A British research team in Antarctica has launched a long-awaited project to hunt for life in a lake hidden beneath the ice-sheet, BBC News reported.

A team of 12 scientists and engineers has begun work at remote Lake Ellsworth. They are using a high-pressure hose and sterilized water at near boiling point to blast a passage through more than two miles of ice.

The aim is to analyze ice waters isolated for up to 500,000 years.

The process of opening a bore-hole is expected to last five days and will be followed by a rapid sampling operation before the ice refreezes.

Lake Ellsworth is one of several hundred lakes known to exist beneath the ice-sheet - its waters kept just above freezing temperature by the warmth of the rocks below. It is thought that the lake has been cut off from the outside world for long enough to raise the possibility that microbial life has evolved in unique ways.

This will be the first attempt to use highly sterilized equipment to collect samples of water and sediment from a body of water so deep and isolated for so long.

The aim of the project is to investigate the limits of where life is possible so preventing any contamination has been integral to the design of the equipment.