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Sub-Ice Antarctic Lake Vida Abounds With Life
ananyo writes "It is permanently covered by a massive cap of ice up to 27 metres thick, is six times saltier than normal sea water, and at 13 C is one of the coldest aquatic environments on Earth — yet Lake Vida in Antarctica teems with life. Scientists drilling into the lake have found abundant and diverse bacteria, including at least one new phylum (full paper (PDF)). The find increases the chances that life may exist (or have once existed) on planets such as Mars and moons such as Jupiter's Europa."
And that's because the article says -13C and not +13C which is quite a bit of difference. It'd be cool if the editors actually did their editing work ;-)
Yeah, the Wiki-Page talks about -13C (9F). Typo?
TFA has the correct -13C, which is much more believable as "one of the coldest aquatic environments on Earth". For Americans 13C would be 55.4F, and -13C is 8.6F or 23.4F below freezing.
And for the nerds 13C would be 286.15K whereas -13C is 260.15K
Is it the high salt concentration...?
You hit the nail in the head.
It just said sealed for 2800 years... nothing about being in a warmer climate then. There's any number of things that could have caused it to be unsealed (which is not the same thing is completely open) up until ~2800 years ago. Maybe there was a subsurface channel connecting it to the ocean, maybe there was a chasm leading from the surface, maybe a meteor strike penetrated the cap.
Bacteria evolve very quickly. 2800 years is billions of generations for life in that lake.