Deep cold biosphere

Abstract

Recent findings suggest the possibility of a previously unknown ecosystem – a ‘deep, cold biosphere’. US and Russian researchers had previously detected bacteria frozen in ice-core samples from the depths of Lake Vostoc, but newer evidence suggests that microbial communities could be active and living in the Antarctic ice. University of California-Berkeley physicist Buford Price modelled the deep ice, called accretion ice. His model suggests that veins of liquid water might run between grains of solid ice in this layer, and he says that bacteria could be growing in the veins. If life is possible in the deep cold, perhaps life could occur in the frozen oceans of distant planets? AV