(Aug. 21) – There is life in the sub glacial lakes of Antarctica, the extreme, dark areas subjected to high pressure, isolated from the atmosphere for thousands of years by the thick ice cap. The discovery has important implications for studies on life in extreme environments, both on Earth and on other planets of the solar system. By developing an innovative hot water ultraviolet rays drilling technology, which protects from contamination both the environment and samples, researchers collected micro-organisms living in the waters of the subglacial Lake Whillans, buried under 800 meters of ice. The presence of ecosystems in these subglacial lakes is likely to affect the chemical and biological composition of the Southern Ocean, the vast and biologically productive ocean that surrounds the Antarctic continent. The research was published on the scientific journal Nature, under the title “A microbial ecosystem beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. “Among the authors, there is also Carlo Barbante, Italian chemist and paleoclimatologist at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Director of the Institute for the Dynamics of Environmental Processes of the National Research Council (CNR-IDPA). The article was co-authored with researchers from Montana State University, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, St. Olaf College in Minnesota, the University of Tennessee, and the British Aberystwyth University. (Red)
