NASA Finds Deep Ice Holds Living Creatures (2010)

 I know this is old news, but I doubt that many people had heard about this:

      Deep in the waters of the arctic, beneath layers of frigid ice, life has been discovered to thrive. Scientists weren’t actually searching for the life forms though, just trying to capture a glimpse of what lies beneath the icy surface. Instead they caught a glimpse of a jellyfish and a shrimp-like amphipod.

        They believed that nothing more that microbes could exist in this dark cold place, six hundred feet below the ice.... The NASA team had lowered a camera into the water to look around down there when they noticed a three inch little Lyssianasid amphipod clinging onto the camera cable. Upon fishing up the cable they found a tentacle stuck to the cable, which they believe to be from a jellyfish of some sort.

Robert Bindschadler, a NASA ice scientist will be presenting the shocking findings on Wednesday March 17, 2010 at an American Geophysical meeting.

 He told the press that they believed nothing to exist down there, and are ecstatic about what more they could learn from this. It’s hoped that the finding will make experts reassess their views on life and where life can be found. It opens a door of possibilities.

If life can exist six hundred feet below sea ice, then it is possible that there could be life on places such as Jupiter’s moon Europa.


An intrigued microbiologist, Cynan Ellis-Evans adds,

"This is a first for the sub-glacial environment with that level of sophistication."

He also added that there have been similar findings, where life presented itself where people doubted it to be there, but nothing so many feet deep below the surface. He brought up the possibility that the creatures found were not native to the area they found them in, but just passing through.
        Co-author of the study, Kim, doubts Cynan’s point about the creatures not living there. She points out that the area that was being filmed is 12 miles from open seas and the likely hood of such small creatures being filmed in such a small space, traveling such a great distance, is indeed very unlikely.

           One thing that really stumped scientists was what could the amphipod
and jellyfish possibly feed on? While most microbes can make their own nutrition, these two animals can not. Kim states that

"It's pretty amazing when you find a huge puzzle like that on a planet where we thought we know everything."

It looks like scientists still have a great deal to learn about our planet.

Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1836838/nasa_finds_deep_ice_holds_living_creatures/index.html