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Post Info TOPIC: Extremophile


L

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Extremophiles
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Two UK scientists are travelling to one of the coldest places on Earth to help them understand how life could exist on other planets in our Solar System.
Professor Liane Benning (University of Leeds) and Dr Dominique Tobler (University of Glasgow) will travel to Ny-Alesund on the island of Svalbard in the Arctic to investigate how the snow and ice there was first colonised by extremophiles - organisms that thrive in harsh conditions. 
The team will spend two weeks on Svalbard from 6 to 20 August as part of the Europlanet Research Infrastructure's Translational Access Programme. The expedition is part of the larger international AMASE project, which uses extreme environments on Earth as a test-bed for technology that will be used on future NASA and ESA 'Search for Life' missions to Mars.

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Extremophile Hunter
The search is on for extremophiles that may provide insights about life elsewhere in the cosmos
Astrobiologist Richard Hoover really goes to extremes to find living things that thrive where life would seem to be impossible--from the glaciers of the Alaskan Arctic to the ice sheets of Antarctica.

"I have personally been to many of the most hostile and extreme environments on Earth" - Richard Hoover.

These so-called "extremophiles" are bacteria that have adapted to living in harsh conditions. They were unknown to scientists until just a few years ago. But then researchers started finding these hearty microbes flourishing in unlikely places--like inside the geysers of Yellowstone National Park, and within deep-sea hydrothermal vents, called "black smokers."

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Title: Detection of Endolithes Using Infrared Spectroscopy
Authors: S. Dumas, Y. Dutil, G. Joncas

On Earth, the Dry Valleys of Antarctica provide the closest martian-like environment for the study of extremophiles. Colonies of bacteries are protected from the freezing temperatures, the drought and UV light. They represent almost half of the biomass of those regions. Due to there resilience, endolithes are one possible model of martian biota. We propose to use infrared spectroscopy to remotely detect those colonies even if there is no obvious sign of their presence. This remote sensing approach reduces the risk of contamination or damage to the samples.

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