More evidence that microbes inhabit lakes deep under Antarctic ice

Sterile drilling equipment at the Whillans site.

Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling

Life is hardier than was thought only a few decades ago. With the help of new exploration technologies and new methods for finding and identifying organisms, our perceptions of what constitute the environmental limits for life on Earth have changed.

You can find life in extreme environments, whether acid or alkaline, hot or cold. Life can be found under high pressure, without free water (in hot and cold deserts), in extremely salty environments (like the Dead Sea), and in areas that lack oxygen or experience high radiation levels.

We now recognize that microbial life can exist in most extreme environments on Earth. So it should not be a surprise that in a study just published in Nature, researchers report the first direct evidence of life in a lake located almost a kilometer below an ice sheet in Antarctica.