifetime for any owner, and brings a wealth of opportunity in breeding potential.

This was the fourth time a Peke won at Westminster, and the first since 1990. Fitzpatrick, who’s also a co-owner, said Malachy was likely headed back home for a life in retirement.

“He’ll probably chase squirrels, and he’ll be pampered,” Fitzpatrick said.

Another retiree: Another area pooch is also looking forward to retirement after the most prestigious dog show in the country.

Tanner, a 6-year-old Bernese mountain dog owned by Dawn Cox of Hanover, received an award of merit in his breed Tuesday.

“He can retire on a high note,” Cox said. “I was proud with the way he showed. He really is quite the showman.”

During the afternoon judging, Tanner was a crowd favorite and garnered a number of cheers from the audience, Cox said.

Of course, Cox would have liked to see Tanner make it all the way to the Best in Show competition, but she’s a proud owner nonetheless.

“It was exciting to be competing against the top dogs in your breed,” she said.

Reported by GREG GROSS of the York Dispatch from YORK, Pa. Reach him at 505-5434, ggross@yorkdispatch.com, or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/greggrss.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Two Miami blue butterfly hang out at Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last August issued an emergency listing of the Miami blue as an endangered species. (AP Photo/Paula Cannon)

For more than a year, Bahia Honda State Park biologist Jim Duquesnel traversed the nature sanctuary with two hopes. He wanted to see a Miami blue butterfly and rid the Florida Keys outpost of as many iguanas as he could.

The reason: The Central American invader may be driving the Miami blue into extinction by eating the leaves where it lays its eggs—a bit of butterfly caviar in every bite.

The butterfly has not been seen in the park since July 2010, and with each passing day it becomes less likely any exist there. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year issued an emergency listing of the Miami blue as an endangered species and three similar butterflies —- cassius blue, ceranus blue and nickerbean blue -— as threatened. The emergency listing continues through April, and federal officials may make it permanent.

In the listing, federal officials noted that the only surviving Miami blue population appears to be a few hundred living in the Key West National Wildlife Refuge, about 50 miles west of Bahia Honda.

Still, Duquesnel has tried to keep hope alive -— and eradicate the iguana from his 600-acre park in the Middle Keys.

If the Miami blue makes a comeback, it wouldn’t be the first time.

On the decline: The pale blue butterfly —- about the size of a quarter —- was once ubiquitous in the hardwood hammocks, pines and scrub along the Florida coasts from the Keys north to Tampa Bay on the Gulf Coast and Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic. But the region’s development after World War II slowly shrank its habitat until by the early 1990s it was found only in the Keys, a chain of islands on the southern tip of Florida.

After the monstrous winds of Hurricane Andrew blew through the islands in 1992, no Miami blues were to be found and many thought them extinct.

But seven years later, a colony of 50 was found in Bahia Honda and it slowly grew.

Their population grew into the hundreds, until they were easy to spot year round from public trails. Jaret Daniels, a butterfly specialist at the University of Florida, remembers

Opening a scientific frontier miles under the Antarctic ice, Russian experts drilled down and finally reached the surface of a gigantic freshwater lake, an achievement the mission chief likened to placing a man on the moon.

Lake Vostok could hold living organisms that have been locked in icy darkness for some 20 million years, as well as clues to the search for life elsewhere in the solar system.

Touching the surface of the lake, the largest of nearly 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, came after more than two decades of drilling, and was a major achievement avidly anticipated by scientists around the world.

“In the simplest sense, it can transform the way we think about life,” NASA’s chief scientist Waleed Abdalati told The Associated Press in an email Wednesday.

The Russian team made contact with the lake water Sunday at a depth of 12,366 feet, about 800 miles east of the South Pole in the central part of the continent.

Scientists hope the lake might allow a glimpse into microbial life forms that existed before the Ice Age and are not visible to the naked eye. Scientists believe that microbial life may exist in the dark depths of the lake despite its high pressure and constant cold—conditions similar to those believed to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Valery Lukin, the head of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said reaching the lake was akin to the Americans winning the space race in 1969.

“I think it’s fair to compare this project to flying to the moon,” said Lukin, who oversaw the mission and announced its success.

American and British teams are drilling to reach their own subglacial Antarctic lakes, but Columbia University glaciologist Robin Bell said those are smaller and younger than Vostok, which is the big scientific prize.

“It’s like exploring another planet, except this one

If scientists find microbes in a frigid lake two miles beneath the thick ice of Antarctica, it will illustrate once again that somehow life finds a way to survive in the strangest and harshest places.

Tourists walk in Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) located inside the nature reserve of Los Flamencos in the Atacama Desert, near San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile, April 27, 2005. NASA says the desert is much like the climate and conditions of Mars, and therefore worthy of study.

And it will offer hope that life exists beyond Earth.

Russian researchers reported Wednesday that they had reached Lake Vostok, a pristine body of water untouched by light or wind for about 20 million years. They want to know what type of microbial life—bacteria too small to see—might exist there.

Finding microbes may not sound like much. But they were the first form of Earth life eons before plants and animals existed.

If scientists find these tiny germs in Lake Vostok, it bolsters already strong hope that elsewhere in our solar system, life also might exist where once it didn’t seem possible.

There are plenty of examples of life forms existing in the most improbable of places:

• A tiny shrimp was captured on a NASA video floating under thick ice sheets in a different part of Antarctica.
• Tubeworms somehow get needed energy from violent hydrothermal vents in the deepest Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
• A germ called “the world’s toughest bacterium” by the Guinness Book of World Records and also termed “Conan the Bacterium” was found 55 years ago in a can of meat. It survives and even repairs itself in radiation that would be deadly to cockroaches.
• In the highly acidic Rio Tinto in Spain, where you dare not stick a hand, life thrives.
• In Chile’s Atacama desert, so dry that scientists use it as an analog for Mars, life has been found blowing in the arid wind.
• A microbe was found in a South African gold mine that essentially lives on radioactivity in the mine.

“Everything I’ve learned shows just how

A 9-year-old Maine girl is home from a Boston hospital healthy, active and with high hopes — and a new stomach, liver, spleen, small intestine, pancreas, and part of an esophagus to replace the ones that were being choked by a huge tumor.

Alannah Shevenell, 9, rides on a sled with her grandfather, Jamie Skolas, at their home in Hollis, Maine, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012. Alannah returned home Wednesday afternoon, three months after receiving six new organs in a groundbreaking operation.

It’s believed to be the first-ever transplant of an esophagus and the largest number of organs transplanted at one time in New England.

Spunky and bright-eyed as she scampered around her family’s farmhouse outside Portland, Alannah Shevenell said Thursday that she’s glad to be feeling well again and able to go sledding, make a snowman, work on her scrapbooks and give her grandmother a little good-humored sass.

The best part, though? “Being home,” she said. “Just being home.”

Medical trouble: It was 2008 when Alannah, then 5, began running a fever and losing weight while her belly swelled. Doctors discovered the tumor that year and twice attempted to remove it, as it made its way like octopus legs from organ to organ. But it was difficult to access what turned out to be a rare form of sarcoma, said Debi Skolas, Alannah’s grandmother, and chemotherapy didn’t do the trick, either.

All the time, the growth — known as an inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor — continued to grow in her abdomen, causing pain, making it hard to eat and swelling her up with fluid. Surgery was the