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.

Comments

Extreme living, eh?

[the_humeister]

Sounds even more fun than extreme ironing!

A first step to terraformation as well?

[CRCulver]

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.

Re:A first step to terraformation as well?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, I've seen it on Star Trek. The TV doesn't lie.

Re:A first step to terraformation as well?

[Amorymeltzer]

Ahhh, another dork who doesn't seem to know what the words FORWARD THINKING mean.

If you'd read the books, you'd know that while it is all fiction, those series are one of the few books out these days that had serious science done in them. Robinson was a fantastic writer, and very little was far from fact in that book. Terraforming a planet will in a number of ways be asier than changing our because we'd have a clean slate. Initial challenges aside, once we get the process going we can set up a runaway series of "reactions" to get the planet how we'd like it to be. On Earth, we're faced with the fact that the entire planet is alive and resisting nearly any change we put into it. We also have to account for the fact that we can't do anything radical because we're trying to keep everything currently alive still alive.

Nothing needs to change in even my great-grand children's lives, but a long process needs to start somewhere, and it's with parent's thinking.

Re:A first step to terraformation as well?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The problem with the idea terraforming Mars is that it doesn't seem to be able to hold its own atmosphere that well. It has a weak gravity and little magnetic field. To make terraforming an actual long-term project, there needs to be a good way to keep the atmosphere trapped, or else it's not going to last, maybe not even take hold.

Re:A first step to terraformation as well?

[Hizonner]

The problem with the idea of terraforming Mars is that there's no good reason to try it in the first place. Why would you want to do a thing like that?

To preempt the most common answers--

• It's not going to be a home for the teeming billions of Earth. It would cost too much, mostly in the form of energy, to transport that many people there. Anyway, it would just be a stopgap even if transport were free. Geometric growth is still geometric growth. The amount of time you'd gain may not even be the amount of time it would take to do the terraform job.

• It's not a particularly efficient way to provide a "backup" habitat in case of the destruction of the human species on Earth. Open-space colonies would be cheaper and easier. Even that, of course, is only interesting if you really care about the issue in the first place. Personally, I don't care very much, definitely not enough to go to all that trouble. The big problem with species-destroying events, from my point of view, is the death of all those individuals, and a backup colony doesn't save many, if any, individuals.

Complete boondoggle. And politically and economically impossible, as well...

Re:A first step to terraformation as well?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

A disaster is still a disaster, but I'd take a situation where humanity can at least carry on vs. total extinction.

Re:A first step to terraformation as well?

[khallow]

Hmm. If we're going to plan ahead, how about not making your great grandchildren so numerous that they need to terraform whole planets, eh? Sounds a lot easier, a lot more reliable, and a lot more aesthetically pleasing.

You don't need population growth for a reason to go somewhere else. Besides Earth is out of room for many things. If you want to start a new nation, for example, it's hard to start one on Earth.

I will never figure out the blind expansionism of the space-colonizer types...

It helps to first try to understand a different viewpoint.

Oh they'll find it

[Nylathotep]

Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

Re:Oh they'll find it

[jollyreaper]

Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! Fucker, you beat me to it. :) But to remain on topic...

Shoggoth, Shoggoth, Shoggoth, I made you out of flesh...

The fun guys from Yuggoth

Shoggoth on the Roof

I saw mommy kissing Yog-Sothoth

Re:Oh they'll find it

[vhogemann]

Unfortunatelly I don't have mod points... Let's see how long it takes until someone mod you up.

Until then, let me enlight the rest of you that didn't got the reference:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness

Great history.

Re:Oh they'll find it

[SurturZ]

>Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

I see the eyes have it.

Or maybe the other way around.

Mix 'em up!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Add the Clorox to the methane producing dudes. Kill 'em off! Need to fix the gloabl warming.

X-Treme Life Forms

[Junior J. Junior III]

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.

Methane

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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. :)

Re:Methane

[gEvil (beta)]

I think the article is perfectly clear on this--methane would be a waste product (or by-product) of any extremophiles living there (note that they haven't actually found any yet). If life there consumed methane, a different chemical compound would be given off as waste.

Go easy on the Extremophiles

[Chakka!]

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.

Re:Go easy on the Extremophiles

[ScrewMaster]

Fortunately, where these guys are going is unlikely to ever be much of a tourist attraction.

This is asking for trouble...

[Fallen Seraph4]

Has HP Lovecraft taught us nothing?!

Re:I don't get it.

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

I'm not sure why I'm responding to such an idiotic post as this, but here goes. They're looking for self-sustaining life in this Antarctic lake. I can guarantee that the scientists would die up there if we didn't send them along with food and fresh water.

Re:I don't get it.

[g0dsp33d]

... We are approaching the ring of deat[no carrier]...

Dupe, or repeated trip

[Mark_in_Brazil]

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.

To the tune of "Jesus Loves me"

[Xaositecte]

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!

Re:To the tune of "Jesus Loves me"

[jollyreaper]

Sing this to the tune of Tiny Toon Adventures

We're slimey, we're squishy, we're all a little fishy,
and in this adventure we'll be feasting on your brains.
We're abysmal creatures, with gross horrific features.
In Cthuloid adventures, lose alot of sanity.
So here's Miskatonic U. where all the creatures dwell,
take a look at a mythos book and find yourself in hell.
Your guns aren't defective, they just aren't real effective.
Our feast of human flesh and souls is about to start.
Your magic, and voodoo will not stop Great Cthulhu.
Don't eat with the Tchoo Tchoo, and the Migo steal your brain!
Here's Narly, Tsathoggua, over there's Cthugha,
don't forget Ithaqua, and Hastur hates his name.
So here's sunken R'lyeh where the angles are all wrong.
You'll lose your soul, and go insane if you stay there too long.
We're slimey, we're squishy, we're all a little fishy,
Our feast of human flesh and souls is about to start.
And now we'll eat your heart.

Re:extreme facist crusader zealots cracking planet

[tm2b]

You forgot to add, "Vote for Ron Paul"

Re:Producing Methane?

[ScrewMaster]

They've obviously never been to my toilet after I've had Mexican food and beer!

Oh, they've tried ... it's just none of the expeditions sent to date ever returned.