John Priscu, a glaciologist at Montana State University in
Bozeman, and his team have been the first to find life under Antarctica. The discovery occurred on January 28, 2013. The life is in a lake trapped under the
continent’s frozen ice sheet called Lake Whillans. The lake is a 60-square-kilometer
body of water that is on the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf in West
Antarctica. They had to drill down 800
meters of ice with their clean hot-water drill to break through the lake’s
surface. They
found the lake to be only about two meters deep, which is much shallower than
their predicted 10-25 meters. The
scientists collected 30 liters of liquid lake water and eight sediment cores
from the lake’s bottom. Both sources
contained microbes that do not need sunlight to survive. The lake water contained about 1000 bacteria
per milliliter. The researchers hope
that these microbes could give us clues to what extraterrestrial biology
could be like with the microbe's survival strategies.
NOS Themes:
- Science is collaborative
- Science is based on evidence
- Role of motivation and curiosity
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Related Articles:
http://www.dri.edu/news/4192-ancient-microbes-found-living-beneath-the-icy-surface-of-antarctic-lake
This article was very interesting. I wonder how the bacteria got down there and how it's been surviving this whole time. It will be very interesting to see what the results are and just how much it will change our knowledge on various ecosystems. I'm curious to know how they found out about these lakes and how many more are there.
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