Scientists go 'gaga' to find creatures beneath 180 metres of ice

Scientists go 'gaga' to find creatures beneath 180 metres of ice

au.news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON - In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet.

One hundred and eighty metres below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.

(visit the link for the full news article)

That is cool... literally.
180m below the Antarctic ice would surely be the coldest of cold and there's shrimp down there! Don't tell Forest!

"Sub-freezing" they say! A place where the sunlight never reaches and there's jellyfish too! Get Bear Grills in there to show us how we could survive in this environment!

In all seriousness it shows that there are still millions upon billions of things this world has too show us!





au.news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 16/3/10 by spearhead]

reply to post by spearhead


Yet theres those that still believe that life cant exist elsewhere in the universe? very funny

Now we know where they're talking about when they tell you to "stick it where the sun don't shine".

Seriously though, if relatively "advanced", multiple celled lifeforms like this can exist in these conditions, it really does improve our chances of finding life on other planets, maybe even animal life. If there's animal life, it's conveivable that there could be intelligent life.

I wonder how long it'll be until we (believers) will be laughing at the non-believers, instead of the other way round?

I would say that its.. neat.. but I'm not overly impressed until they drill into one of Antarctica's fresh water lakes and finds life (I'm sure there is). Of course you will find life under a massive ice shelf that covers a small portion of the ocean. How about a fresh water lake isolated from all of its surroundings. Thats more impressive.

Still worth a star though.

I didn't find this news even slightly interesting, to be honest.

The only people who get excited over this are the folks who think we've "seen it all" and discovered everything, and consider space the "final frontier", etc. If 'science' hasn't found it, it doesn't exist.

98% of the oceans on our planet are unexplored. We literally have no idea what's under our seas, but mainstream science will have us believe there is nothing interesting, just deep water and some unseen fish.



[edit on 16-3-2010 by SyphonX]

Originally posted by SyphonX
I didn't find this news even slightly interesting, to be honest.

The only people who get excited over this are the folks who think we've "seen it all" and discovered everything, and consider space the "final frontier", etc. If 'science' hasn't found it, it doesn't exist.

98% of the oceans on our planet are unexplored. We literally have no idea what's under our seas, but mainstream science will have us believe there is nothing interesting, just deep water and some unseen fish.

[edit on 16-3-2010 by SyphonX]

The problem is pressure, we KNOW there can't be very many deep sea fish because it simply wouldn't work due to the pressure, this is shown when we actually do go deep and find only a few species down there.
There certainly won't be a cthulu down in marianas trench, or if there is, it will be considerably smaller than the real one.

[edit on 16-3-2010 by hippomchippo]

"Wow" this seals the deal for me, I would guarantee that there is life in our own solar system let alone the entire universe. great post op

The very fact that "scientists" can be so surprised and elated over a discovery made in our own backyard proves once again that science is still developing.

How can even begin to explain the theories of outerspace when its innerspace theories continue to get get disproven?

Some more:

Stunning sea life under melting Arctic ice (with video)

Probably just a matter of time before the oil companies slime it all too.

reply to post by SyphonX


I'm still waiting on the discovery of the source of the Bloop.

I figure we will all go insane when that happens.

Originally posted by spearhead
"Sub-freezing" they say!

There are some untold things in that news piece (as usual), too bad journalists do not think about what they write (or maybe they do but this is what we get ).

If the temperature was sub-freezing, how is the water not turned into ice? They also say that they don't know how they get their food, so I guess that what is wrong in the experiment is that they were "looking at a tiny amount of water", it looks more like they are looking at a relatively large amount of water, but the articles doesn't go that way.

Cool find, nonetheless.

reply to post by ArMaP


'Sub-freezing' because water is almost unique in its solid crystalline structure. Almost everything contracts as it cools and its solid form is its most stable and smallest structure. Water does not act that way. With almost everything else, you can change its state to solid form by either decreasing the temperature OR INCREASING pressure. Water does not work that way.

The reason we have sub-freezing liquid form is because of the pressure. At deep depths, water even at very low temperatures water cannot freeze because it cannot form its crystalline structure. It has to "expand" into that structure, and that is not possible under intense pressure.

Water has many phenomenons that are almost unique to it, and this is one of them. Water can be superheated, supercooled and more.

Here is a very interesting experiment you can do at home. Buy a Glass Bottle of Coke or Root Beer. Put it in your freezer overnight (it won't bust). When you take it out the next morning it will still be liquid, it won't freeze. Now open the top, and voila, instant frozen coke! As soon as you relieve the pressure, the temperature causes it to instantly freeze!!

