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21/02/23/2146201 story

Unexpected Life Lurking in Subglacial Lakes Isolated Deep Beneath Antarctic Ice

posted by mrpg on Wednesday February 24 2021, @06:01AM   

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Unexpected Life Lurking in Subglacial Lakes Isolated Deep Beneath Antarctic Ice:

Lakes underneath the Antarctic ice sheet could be more hospitable than previously thought, allowing them to host more microbial life.

This is the finding of a new study that could help researchers determine the best spots to search for microbes that could be unique to the region, having been isolated and evolving alone for millions of years. The work could even provide insights into similar lakes beneath the surfaces of icy moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, and the southern ice cap on Mars.

Lakes can form beneath the thick ice sheet of Antarctica where the weight of ice causes immense pressure at the base, lowering the melting point of ice. This, coupled with gentle heating from rocks below and the insulation provided by the ice from the cold air above, allows pools of liquid water to accumulate.

[...] Now, in a study published today in Science Advances, researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Lyon and the British Antarctic Survey have shown subglacial lakes may be more hospitable than they first appear.

As they have no access to sunlight, microbes in these environments do not gain energy through photosynthesis, but by processing chemicals. These are concentrated in sediments on the lake beds, where life is thought to be most likely.

Journal Reference:
Louis-Alexandre Couston, Martin Siegert. Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc3972)

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Original Submission

• Look cunts Look cunts (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @07:05AM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @07:05AM (#1116784)

  You can't keep calling it unexpected after *all* these fucking examples. Go back to your boring non-front page existence doucetards.

  • Comment Below Threshold

    Re:Look cunts (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @08:10AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @08:10AM (#1116792)

    You can't keep calling it unexpected after *all* these fucking examples.

    What fucking examples, cunt? The one in your and the other cunts' imagination?

    Lakes underneath the Antarctic ice sheet could be more hospitable than previously thought, allowing them to host more microbial life.
    ...
    This means that any life in these lakes could be just as ancient, providing insights into how life might adapt and evolve under persistent extreme cold conditions, which have occurred previously in Earth’s history.

    Expeditions have successfully drilled into two small subglacial lakes at the edge of the ice sheet, where water can rapidly flow in or out. These investigations revealed microbial life beneath the ice, but whether larger lakes isolated beneath the central ice sheet contain and sustain life remains an open question.

    Now, in a study published today in Science Advances, researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Lyon and the British Antarctic Survey have shown subglacial lakes may be more hospitable than they first appear.
    ...
    The researchers calculated that this heat can stimulate convection currents in subglacial lakes that suspend small particles of sediment and move oxygen around, allowing more of the water body to be hospitable to life.

    Lead researcher Dr. Louis Couston, from the University of Lyon and the British Antarctic Survey said: “The water in lakes isolated under the Antarctic ice sheet for millions of years is not still and motionless; the flow of water is actually quite dynamic, enough to cause fine sediment to be suspended in the water. With dynamic flow of water, the entire body of water may be habitable, even if more life remains focused on the floors. “This changes our appreciation of how these habitats work, and how in future we might plan to sample them when their exploration takes place.”

    The researchers’ predictions may soon be tested, as a team from the UK and Chile plan to sample a lake called Lake CECs in the next few years. Samples taken throughout the depth of the lake water will show just where microbial life is found.

    Parent

• Yep (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @06:08PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @06:08PM (#1116905)

  That must be where chauvinist white males originated from.

• Look, you silly scientist cnuts, leave well alone! (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @08:08PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @08:08PM (#1116956)

  I assume we've all read Lovecraft, and we know what you science mob are like, and where this'll end...

  'oh, why don't we just go and drill into one of these lakes and find out?'

  Oh yes, let's do, and then, next thing we know, we're all up to our ears in wall to wall fucking shoggoths and bloody old ones, both lots trying to outdo each others human (and each others) body-count scores and then there's the neverending 'who can bloody well out Tekeli-Li! who?' competitions...

  So, no, no thanks, and no going and making any sleekit attempts at trying to 'touchy touchy' those lakes when we're not looking.....

• I got a good feeling about this (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:08PM

  by krishnoid (1156) on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:08PM (#1116978)

  They found something in the ice! Good for them. [youtu.be]

• How do they distinguish "lurking" life from (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @10:18PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @10:18PM (#1116999)

  non-lurking life? Would non-lurking life make it into Soylent?

• These look like... (Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday February 25 2021, @06:29PM

  by Pav (114) on Thursday February 25 2021, @06:29PM (#1117304)

  ...the first complex life we know of on earth ie. the Ediacra fauna. Not saying it's even related, but convergent perhaps? The first life came after "snowball earth" after all. Just look at the picture [iflscience.com] we have - holdfasts to the substrate, stalks attached to some kind of organism pushed away from the substrate out into the water. VERY interesting.