Antarctica – There is life in the subglacial lakes of Antarctica, where dark environments meet high pressure, isolated for thousands of years from our atmosphere thanks to the thick ice cap. The discovery has important implications for our understanding of life in extreme environments, both on Earth and on other planets of the solar system. By developing innovative hot water and ultraviolet rays drilling technologies, the researchers collected microorganisms living in the subglacial waters of lake Whillans, buried under 800 meters of ice. The presence of ecosystems in these lakes is likely to affect both the chemical and biological composition of the Southern Ocean, the researchers say in an article published today in the scientific journal Nature, entitled “A microbial ecosystem beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.” One of the authors is the Italian Carlo Barbante, chemist and paleoclimatologist at the Ca ‘Foscari University of Venice and Director of the Institute for the Dynamics of Environmental Processes at the National Research Council (CNR-IDPA). (9Colonne)
