University of Tennessee researchers found evidence that life can survive in some of the darkest and coldest environments on Earth.
Researchers looked at rocks and sediments from a shallow lake beneath an Antarctic ice sheet, and found the frigid environment supports mineral-munching microbial ecosystems. An analysis of the lake water revealed the lake "supports a metabolically active and...diverse ecosystem that functions in the dark at subzero temperatures," the authors wrote.
The National Science Foundation funded project called the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) made scientific history in 2013 when the team retrieved sedimentary and water samples from Subglacial Lake Whillans. This buried lake is has been isolated from the outside environment for at least several thousand years.
"Because Antarctica is basically a microbial continent, exploring below its thick ice sheet can help us understand how life has evolved to survive in cold darkness. I hope our findings motivate new research on the role of these extreme microorganisms in the function of our planet and other icy worlds in our solar system," Jill Mikucki said.
Subglacial Lake Whellands is part of a network of major reservoirs under the Whillans Ice Stream. Through this connection the ecosystems influence the chemical and biological composition of the Southern Ocean.
"Given the prevalence of subglacial water in Antarctica, our data...lead us to believe that aquatic microbial systems are common features of the subsurface environment that exists beneath the...Antarctic Ice Sheet," wrote the authors.
The lake is kept liquid from bedrock and friction from the glaciers, National Geographic reported.
"[The findings beg the question of whether microbes could eat rock beneath ice sheets on extraterrestrial bodies such as Mars," Martyn Tranter, a geochemist at the University of Bristol, England, who was not involved in the study wrote in a paper commentary, Nat Geo reported.
The findings were published in the current edition of the science journal Nature.
