Icy Life

From ScealWiki

Notes from the fringes of life

New life beneath sea and ice

• PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Thursday, November 20, 2008
• Source: European Science Foundation - Comments Comments

At a European Science Foundation and COST (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) 'Frontiers of Science' meeting in Sicily in October, scientists described apparently productive ecosystems in two places where life was not known before, under the Antarctic ice sheet, and above concentrated salt lakes beneath the Mediterranean. In both cases, innumerable tiny microbes are fixing or holding onto quantities of organic carbon large enough to be significant in the global carbon cycle. ... Based on accumulating measurements of microbes in the subglacial environment, he calculates that the concentration of cell and organic carbon in the Earth's ice sheets, or 'cryosphere', may be hundreds of times higher than what is found in all the planet's freshwater systems. "Glacial ice is not currently considered as a reservoir for organic carbon and biology," says Christner, "but that view has to change."