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Mars Base

NASA Hubble Telescope Discovers Water Plumes Over Icy Europa - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...ter-plumes-over-icy-europa.htm

scibyte113 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 13 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has
  • spotted water vapor above the moon's frigid south polar region, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface
  • Scientists had previously detected evidence of an ocean under Europa's icy crust
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa
  • If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean
  • then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa's potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice
  • This would actually be the second moon in the solar system known to have water vapor plumes
  • The first one to be discovered was Saturn's moon Enceladus
  • First detected in 2005 by NASA's Cassini orbiter, the plumes also possess dust and ice particles
  • So far, though, only water vapor gases have been detected in Europa.
  • It's possible that these plumes could be vented from long cracks on Europa's surface
  • Cassini has actually seen similar fissures that host the Enceladus
  • Europa plumes are similar to Enceladus in another way. They seem to also vary depending on the moon's orbital position; active jets have only been seen when Europa is farthest from Jupiter
  • supports a key prediction that Europa should tidally flex by a significant amount if it has a subsurface ocean
  • Once the plumes are confirmed, scientists can take a closer look at their composition and may even be able to find out more about the potential subsurface sea of Europa
Mars Base

Hydrogen Peroxide Could Feed Life on Europa - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...xide-could-feed-life-on-europa

scibyte89 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 06 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • According to research
  • Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Europa has hydrogen peroxide across much of the surface of its leading hemisphere
  • compound
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • could potentially provide energy for life if it has found its way into the moon’s subsurface ocean.
  • The availability of oxidants like peroxide on Earth was a critical part of the rise of complex, multicellular life
  • The highest concentration of peroxide found was on the side of Europa that always leads in its orbit around Jupiter,
  • roughly 20 times more diluted than the hydrogen peroxide mixture available at drug stores
  • The concentration
  • then drops off to nearly zero on the hemisphere of Europa that faces backward in its orbit.
  • Hydrogen peroxide was first detected on Europa by NASA’s Galileo mission, which explored the Jupiter system from 1995 to 2003
  • Galileo observations were of a limited region. The new Keck data show that peroxide is widespread across much of the surface of Europa, and the highest concentrations are reached in regions where Europa’s ice is nearly pure water with very little sulfur contamination
  • scientists think hydrogen peroxide is an important factor for the habitability of the global liquid water ocean under Europa’s icy crust
  • hydrogen peroxide decays to oxygen when mixed into liquid water
  • abundant compounds like peroxide could help to satisfy the chemical energy requirement needed for life within the ocean, if the peroxide is mixed into the ocean
Mars Base

Acidic Europa may eat away at chances for life - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...cidic-europa-chances-life.html

scibyte36 Jupiter Europa

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Europa's interior. The moon is thought to have a metallic core surrounded by a rocky interior, and then a global ocean on top of that surrounded by a shell of water ice
  • ocean underneath the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa could be too acid to support life
  • Europa, which is roughly the size of Earth's moon, could possess an ocean about 100 miles deep
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Recent findings even suggest its ocean could be loaded with oxygen, enough to support millions of tons worth of marine life like the kinds that exist on Earth
  • However, chemicals found on the surface of Europa might jeopardize any chances of life evolving there
  • compounds in question are oxidants, which are capable of receiving electrons from other compounds
  • usually rare in the solar system because of the abundance of chemicals known as reductants such as hydrogen and carbon
  • oxidants from Europa's surface might react with sulfides and other compounds in this moon's ocean before life could nab it
  • generating sulfuric and other acids
  • . If this has occurred for just about half of Europa's lifetime, not only would such a process rob the ocean of life-supporting oxidants
  • could become relatively corrosive, with a pH of about 2.6, "about the same as your average soft drink
  • ecosystem would need to evolve quickly to meet this crisis, with oxygen metabolisms and acid tolerance developing in only about 50 million years to handle the acidification
  • analogous to microbes found in acid mine drainage on Earth
  • bright red Río Tinto river in Spain
  • dominant microbes found there are acid-loving "acidophiles" that depend on iron and sulfide as sources of metabolic energy.
  • microbes there have figured out ways of fighting their acidic environment
  • If life did that on Europa, Ganymede, and maybe even Mars, that might have been quite advantageous
  • Others have questioned whether or not rock in Europa's seabed might actually neutralize the effects of this acidity
  • not think this is likely
  • one of the interesting possibilities is that they might have use blue phosphates as their bone material instead to evolve large organisms
Mars Base

