American scientists have found under the ice of Antarctica thousands of unknown microorganisms – Moskovsky Komsomolets

They went to the Russians and the British due to the special method of drilling ice

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Microbiologists from the University of Montana and other scientific centers of America have successfully completed all test water samples from Antarctic subglacial lake Uillans (west of the continent), where last year the polar explorers found traces of unknown microbes. Analysis of fluid samples showed that live in it, several species of bacteria that feed on a variety of inorganic substances.

Culture of bacteria from the lake Uillans grown in the laboratory. Photo: Brent Christner.

«This is the first concrete evidence that beneath the ice of Antarctica is not only life, but also the whole active ecosystem of the possibility of the existence of which we thought for many decades. After writing this article, we can now take the magazine with her, knocked loudly on the table, and publicly announce that we were right, “- said Brent Kristner from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (USA).

American scientists were the first who at the same time managed to reach subglacial water supplies and to find traces of them full of life, reports rusplt.ru. They went to the British and the Russians are not only due to the fact that the lake Uillans located relatively close to the surface, but also because of another way of ice drilling. American researchers did not use the classic rigs require large supplies of kerosene and Freon silicone grease to secure the well and water “gun”, which gradually breaks the ice with a stream of hot water.

The lake is at 800 Uillans meters of ice, and to control samples had to drill a well. At the same time, scientists have found not just a set of micro-organisms, and an entire ecosystem, and basically it consists of Archean – unicellular organisms without nuclei, notes m24.ru. It became clear that in the waters of the lake inhabited by at least 3931 operational taxonomic unit (species and species groups) microorganisms.

^{Micrograph of bacteria attached to it particles of sediment. Photo: Trista Vick-Majors.}

Some of the local ecosystem lives by the energy of chemical bonds or ammonium carbon derived from methane. Source and that, and the other is the decomposition of the remains of living creatures found in Antarctica before its icing.

John Priscus of Montana State University, predicted the discovery ten years ago, and his colleagues on the project WISSARD took maximum precautions to ensure the purity of the samples taken, to protect them from contamination with bacteria from the “mainland” According lenta.ru.

A study of the samples showed that life remained there without solar energy for at least the last 120,000 years (and perhaps even millions of years). Thus, it may be the largest unexplored ecosystem on the planet, because the Antarctic continent holds 9% of the globe.

The scientific paper published in the journal Nature, confirms spent 20 years of research, during which the microbes were found in frozen samples of water extracted from Lake Vostok – the largest subglacial Antarctic lakes, adds it gostelekanala vesti.ru.

To the place to say that not all scientists believe that life should be compared on a pole with a potentially existing extraterrestrial. Experts studying Mars, for example, believe that the resemblance is not so obvious. Since the lake Uillans is on the edge of the West Antarctic ice sheet, perhaps it still is contacted with the outside world over the past half a million years.

Presumably, the ecosystem is not born by itself, and has been brought by the wind and then just survived in extreme conditions.

Now, scientists are planning to hold a number of additional research and try to determine exactly how life arose in the dark waters under the ice of Antarctica.