Feb 26 1978
From The Space Library
NASA announced that scientists working for NASA and NSF had discovered living organisms inside rocks on the frozen deserts of the Antarctic. The discovery, made in a region called the Dry Valleys whose harsh climate resembled conditions on Mars, would significantly extend the known limits of life on earth, and would have important implications in a search for extraterrestrial life.
Dr. E. Imre Friedmann and Dr. Roseli Ocampo-Friedmann, a husband-wife team who had searched for more than 15yr for microbial life in rocks, had made the discovery. They had isolated the newly discovered microorganisms (bacteria, algae, and fungi) and were growing them in laboratory cultures for clues to their endurance. Although the Dry Valleys of Antarctica had appeared lifeless, and the region's freedom from snow and ice, combined with constantly blowing winds, had produced an environment among the world's harshest, the Friedmantis had found in the Dry Valleys a widespread rich microbial vegetation under the surface of rocks, in the airspaces of porous rocks, or in fissures. Rocks broken open had revealed the presence of organisms as a dark-green layer a few millimeters deep.
Dr. Richard Young, NASA's chief of planetary biology, said the Dry Valleys in many ways resembled the environmental extremes found on Mars by the 1976 Viking landers, which searched the Martian soil unsuccessfully for signs of microbial life or organic molecules. "If Martian life forms exist only in the interior of Martian rocks, as is principally the case in the Antarctic, that could easily serve as an explanation for the lack of evidence on Mars," Young said. "This interesting (if speculative) analogy is of considerable interest to NASA in designing future attempts to study planetary surfaces for evidence of life." NASA and NSF research grants had supported the Friedmanns' work. (NASA Release 78-14)
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