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Ancient Ecosystem Found In Ice Pocket

Posted by timothy on from the so-it's-not-a-traditional-honeymoon-suite dept.

ApharmdB writes "Beneath a glacier in Antarctica, scientists have discovered a community of microbes growing in frigid pools of salty water. It's a particularly tough environment, with no light, no oxygen, and extremely cold temperatures. But the microbes appear to live — and thrive — off a combination of iron and sulfur, according to a new study. The result of that strange metabolism is a brilliant red streak of cascading ice called Blood Falls."

5 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Similarity by Verteiron · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A red streak, huh? Looking at the picture, it's sort of a orange-red rust color. A rust-colored streak in the middle of a bunch of ice. What does it remind me of? Ah, yes.

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  2. Re:How did it first appear? by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's no evidence that life could ever appear in such environments starting from abiotic conditions, it seems pretty obvious these organisms evolved from more benign habitats.

    Like, say, a moon that's crunchy on the outside, but warm on the inside? With lots of organics and water?

    I don't think Europa is a perfect haven for biology, but I can easily imagine a race somewhere that has a complete explanation for how they evolved under an ice crust, and that would scoff at the notion of life on the exposed, irradiated, violent surface of a planet...

  3. Arthur C. Clarke FTW by NonUniqueNickname · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe no one has read it. In Odyssey 3001 (The Final Odyssey) Clarke wrote about a sulfur-based life forms on Jupiter's Europa moon.

  4. Similar to.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    They also have similar "red snow" in the glaciers of the high sierra. Although in the high sierra's, the sun is extremely intense.
    http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plaug98.htm

  5. Eating the past, with relish by handy_vandal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream-and in it were found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preserved in so fresh a state, the scientific correspondent reported, that those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot."

    - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Arachipelago

    Link

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