Fish Found Living Half a Mile Under Antarctic Ice 79
BarbaraHudson (3785311) writes "Researchers were startled to find fish, crustaceans and jellyfish investigating a submersible camera after drilling through nearly 2,500 feet (740 meters) of Antarctic ice. The swimmers are in one of the world's most extreme ecosystems, hidden beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, roughly 530 miles (850 kilometers) from the open ocean. "This is the closest we can get to something like Europa," said Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a chief scientist on the drilling project. More pictures here."
By diving in it (Score:1)
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia, I'd have thought they'd take more care about preserving its microbial integrity and not just go diving in it.
Re:By diving in it (Score:5, Informative)
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia
The Ross Ice Shelf [wikipedia.org] is open to the sea on one edge. It is possible to access the same site by going deep under the edge of the self and then in. It is not "sealed away".
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I know, but how many fish are contemplative enough to go deep under the edge of the self, and then in?
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Supposedly there isn't much food, so why are those animals going there?
To get to the other side.
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Tardigrades FTW.
Re:By diving in it (Score:5, Informative)
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia, I'd have thought they'd take more care about preserving its microbial integrity and not just go diving in it.
Please look at the pictures in the last link - they show a probe about to be lowered into the borehole - that 3" pipe at the bottom of the pic. Nobody went diving unless they were blended first. Also, the site has value because it shows that animals needing high energy (to avoid the constant rain of gravel, dust, and boulders) can survive in such austere conditions. Look at how the sea bottom is totally dead - nothing stationary or slow can live there.
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Barbara,
There is no "bombardment". There is some rocks/sediment that got trapped in the ice. Very slowly, over 100s or 1000s of years ,that will fall out. This is not a fast or high energy environment. Slow things do just fine.
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Re:By diving in it (Score:5, Informative)
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia ...
The site is connected to the open sea. It is not sealed. There are other bodies of water under the Antarctic ice, such as Lake Vostok [wikipedia.org], that really are isolated. Greater precautions are taken for those, and it would really be a surprise if anyone found fish living in Lake Vostok.
Re:By diving in it (Score:5, Funny)
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/Oblg.
Rocks "Das Rad" -- "Human civilization from the rocks perspective"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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âoeIs there really a secret underwater railroad smuggling flounder to freedom? Get on board the sole train, tonight on Sick, Sad World!â
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Re:By diving in it (Score:5, Informative)
Disruption and contamination is a constant concern in an ecosystem ecological research, particularly microbial work. I think of it as being somewhat akin to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the more deeply you investigate an ecological system, the more likely you are to mess up the that system.
That being said, these folks are professionals, I guarantee you that the first thing they did was collect the microbial samples. Further, there are sterilization protocols in place to limit contamination:
http://www.nature.com/news/lakes-under-the-ice-antarctica-s-secret-garden-1.15729
From the article:
"Although contamination is always a concern, researchers not connected with the Lake Whillans project say that the sterilization precautions seem to have worked well. One sign is that the microbial density of the drilling water in the hole was 200 times lower than that of the lake samples, says Peter Doran, an Earth scientist at the University of Illinois in Chicago, who worked with the US National Research Council for ten years to develop guidelines for sampling Antarctic lakes cleanly. Doran was convinced by the evidence of diverse microbial life in the lake. “They found it in such a way that it can't be questioned. It's pretty iron-clad,” he says."
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Reality is of course, that it is not like any thing of this planet is ever going to be permanent. Some localised environments well end up doing not much more than providing knowledge that can be used in other areas and many will disappear without any human ever being aware of them, let alone try to understand them and the knowledge they can provide about the rest of the environment we live in. All things in balance, the quest for knowledge and what it provides and the quest to preserve. Of course there is
What does 200X lower mean given exponential growth (Score:2)
of introduced microbes? Just mean reaching the same population density takes a few days longer... Granted, this is not Lake Vostok, so difference concerns may apply. And it's true that a smaller amount of bacteria introduced provides more time for the ecosystem to respond to it by eating it before it expands.
By diving in it (Score:2, Informative)
Care was taken. All instruments were cleansed with hydrogen peroxide, and then irradiated with a ultravoilet light before/while being lowered down the borehole
Re:By diving in it (Score:5, Funny)
"Care was taken. All instruments were cleansed with hydrogen peroxide,..."
So all the stuff they'll find will be blonde?
Re:By diving in it (Score:4, Informative)
Since the site only has scientific value because it has been sealed away for millennia, I'd have thought they'd take more care about preserving its microbial integrity and not just go diving in it.
You're confusing this with Lake Vostok.
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But yes, the OP is getting confused.
Why is this a surprise? (Score:3)
Re: Why is this a surprise? (Score:3)
"Surprises" get papers and Slashdot stories accepted. "We found some fish, pretty much as we expected" gets filed in the dustbin of history. Same scientific results either way.
Re: Why is this a surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is a surprise. Think of it - the environment is only 30' in height top to bottom, the bottom is subjected to continuous bombardment by gravel and rocks so nothing can live on the bottom, and anything that is slow (low-energy) gets stoned out of existence, and it's -2C.
No sunlight, sulpher, or thermal vents to add energy to the ecosystem, hundreds of miles from the open sea, and you stick a robe down there and fish swim up to it? There's a reason they said the conditions were the closest you could get to Europa [wikipedia.org], which has an ice crust over liquid water.
