Tag Archive for Lake Vida

NASA Researchers Discover Ancient Microbes in Antarctic Lake

from Terra Daily

by Karen Jenvey and Rachel Hoover for Ames Research Center
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Dec 05, 2012

In one of the most remote lakes of Antarctica, nearly 65 feet beneath the icy surface, scientists from NASA, the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nev., the University of Illinois at Chicago, and nine other institutions, have uncovered a community of bacteria. This discovery of life existing in one of Earth’s darkest, saltiest and coldest habitats is significant because it helps increase our limited knowledge of how life can sustain itself in these extreme environments on our own planet and beyond.

Lake Vida, the largest of several unique lakes found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contains no oxygen, is mostly frozen and possesses the highest nitrous oxide levels of any natural water body on Earth. . . . Read Complete Report