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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
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.
So life on other planets is dependent on our knowledge? Sounds doubtful. It may increase our reason to believe that such life is possible, but not whether that life actual exists/existed.
Dallas?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Antarctica wasn't always icebound. Once it would have been filled with life until plate tectonics moved it to the south pole. So there is a significant difference to the likes of Mars and moons orbiting the gas giants in that life under the ice first evolved under different conditions somewhere else and has adapted to the changing conditions as the land iced over.
That means it is a statistical certainty that there is at least one planet somewhere that has at least one farm animal because: p = 1 - .5 x .5 x .5 ....
Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, therefore we can round the average population of the Universe to zero, and so the total population must be zero.
Thank you Douglas Adams:-)
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.
Everywhere we've looked on this planet, including sulfuric volcanic fissures miles under the surface, where there's water we've found life. Clearly this planet is infested with it.
At some point finding life in a weird new liquid water-based environment on Earth has to cease being news.
You hit the nacl in the head.
There FTFY.