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Life on the Moons of Jupiter?
bcrafts writes "The ecological conditions in which microbes were found by researchers near the Antarctic underground freshwater Lake Vostok, have sparked more discussion inside of NASA, on a CNN report, other scientific groups,as well as other online sites about possible life on Jupiter's moon, Europa. "
but I think it bears repeating, so I'll say it again.
The discovery of life on Europa would more or less confirm the ubiquity of life. If microbes were found on Mars, they could have originated on Earth and moved to Mars (or vice versa), but the chances are low indeed (although admittedly not zero) of Earth and Europan life having a common origin.
Having said that...
The Vostok life forms show only that life can exist in such environments; it says nothing about life forming there. It may well be possible for existing life to adapt to a shitty environment (from our POV), but it would, to my untrained eye, be far more difficult for life to start there.
Read 2010: Odyssey Two, Chapter 11: Ice and Vacuum.
He describes a very interesting creature uniquely adapted to the harsh cold and explains how it could have evolved there.
Yes, it *is* science fiction, but remember that this is Clarke, who loves throwing facts and theories into the writing. It does make it that much more interesting. Try reading "Ghost off the Grand Banks", where he describes a lot about offshore oil drilling and the Hibernia rig only recently completed near here, the Mandelbrot set including the history of it with some very good explanations, plus a lot of discussion on ways to possibly raise the Titanic.
Asimov is good like that as well. I remember reading his retelling of "The Goose That Laid Golden Eggs" from a chemist's point of view. That one fictional short story made chemistry make so much sense that I really started getting interested in it. Now I have a bit of a chemistry lab here sharing space with electronics and computer equipment.
Oh yeah, highly recommended Asimov non-fiction: "The Relativity of Wrong." It's a collection of essays on a myriad of topics. They're quite witty, too. He exhibits a bit of a Dave Barry-ish style in a couple of places. I learned a lot from that book, and the title essay, "The Relativity of Wrong," is very cool.
Ok, got a little off-topic there, but these books were, I think, some of the most important I have ever read.