Published in Chemistry World, 16 Apr 2009
Researchers in the US and the UK have found microbes in the Antarctic that appear to have survived in isolation, without sunlight or new supplies of nutrients, for more than a million years. The discovery suggests that similar microbes could have survived the supposed ‘snowball Earth’ periods, when our planet may have been covered by ice, or could even exist elsewhere in the solar system.
Most organisms familiar to us rely in some fashion on energy generated by photosynthesis, a chemical reaction that uses carbon dioxide, water and sunlight. But not all organisms need photosynthesis: on the dark ocean floor some microbes survive on the oxidation of sulphides, for example, and some bacteria are known to survive inside rocks purely by reacting carbon dioxide with hydrogen. […]
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