Confirmed: Microbial life found half mile below Antarctic ice sheet
Confirmed: Microbial life found half mile below Antarctic ice sheet
By Deborah Netburn
August 20, 2014, 12:26 PM
In an icy lake half a mile beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have discovered a diverse ecosystem of single-celled organisms that have managed to survive without ever seeing the light of the sun..
The discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature is not so much a surprise as a triumph of science and engineering. The research team spent 10 years and more than $10 million to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that life did indeed exist in subglacial lakes near the South Pole.
"It's the real deal," said Peter Doran, an Earth scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was not involved in the study. "There was news that they found life early this year, but a bunch of us were waiting for the peer reviewed paper to come out before we jumped for joy."
John Priscu, the lead scientist on the project, has been studying the Antarctic for 30 years. He published his first paper describing how life might exist in the extreme environment beneath the ice sheet in 1999, and has been looking for definitive proof ever since.
More:
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-microbe-ecosystem-antartic-ice-sheet-20140819-story.html
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