Russia May Land Probe on Jupiter's Moon Ganymede with Europe's JUICE Mission | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/sia-europe-jupiter-probes.html

scibyte99

shared by Mars Base on 20 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • A Russian probe being designed to land on Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, could launch toward the gas giant with a European spacecraft being developed to explore Jupiter's icy ocean-covered satellites, according to European space officials.
  • more Earthly concerns, such as government finances and the realities of technical developments, could thwart the proposal
  • JUICE is scheduled to launch in 2022 and arrive at Jupiter in 2030, entering orbit around the huge planet and making repeated flybys of three of its largest moons — Ganymede, Callisto and Europa
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • In September 2032, the European spacecraft will arrive at Ganymede, becoming the first probe to enter orbit around the moon of another planet
  • Equipped with radar, a mapping camera and other instruments, JUICE will measure the thickness of global ice sheets covering Jupiter's moons and produce terrain and mineral maps of Ganymede
  • Russia's plan is to implement a Ganymede Lander
  • Russian mission planners initially proposed the lander to target Europa, another of Jupiter's moons with a frozen crust thinner than the ice cap covering Ganymede
  • After a NASA mission to orbit Europa never materialized, Russia retooled the project to focus on Ganymede, falling in line with the goals of Europe's Jupiter mission
  • advantages of landing on Ganymede as opposed to Europa
  • The radiation environment at Ganymede is less severe than at Europa, which lies closer to Jupiter
  • this is one of the reasons ESA picked Ganymede as the destination for JUICE
  • Russian scientists say mapping and reconnaissance of Ganymede are required before any attempted landing
  • If Russia becomes a full partner in Europe's JUICE mission, the development of the lander will need to be accelerated to launch in 2022, if managers want the Russian craft to ride to Jupiter as a piggyback payload.
Mars Base

Will the Europa Clipper Cruise to Jupiter's Moon? : Discovery News - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...-to-the-jovian-moon-130401.htm

scibyte89 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 09 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • a resolution
  • was recently passed by the House and Senate outlining the extent of government funding
  • “$75,000,000 shall be for pre-formulation and/or formulation activities for a mission that meets the science goals outlined for the Jupiter Europa mission
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Europa recently hit the headlines after planetary scientists
  • uncovered the presence of magnesium sulfate salt — a.k.a. Epsom salt — on Europa’s surface
  • the presence of magnesium sulfate is suggestive of a cycling of Europa’s salty ocean with the surface.
  • Although this is good news, it’s also a reminder that potentially habitable moons don’t only orbit Jupiter
  • Enceladus
  • the Saturnian moon
  • is known to possess salty liquid water beneath its surface, plus an internal heat source, that generates Enceladus’ famous geysers
Mars Base

Jupiter Moon's Buried Lakes Evoke Antarctica | Jupiter Moon Europa | Subsurface Lakes P... - 0 views

www.space.com/arth-antarctica-analogues.html

scibyte22 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Patches of broken ice unique to the moon have puzzled scientists for over a decade
  • Some have argued they are signs of a subterranean ocean breaking through, while others believe that the crust is too thick for the water to pierce
  • studies of ice formations in Antarctica and Iceland have provided clues to the creation of these puzzling features
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • irregular areas contain domes and iceberglike blocks that no theoretical models have been able to replicate
  • "It looks like crushed ice,
  • In Iceland, volcanoes lay beneath the ice. Their heat melts the base of glaciers and ice sheets, causing the surface to buckle in on itself and allowing stress fractures to form
  • there's no evidence for volcanoes on Europa, and the makeup of the ice is likely different from Earth'
  • , a combination of these elements could very well be at work on Jupiter's moon
  • "On Earth, it is the volcano [melting the ice]," Schmidt said. "On Europa, it is the warm ice plume coming up from below."
  • estimated that it contained as much water as all of the North America's Great Lakes combined, about 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface.
  • One such lake
  • several liquid lakes are likely to exist near the surface today
  • The material cycled into the ocean via these lakes may make Europa's ocean even more habitable than previously imagined
  • The lakes may even be habitats themselves
Mars Base

