Only the most difficult Organisms can breed in one of the coldest springs on the planet. Therefore, in the summer of 2017 and 2019, Lyle White helicopted to Lost Hammer Spring in the low-population Arctic Highlands of Nunavut, Canada. Snow, ice, salt tufa, rocks and permafrost surround the unpretentious spring on Axel Heiberg Island, hundreds of miles from the Arctic, surrounded by almost barren, treeless mountains. He traveled to places outside the world to study the microorganisms that live in their salty, icy, hypoxic waters, and what life would have been if they appeared in similar places on Mars. I wanted to know. ..
In a new paper Journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology, Whyte and his colleagues write that microorganisms that live a few inches below spring sediments can actually withstand harsh environments. Most Earth species depend directly or indirectly on solar energy. However, these microorganisms can survive on chemical energy sources. Because it eats and breathes inorganic compounds such as methane and hydrogen sulfide, it smells like rotten eggs even from a distance. (Research team pilots call this site a “smell fountain.”) “In this frozen world, there are insects that eat these rocks that are essentially eating simple inorganic molecules, and Mars. We do this under these conditions, “says White, a space biologist at Magill University in Montreal, Canada.
The search for extraterrestrial life has often focused on the red planet. Scientists believe that more than three billion years ago, Mars was warmer and moist than it is today and had a more protective atmosphere. The Earth is now almost completely lifeless, but researchers imagine that past Martian microbes are producing or prospering in the cold, dirty bottoms of ponds. Scientists sent rover to crouch along the surface to look for evidence of such long-term extinct alien microorganisms, and drone helicopters to scout the way ahead. However, sending a sampling expedition to Mars is expensive and difficult. Canada is pretty close and not a bad agent.
Lost Hammer Spring has some unique attributes that mimic parts of the Martian landscape, says White. First, there are sub-zero temperatures (about -5 degrees Celsius) and extreme salinity in water (25% salinity, about 10 times the salinity of seawater). (Salt keeps water liquid and prevents it from freezing.) Mars is known to have salt deposits here and there. Some of them may have been in salt water decades ago and were probably the last habitable place on earth. .. Lost Hammer’s water is almost oxygen-free and less than one millionth. This is unusual on Earth, but unusual in other worlds. The creatures there are counted as “extremophiles” because they survive in the desolate conditions around where life may exist.
On each trip to remote Canada, White and his colleagues scooped up a sample of Brinnie Mud, each weighing just a few grams. Returning to the lab, they used machines to isolate microbial cells, sequence their genomes and RNA, and understand what they use for energy and how they withstand spring conditions. It may help astronomers’ efforts to understand where and how microorganisms are maintained on Mars and other worlds.