<span style="font-family:Verdana">Here is a reference to the Martian ice worm/nematode movie I made from the phoenix optical imager posted back on </span><span style="font-family:Verdana">06-16-08</span><span style="font-family:Verdana"> in this thread. Note there could be something else in that movie that makes it look like a worm. Never-the-less the possibility of finding life on Mars is accelerating every day because of research here on earth that shows the extreme environments that they can thrive in - you just have to know where to look. I have been preaching the gospel of the possibility of finding subterranean life-forms there and how water can be present just under the surface for over 12 years.....Note the title here for this thread is “Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars” researchers have said can exist on the surface under the right conditions. It is mostly due to briny water.....</span> <p align="left"><font color="#993300">Tiny microbes beneath the sea floor, distinct from life on the Earth's surface, may account for one-tenth of the Earth's living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale. "Our first study, back in 2006, made some estimates that the cells could double every 100 to 2,000 years," says Jennifer F. Biddle, PhD. recipient in </font>
<font style="font-weight:400;color:blue!important;font-family:geneva,arial,verdana" color="#993300"><span style="font-weight:400;color:blue!important;font-family:geneva,arial,verdana;background-color:transparent" class="kLink">biochemistry</span></font><font color="#993300"> and former postdoctoral fellow in geosciences, Penn State. Biddle is now a postdoctoral associate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. </font></p><p align="left"><font color="#993300">The researchers, who included Biddle; House; Stephan C. Schuster, associate professor; and Jean E. Brenchley, professor, biochemistry and </font>
<font style="font-weight:400;color:blue!important;font-family:geneva,arial,verdana"><font color="#993300"><span style="font-weight:400;color:blue!important;font-family:geneva,arial,verdana;background-color:transparent" class="kLink">molecular </span><span style="font-weight:400;color:blue!important;font-family:geneva,arial,verdana;background-color:transparent" class="kLink">biology</span></font></font><font color="#993300">, Penn State; and Sorel Fitz-Gibbon, assistant research molecular biologist at the Center for Astrobiology, UCLA, found that a large percentage of the microbes were Archaea, single-celled organisms that look like Bacteria but are different on the metabolic and genetic levels. The percentage of Archaea increases with depth so that at 164 feet below the sea floor, perhaps 90 percent of the microbes are Archaea. The total number of organisms decreases with depth, but there are lots of cells, perhaps as many as 1,600 million cells in each cubic inch. </font></p><p><font color="#993300"><font color="#993300">If the rest of the world is like the Peruvian Margin, then at least one tenth and as much as a third of the Earth's biomass could be these tiny microbes living in the mud. However, this population lives at an unusual rate. Single-celled organisms usually consume food for energy and then rather than grow larger, simply divide and reproduce themselves. While the Bacteria Escherichia Coli, as an example, doubles its numbers every 20 minutes, these Archaea double on the order of hundreds or thousands of years and consume very little energy.</font> </font></p><p align="left"><font color="#000080">"In essence, these microbes are almost, practically dead by our normal standards," says House. "They metabolize a little, but not much." </font></p><p align="left"><font color="#993300">According to House, organisms metabolizing at such slow rates is what we could expect to find in other areas of our solar system because such environments have much less energy available than on Earth. </font><font color="#000080">Perhaps, similar organisms may be in hydrothermal vents beneath the ice of Europa -- the second moon of Jupiter -- or in subsurface aquifers of Mars. </font></p><p align="left"><font color="#993300">"We do not expect the microbes in other places to be these microbes exactly," says House. "But, they could be living at a similar slow rate." </font></p><p align="left"><font color="#993300">Biddle notes that these microbes could survive major Earth impacts by asteroids, so the subsea floor could be a refuge for life during extinction events. Now this study shows they may be a reservoir of novel genetic material as well. Her future research will focus on understanding the lifestyle of the microbes. </font></p><p>
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=26031</p><p> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>