Expedition to track down extreme living creatures

William Atkins
Friday, 08 February 2008 20:02

Science - Space

Antarctica is filled with tiny organisms that love conditions too extreme for most other living thing. And a team of international scientists is looking for more of them at Lake Untersee in the cold confines of Antarctica.         

Expedition leader and astrophysicist Richard B. Hoover, of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, hopes to scoop up some of these tough little organisms called extremophiles, tiny creatures that have adapted themselves to living in physically or geochemically extreme conditions.

Such extremophiles are thought to comprise about one-third to over one-half of all the living biomass (the mass of living organisms in a ecosystem) in the world.

Equally important, their discoveries here on Earth could help scientists learn more about how and where similar organisms live out there in space.

Their primary distination is Lake Untersee, the largest and deepest sub-glacial lake found in the interior of East Antarctica. About 4.0 miles (6.5 kilometers) long and approximately 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometers) wide, it was first discovered by the German Antarctic Expedition 1938-39.

Lake Untersee in Antarctica is fed by glaciers and is permanently dammed by the Anuchin Glacier. The lake is always covered with ice with an average thickness of about 9.8 feet (3.0 meters) during the summer. Its water temperature is always below 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit (one degree Celsius).

What makes it very unusual is that the upper 230 feet (70 meters) of its lake water is very alkaline, with a pH between 9.8 and 12.1.

In the NASA article “Extremophile Hunt Begins”, Hoover states, “Its ph is like strong Clorox™. And to make it even more interesting, the lake's sediments produce more methane than any other natural body of water on our planet. If we find life here, it will have important implications."

What they find at Lake Untersee will help them and other scientists look for other creatures in the solar system.

In the future, they are looking forward to exploring such places as the planet Mars, the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and in the nuclei of comets. These extreme places—many of which are cold and rich in methane like Lake Untersee here on Earth—may contain similar extreme-living creatures called extremophiles.

Hoover continued to say, "One thing we've learned in recent years, is that you don't have to have a 'Goldilocks' zone with perfect temperature, a certain pH level, and so forth, for life to thrive."

"With our research this year, we hope to identify some new limits for life in terms of temperature and pH levels. This will help us decide where to search for life on other planets and how to recognize alien life if we actually find it."

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