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

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?

[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.

Oh they'll find it

[Nylathotep]

Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

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.

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: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.