Lake Vostok Microbes Would Add To List Of Life In Unlikely Places

AP     SETH BORENSTEIN
First Posted: 02/ 9/2012 1:56 am Updated: 02/ 9/2012 10:06 am

This image provided by NASA Tuesday March 16, 2010 shows a small shrimp-like creature at a depth of 600 feet beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, the creature managed to brighten up an otherwise gray polar day in late November 2009. This critter is a three-inch long Lyssianasid amphipod found beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, about 12.5 miles away from open water. (AP Photo/NASA)

WASHINGTON (AP) — If scientists find microbes in a frigid lake two miles beneath the thick ice of Antarctica, it will illustrate once again that somehow life finds a way to survive in the strangest and harshest places.
And it will offer hope that life exists beyond Earth.
Russian researchers reported Wednesday that they had reached Lake Vostok, a pristine body of water untouched by light or wind for about 20 million years. They want to know what type of microbial life — bacteria too small to see — might exist there.
Finding microbes may not sound like much. But they were the first form of Earth life eons before plants and animals existed.

MORE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/lake-vostok-microbes-unlikely-life_n_1264605.html

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