APOD: 2012 May 24 - All the Water on Europa - 0 views

apod.nasa.gov/ap120524.html

scibyte48 earth Europa water

shared by Mars Base on 24 May 12 - No Cached
  • Based on the Galileo probe data acquired during its exploration of the Jovian system from 1995 to 2003
  • Europa possesses a deep, global ocean of liquid water beneath a layer of surface ice
  • The subsurface ocean plus ice layer could range from 80 to 170 kilometers in average dept
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • estimate of 100 kilometers depth
  • all the water on Europa were gathered into a ball it would have a radius of 877 kilometers
  • a volume 2-3 times the volume of water in Earth's oceans
Mars Base

Hubble discovers water vapor venting from Jupiter's moon Europa - 0 views

phys.org/...apor-venting-jupiter-moon.html

scibyte113 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 13 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Only after a particular camera on the Hubble Space Telescope had been repaired on the last servicing mission by the Space Shuttle did we gain the sensitivity to really search for these plumes
  • Future space probe missions to Europa could confirm that the exact locations and sizes of vents and determine whether they connect to liquid subsurface reservoirs
  • ESA's JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, a mission planned for launch in 2022, and which aims to explore both Jupiter and three of its largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
Mars Base

Europa's ocean could help explain its jigsaw surface | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...elp-explain-its-jigsaw-surface

scibyte113 Europa ViewerFeedback

shared by Mars Base on 06 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Jupiter’s icy moon Europa
  • cracks appear in this facade
  • the cracks come in the form of jumbled pieces of ice that make up what are called the moon's “chaos terrains.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • It seems likely that the ocean has something to do with the chaos terrain, especially given the presence of salt there
  • To figure that out, however, we’d have to know something about how water circulates in that ocean
  • Circulation in the ocean would be driven by the heat from Europa’s interior
  • It’s been thought that the big-picture pattern might look something like the atmosphere of Jupiter, with alternating bands of eastward or westward flow.
  • difficulty of studying Europa’s
Mars Base

Curiosity Rover | SciByte | Jupiter Broadcasting - 0 views

www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/...curiosity-rover-scibyte-21

scibyte42 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 12 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Curiosity Rover | SciByte 22
  • November 22, 2011
  • Jupiter’s ice-moon Europa
Mars Base

