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Antarctic Expedition To Track Down Extreme Living Creatures
WirePosted tips us to a story about a group of scientists who are heading to Antarctica to study organisms that thrive in climates too extreme for most other life forms. The team will be visiting a lake that has a pH "like strong Clorox," the sediments of which "produce more methane than any other natural body of water on our planet." The scientists hope to learn about the potential for life in other unforgiving climates, such as those on Mars or the various ice-covered moons in the Solar System. Expedition leader Richard Hoover was quoted saying, "This will help us decide where to search for life on other planets and how to recognize alien life if we actually find it." We've previously discussed Antarctic microbes as they related to conditions on Mars.
Sounds even more fun than extreme ironing!
Besides showing us how to recognize alien life, wouldn't a better understanding of extreme creatures help us decide which species to first release in a terraforming effort? In Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy beginning with Red Mars , Sax Russell's choice of initial seedings is inspired by an earlier sojourn in Antarctica.
Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
Add the Clorox to the methane producing dudes. Kill 'em off! Need to fix the gloabl warming.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'll take that challenge. They've obviously never been to my toilet after I've had Mexican food and beer!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
look at this.
We have a weird circular loop going here.
Searching the other planets for life etc is supposed to be telling us more about how life might have eveolved on earth.
Now we're searching earth to find out how life might evolve on another planet so we can come back and say how it might have eveolved on earth. Does anyone else see the irony in thi?.
Perhaps we should just skip the whole space searching deal and spend more time doing earth-based research?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Spock: Captain, sensors indicate that this creature subsists on a diet of Slim Jims and Cheetos... Fascinating. It's blood is a substance you humans know as 'Mountain Dew'.
Kirk: SPOCK! How. Can that... BE... possible?
McCoy: If what you're describing is true, we've discovered the most extreme organism in the entire galaxy.
Spock: Indeed, Doctor. Most intriguing.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Very interesting, if somewhat unclear - are these extremophiles supposed to be the source or the consumers of the methane? If it is the latter, it would be nice to draw some comparison with, let's say, Lake Kivu. Reading TFA somehow didn't help. :)
Ezekiel 23:20
May seem like such organisms are hardy & tough, but those are super fragile environments - Images of tourists throwing coins into the Yellowstone thermal pools come to mind.... Please remember that not every animal, organism, and scrap of land on this planet has to have a human use.
Has HP Lovecraft taught us nothing?!
They're going to the antarctic to show that things can live at the antarctic.
...But it would make for some entertaining television otherwise.
Logically, if nothing could survive in the antarctic, then any expedition would be doomed, no?
The mere fact that they are planning to go (and return) proves that things can be expected to survive out there.
-Z
Tekeli-li!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
population, etc...? doing more than their share of damage then, to say the least. the 'creatures' could likely be 'tracked down' in the jersey swamps this summer the way things seem to be going. let yOUR conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/ts_alt_afp/ushealthfrancemortality;_ylt=A9G_RngbRIVHsYAAfCas0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yO
I read about this already. Either this is a dupe or they're just repeating an expedition made years ago (1931 or something).
Here's a description of the trip from one of the members of the expedition.
Here's a Wikipedia entry on the expedition.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Cthulhu hates me, this I know
For the old ones told me so
Human souls to him belong
They are weak but he is Strong!
Yah, Cthulhu Fh'tagn!
Yah, Cthulhu Fh'tagn!
Yah, Cthulhu Fh'tagn!
The old ones told me so!
You forgot to add, "Vote for Ron Paul"
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Oh, and shit! Those giant, albino penguins!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Wilford Brimley isn't getting any younger...
Stanley Miller's experiments were the first efforts (of which i'm aware) to challenge the enormous chauvinsim implicit in the conventional definitions of Life, with a capital 'L'
the discovery of volcanic 'smokers' did much to challenge the conventional definitions
i found it perplexing that cosmologists proposed Life might needed to have been 'seeded' by asteroids as though the Earth itself were not more varied and complex in orders of magnitude than an asteroid and teeming with "Life" not yet discovered
similar chauvinism sullies the definition of 'intelligence'
this book by Louise B. Young, 1986
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=9tFQIEd7hnkC&dq=unfinished+universe&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=Rd-pCskvdo&sig=tgTg6GadMWnXbUFE2kO1ggU59As
challenges many assumptions
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
Perhaps now we will finally catch live specimens which will prove the existence of the hotheaded naked ice borer once and for all!
Mir tut es leid, Menschen daß Einfältigfehlersuchenbaumfolgendenaffen sind.
Holy tinfoil hat batman!!!!
Extreme living creatures? Wow, living creatures that are extreme. How about that. Better than extreme creatures that are dead, of course, but extreme-living creatures could be more interesting.
So now we'll have even more examples of earth life that could stand conditions in some niche elsewhere in the solar system. Not only can we grow stuff on Mars, we can also find things in underwater smokers and volcanic lakes that will live in the upper atmosphere of Venus. I'd bet that something in Lake Vostok could stand living under the ice on a moon around Jupiter or Saturn. Cool stuff, to be sure. I'd even argue that we have a justifiable, instinctual drive to spread not just humans, but life as far and wide as we can.
But I wonder: How long do you study a new place to see if it already has life before you throw our, possibly hardier, alien invasion force at it? Destroying something native would be a far greater tragedy than letting a planet stay sterile for a while.
I still want a moonbase.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
coming a piss BSD had bEcome NIGGER ASSOCIATION the resignation Fact: *BSD IS A
You're not thinking long term.
Those 1 million will over time have many billion descendants.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/07feb_cloroxlake.htm
Enjoy
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Am I the only one that has a problem with the 'pH of strong Clorox' statement? Assuming they are talking about household bleach, the active ingredient of which is sodium hypochlorite, an oxidizing agent (as opposed to a reducing agent). This is different chemistry than acid-base chemistry where pH would be a more appropriate measure. Perhaps they meant to say lye.
insert pithy comment here