Article: Salt-loving bugs could survive on other worlds
Robert Karl Stonjek
MICROBES have been found flourishing in the saltiest earthly environment yet
investigated for life. The find boosts claims that extraterrestrial life
might thrive in equally salty niches on other planets and moons.
The salt-loving microbes were discovered in a Mediterranean sea-floor basin
near the Greek island of Crete. "We expected it to be sterile," says team
leader Paul van der Wielen of Kiwa Water Research, a research institute in
Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. "But the diversity is quite high, and most of
the microbes identified are new species."
Called the Discovery Basin, the zone 3.5 kilomtres under the ocean contains
salt at the highest concentrations ever measured in Earth's marine
environment, more than twice as high as in the Dead Sea and 100 times as
salty as ordinary seawater. Unlike the three other salty basins investigated
by the team, which contain sodium chloride, Discovery contains magnesium
chloride, a salt hitherto considered hostile to almost all life but which
may well form surface deposits on other planets and moons (Science, vol 307,
p 121).
"It doesn't prove there's life up there, but it widens the view that it
might be possible," says van der Wielen. "We now know that high
concentrations of magnesium chloride are not a limitation on life." Van der
Wielen says extraterrestrial surfaces covered with ice - like those already
identified on Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa - are most likely to have
ultra-briny surface regions, created through evaporation.
>From NewScientist
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
TomHendricks474
investigated for life. The find boosts claims that extraterrestrial life
might thrive in equally salty niches on other planets and moons. >>
Though they might SURVIVE the salty environ, that doesn't mean they, or any
kind of life could originate from it.
Those are two entirely different points.