Scientific American: A young scientist with curly, reddish hair tucked beneath a knit cap stepped gingerly onto the three-day-old ice of a remote lake in northeastern Siberia. Coating the black depths like cellophane, the thin film held no promise to bear her weight, but a sudden dunk in the frigid water was a risk she had to take. Searching the lake by rickety rowboat all summer had failed, and any day winter’s first big snow would engulf the region, obscuring the lake’s surface until spring. She could not …