[edit on 6-7-2010 by getreadyalready]

Originally posted by paradiselost333
"Wow" this seals the deal for me, I would guarantee that there is life in our own solar system let alone the entire universe. great post op

I believe there is life on almost every single planet in this solar system!!! IN some form or other. There is proof of life on this planet that thrives in extreme heat and extreme cold. There is life in the ocean depths that survives extreme pressures - so deep they have evolved to have their own light source!!!

it doesn't matter who believes in UFOs or aliens. Fact is there ARE aliens throughout this universe - alien to us. There are are other stars which have planets in orbit around them like our solar system and many will have the same characteristics that are required in planets which support life. There are probably planets which is what earth was like a few billion years ago and there are planets which are, no doubt, a billion years ahead in evolution and are much more advanced.

Fact is, even when we look at the enormity of our own galaxy how caw we even try and argue that earth is the ONLY spec with life - absurd!

Anyone saying different needs to break out of that box!

reply to post by getreadyalready


Great explanation, just like Vodka!

Thanks for the information OP, it reminded me of that movie "The Abyss"!

reply to post by spearhead


Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

Just watched the video, which ends by talking about how trawlers are ripping up the as yet unexplored seabed!

Well done Greenpeace for exposing the beauty — and the barbarity.

Originally posted by spearhead

Get Bear Grills in there to show us how we could survive in this environment!


au.news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 16/3/10 by spearhead]

I hope the Bear Grills part was mockery, because he sleeps in a #ing hotel once the camera is turned off.

Originally posted by hippomchippo

The problem is pressure, we KNOW there can't be very many deep sea fish because it simply wouldn't work due to the pressure, this is shown when we actually do go deep and find only a few species down there.

I beg to differ. There are NUMEROUS uncounted fish down there. The only thing that you don't see living down there is mammals, birds, and reptiles.

Because of the vast expanses of the sea floor, it APPEARS that life is sparse and struggling to endure; but in fact, the sea urchins, starfish, and other echinoderms are the most numerous species on the planet, estimated to outnumber even insects!

The rat tails and sharks (among the hundreds of other fish species) that exist down there have survived in balance with their environment for millions of years. None would survive long if brought to the surface (in fact many wouldn't survive the trip) and we have yet to fully explore more than 3-5% of the seafloor.

There is a huge number of mid-ocean animals that live in the deep and migrate to the twilight zone to feed on plankton and other life nightly - it's the largest biomass migration on the planet (some trillion tons of it) and it takes place every night. Some of those may also visit the sea floor (or get close).

I think you underestimate the ability of life to adapt.

PS - Shouldn't Green Peace be scrutinizing the Gulf of Mexico at this point?

[edit on 6-7-2010 by Maxmars]

Originally posted by getreadyalready
'Sub-freezing' because water is almost unique in its solid crystalline structure.

I know that (but thanks for the detailed explanation :up, what I was thinking is that it could not be sub-freezing because it was not frozen, in the same way that, when talking about chemical properties they use something like "at normal pressure and temperature", because things have a different behaviour for different situations.

What I didn't like was the lack of real data; why didn't they wrote "below 0º Celsius", for example? We have no idea of what was the temperature or the pressure.

Here is a very interesting experiment you can do at home. Buy a Glass Bottle of Coke or Root Beer. Put it in your freezer overnight (it won't bust). When you take it out the next morning it will still be liquid, it won't freeze. Now open the top, and voila, instant frozen coke! As soon as you relieve the pressure, the temperature causes it to instantly freeze!!

That doesn't work with 7-Up, at least with my freezer. I once forgot a bottle inside the freezer (I only wanted to cool it down a little) and it was completely frozen when I remembered about it.

reply to post by ArMaP


Was it a Glass Bottle? It should have worked, unless there was enough airspace to allow for the expansion. Had you already drank a little?

My brother, memarf1, does it all the time with his glass cokes.

It works in a more violent way for boiling. Car radiators are notorious for having temperatures well above the boiling point. The radiator cap provides about 13 to 14 psi, so the water won't boil under that pressure and it gets superheated. In an overheating car, the water temp may approach 300--400 F. Then some dummy pops the cap, the pressure is relieved and about 2 gallons of super heated water becomes 100's of gallons of steam in an instant!! Not good for the guy that pulled the cap off.