2013 in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...2013_in_science

scibyte114 2013YearInReview

shared by Mars Base on 23 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Morocco in 2011, and report that it is a new type of Mars rock with an unusually high water content.[8][9][10] American researchers state that a gene associated with active personality traits is also linked to
  • Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler space observatory announce the discovery of KOI-172.02, an Earth-like exoplanet candidate which orbits a star similar to the Sun in the habitable zone
  • 13 January – Massachusetts doctors invent a pill-sized medical scanner that can be safely swallowed by patients, allowing the esophagus to be more easily scanned for disease
  • ...101 more annotations...
  • 17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue
  • 2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta
  • 3 January
  • 8 January
  • 20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells
  • 25 January
  • An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology
  • 30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch
  • 6 February
  • Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets
  • Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans
  • American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice
  • 10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane
  • 15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people
  • 28 February
  • Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta
  • A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart
  • 1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot
  • 3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year
  • researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants
  • 7 March
  • A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies
  • 11 March
  • 12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals
  • 14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson
  • 18 March
  • NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm
  • 27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.
  • NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station
  • 3 April
  • 15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital
  • 18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft
  • 21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight
  • After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh
  • 29 April
  • 1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope
  • A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life
  • NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like
  • 15 May
  • 16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine
  • 27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory
  • 29 May
  • Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia
  • A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent
  • 4 June
  • During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory
  • 20 June
  • China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date
  • 26 June
  • 20 June
  • 20 June
  • 6 July
  • Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms
  • 15 July
  • ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector
  • 19 July
  • NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover
  • Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn
  • 29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth
  • exoplanet
  • 7 January
  • Astronomers
  • report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 20 February
  • NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon
  • 10 June
  • Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence
  • 25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667
  • 11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere
  • NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered
  • 15 August
  • Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination
  • 3 September
  • 12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977
  • NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples
  • 26 September
  • In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type
  • mafic
  • as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi
  • perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site
  • earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts
  • Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b
  • 30 September
  • 8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
  • 16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.
  • Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through
  • 17 October
  • 22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet
  • 4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars
  • 5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan
  • The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System
  • 21 November
  • 1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16
  • 3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b
  • 9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater
  • 12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter
  • 14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there
  • 18 December
  • nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away
  • 20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported
Mars Base

NASA - NASA Researchers Discover Ancient Microbes in Antarctic Lake - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...12-408_Lake_Vida_Microbes.html

scibyte73 AntarcticLake

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • In one of the most remote lakes of Antarctica, nearly 65 feet beneath the icy surface, scientists
  • , have uncovered a community of bacteria
  • one of Earth's darkest, saltiest and coldest habitats
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • increase our limited knowledge of how life can sustain itself in these extreme environments on our own planet and beyond.
  • Lake Vida, the largest of several unique lakes found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contains no oxygen, is mostly frozen and possesses the highest nitrous oxide levels of any natural water body on Earth
  • approximately six times saltier than seawater
  • average temperature is minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit
  • the brine harbors a surprisingly diverse and abundant variety of bacteria that survive without a current source of energy from the sun
  • Previous studies of Lake Vida dating back to 1996 indicate the brine and its inhabitants have been isolated from outside influences for more than 3,000 years.
  • the best analog we have for possible ecosystems in the subsurface waters of Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa
  • collaborators
  • developed stringent protocols and specialized equipment for their 2005 and 2010 field campaigns to sample from the lake brine while avoiding contaminating the pristine ecosystem
  • expands our knowledge of environmental limits for life and helps define new niches of habitability
  • To sample unique environments such as this, researchers must work under secure, sterile tents on the lake's surface
  • The tents kept the site and equipment clean as researchers drilled ice cores, collected samples of the salty brine residing in the lake ice and assessed the chemical qualities of the water and its potential for harboring and sustaining life
  • analyses suggest chemical reactions between the brine and the underlying iron-rich sediments generate nitrous oxide and molecular hydrogen
  • may provide the energy needed to support the brine's diverse microbial life.
  • Additional research is under way to analyze the abiotic, chemical interactions between the Lake Vida brine and its sediment
  • investigating the microbial community by using different genome sequencing approaches
Mars Base