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> No sunlight
Why does the fish have eyes?
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> No sunlight
Why does the fish have eyes?
Why do you have an appendix?
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> No sunlight
Why does the fish have eyes?
Why do you have an appendix?
The appendix acts as a safe house for good bacteria.
http://politicalblindspot.com/... [politicalblindspot.com]
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Why+do+me... [lmgtfy.com]
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Re: Why is this a surprise? (Score:5, Funny)
Because otherwise they'd be called "fsh."
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So they'd have shells then? :-)
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Think of it - the environment is only 30' in height top to bottom, the bottom is subjected to continuous bombardment by gravel and rocks so nothing can live on the bottom, and anything that is slow (low-energy) gets stoned out of existence, and it's -2C.
No sunlight, sulpher, or thermal vents to add energy to the ecosystem, hundreds of miles from the open sea
So, in other words, Slashdotters would call this "Mom's Basement" . . .
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It was also accepted because the title sounds like they found a single fish after an epic rescue mission.
Sorry, but "Fishies" just doesn't sound right, unless it's Cat from Red Dwarf saying it :-)
Re:Why is this a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering all the extreme places we've found life on earth, I would actually have expected to find some.
I'm not a subject matter expert; but my surprise isn't "life"(there's some sort of extremophilic bacterium cracking molecules that would make a biologist cry and only a chemist would identify as a possible energy source basically anywhere we've been able to look); but that it's big, energetic life.
These probably aren't the world's peppiest fish; but even so, a fish is a big, demanding, multicellular, operation. Some sort of spore-former bacterium that wakes up and divides a couple of times every decade or two is one thing; but fish populations mean a fair amount of active cellular metabolism swimming around in what you would expect to be a very low-energy zone.
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Or it and it's food source(s) got washed under the ice shelf by a fast moving warm ocean current? Some of the fastest moving ocean currents surround Antarctica. Quick napkin math says that water is replaced every three months.
How do they taste? (Score:1, Offtopic)
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And when will my local sushi bar feature this fish?
News (Score:1)
"This is the closest we can get to something like Europa," said Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California...
So, not very close at all, considering that ocean is attached to all the world's oceans, which enjoy the benefits of most of the solar energy the planet receives impinging on a liquid surface. Europa is a long long way from the Sun, and the inverse square law is a bitch. While Jupiter really wants to grow up and become the brown dwarf it was always meant to be, it didn't. The radiation it puts out is hardly enough to make up the difference between the solar energy received by Earth and by Europa.
Is life
Re:News (Score:5, Informative)
While Jupiter really wants to grow up and become the brown dwarf it was always meant to be, it didn't. The radiation it puts out is hardly enough to make up the difference between the solar energy received by Earth and by Europa.
The energy to keep most of Europa above the freezing point of water comes from gravitational forces, not radiation. It's enough to even drive volcanoes.NASA's Europa FAQ [nasa.gov]
Re:Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at the history of the planet, what we have is basically lots and lots of mass extinctions - every major branch of life reaching it's peak and then being almost entirely eradicated and life basically starting over (and by the way - this happening to the human race is not just likely but an absolute certainty - the only actual defence is off-planet colonies which we don't yet have).
There are different ways you can interpret this data however. One interpretation is that life is extremely rare, that we came so close to it ending forever so many times that we must assume the odds of us being here were billions to one and that it may well never have happened anywhere else - that even if life had gotten started elsewhere, it probably didn't survive into present day.
The other, equally valid, interpretation of the same data is that life is extremely resilient - that it has survived absolutely everything the universe has (quite literally) thrown at it. Species and even entire families aren't resilient but life is - even if something kills absolutely everything except a few extremophile bacteria at the bottom of some volcano somewhere -that's enough, life will re-arise and some day, something as intelligent as us will walk the earth again. By this view it's quite likely we are NOT the first, though we're probably the first to make it space. Biologists like Jack Cohen will tell you that the odds of there being a single shred of evidence we ever existed in a billion years time is as close to zero as makes no difference. Even our roads and buildings aren't as long-lasting as we imagine, they only look that way on human time-scales, not on planetary ones. The satelites will all eventually crash with nothing to replenish lost velocity. That little plaque on the moon may survive- but who knows if it will be found by whatever is next able to ask "why are we here".
There is no real way to choose between these views, they are both equally well supported by the available data and until our capacity to look is significantly improved we can't get data from enough other places to see which prediction they match. For the moment we have two predictions from the same data but until we can confirm either one we can't know.
That is why looking is important. It's also why things like THESE are important, they add data which can let us refine our predictions.
That is a critical part of the scientific process, it's helps us figure out what to be looking for in the first place. The more extreme conditions we find life in - the wider the potential search space becomes (and theoretically - the more likely we are to find *something*). It also means that searching it all takes longer.
There is no scientific answer to the question of whether life is such an unlikely event it only ever happened here, or common and happened many, many times. The data we have can equally well defend either conclusion.
So we need more data. Every bit of new data helps.
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Under? (Score:2)
This is non-news. Now half a mile above the ice, that would be something!
Biologists surprised ... again ... as always! (Score:1)
Adding to the body of evidence that biology is not a science, simply 'butterfly collecting'. With no first principles, biology simply makes guesses based on what it has found in the past. It has zero capacity to predict the existence of life (even life 'as we know it'), let alone the nature of life.
The real question... (Score:1)
is are they tasty?