Russia finds 'new bacteria' in Antarctic lake - 0 views

phys.org/...a-bacteria-antarctic-lake.html

scibyte85 SubglacialLake

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Russian scientists believe they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica
  • The samples obtained from the underground lake in May 2012 contained a bacteria which bore no resemblance to existing type
  • "After putting aside all possible elements of contamination, DNA was found that did not coincide with any of the well-known types in the global database,"
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • discovery comes from samples collected in an expedition in 2012 where a Russian team drilled down to the surface of Lake Vosto
  • believed to have been covered by ice for more than a million years but has kept its liquid state.
  • Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica
  • The Russian team last year drilled almost four kilometres (2.34 miles) to reach the lake and take the samples.
  • t the interest surrounded one particular form of bacteria whose DNA was less than 86 percent similar to previously existing forms.
  • "In terms of work with DNA this is basically zero. A level of 90 percent usually means that the organism is unknown."
  • not even possible to find the genetic descendants of the bacteria.
  • "If this had been found on Mars everyone would have undoubtedly said there is life on Mars. But this is bacteria from Earth."
  • new samples of water would be taken from Lake Vostok during a new expedition in May.
  • "If we manage to find the same group of organisms in this water we can say for sure that we have found new life on Earth that exists in no database,"
  • Exploring environments such as Lake Vostok allows scientists to discover what life forms can exist in the most extreme conditions
  • whether life could exist on some other bodies in the solar system.
  • Saturn's moon Enceladus and the Jupiter moon Europa as they are believed to have oceans, or large lakes, beneath their icy shells.
Mars Base

First Evidence of Life in Antarctic Subglacial Lake : The Crux - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...e-in-antarctic-subglacial-lake

scibyte80 AntarcticLake

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The search continues for life in subglacial Lake Whillans, 2,600 feet below the surface of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—but a thrilling preliminary result has detected signs of life
  • At 6:20am on January 28, four people in sterile white Tyvek suits tended to a winch winding cable onto the drill platform
  • One person knocked frost off the cable as it emerged from the ice borehole a few feet below
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • a gray plastic vessel, as long as a baseball bat, filled with water from Lake Whillans, half a mile below.
  • The bottle was hurried into a 40-foot cargo container outfitted as a laboratory on skis
  • Some of the lake water was squirted into bottles of media in order to grow whatever microbes might inhabit the lake
  • cultures could require weeks to produce results
  • When lake water was viewed under a microscope, cells were seen: their tiny bodies glowed green in response to DNA-sensitive dye. It was the first evidence of life in an Antarctic subglacial lake.
  • (A Russian team has reported that two types of bacteria were found in water from subglacial Lake Vostok, but DNA sequences matched those of bacteria that are known to live inside kerosene—causing the scientists to conclude that those bacteria came from kerosene drilling fluid used to bore the hole, and not from Lake Vostok itself
  • In order to conclusively demonstrate that Lake Whillans harbors life, the researchers will need to complete more time-consuming experiments showing that the cells actually grow
  • dead cells can sometimes show up under a microscope with DNA-sensitive
  • weeks or months will pass before it is known whether these cells represent known types of microbes, or something never seen before
  • t a couple of things seem likely. Most of those microbes probably subsist by chewing on rocks. And despite being sealed beneath 2,600 feet of ice, they probably have a steady supply of oxygen.
  • oxygen comes from water melting off the base of the ice sheet—maybe a few penny thicknesses of ice per year
  • When you melt ice, you’re liberating the air bubbles [trapped in that ice
  • That’s 20 percent oxygen
  • , lake bacteria could live on commonly occurring pyrite minerals that contain iron and sulfur
  • would obtain energy by using oxygen to essentially “burn” that iron and sulfur (analogous to the way that animals use oxygen to slowly burn sugars and fats).
  • The half mile of glacial ice sitting atop Lake Whillans is quite pure—derived from snow that fell onto Antarctica thousands of years ago.
  • contains only one-hundredth the level of dissolved minerals that are seen in a clear mountain creek, or in tap water from a typical city
  • a sensor lowered down the borehole this week showed that dissolved minerals were far more abundant in the lake itself
  • The fact that we see high concentrations is suggestive that there’s some interesting water-rock-microbe interaction that’s going on
  • Microbes, in other words, might well be munching on minerals under the ice sheet
  • will take months or years to unravel this picture
  • will perform experiments to see whether microbes taken from the lake metabolize iron, sulfur, or other components of minerals
  • will analyze the DNA of those microbes to see whether they’re related to rock-chewing bacteria that are already known to science.
  • Antarctica isn’t the only place in the solar system where water sits concealed in the dark beneath thick ice. Europa and Enceladus (moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively) are also thought to harbor oceans of liquid water. What is learned at Lake Whillans could shed light on how best to look for life in these other places
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