How a Leopard Seal Fed Me Penguins

Photographer describes assignment that "will stay with me forever." 

While documenting leopard seals in Antarctica for a 2006 National Geographic magazine story, photographer Paul Nicklen had an experience that he says "will stay with me forever" (see Nicklen's photos). That experience has recently resurfaced and gone viral on the Internet, thanks to remixing and postings on Facebook and other outlets.

"Leopard seals are the most incredible animals I've ever had the pleasure of photographing," he said.
"When you get in the water with a wild animal, you're essentially giving yourself to that animal because, as humans, we're quite helpless and vulnerable in the water. You're at the seal's mercy. You're at the predator's mercy.

"Not only did the leopard seals not attack as some predicted they would, they fed me penguins, followed me around, and generally put on a nonstop show."

)

In the video above, Nicklen explained how an encounter with one particular female leopard seal was especially poignant. The animal had a head larger than a grizzly bear's, and it took his camera and his head into its mouth.

But instead of harming him, the seal began to "nurture" him. It began to bring him penguins, first alive, then dead, perhaps assuming that he was a "useless predator in her ocean."

The top predator apparently tried to feed the weaker Nicklen for four days as he scuba dived in the area, working on the assignment.

(See more behind-the-scenes videos of Paul Nicklen photographing polar bears and walruses.)

Follow Brian Clark Howard on Twitter and Google+.

ORIGINAL: NatGeo
By Brian Clark Howard National Geographic
March 11, 2014

Ocean Elders call on Putin to protect Antarctica’s ocean

ORIGINAL: Mission Blue
July 14th, 2013

Today Ocean Elders, including Sir Richard Branson, Dr. Sylvia Earle, James Cameron, Jean-Michel Cousteau and Capt. Don Walsh, wrote a letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin calling for the protection of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean at CCAMLR’s meeting in Germany 2013. 

Below is a copy of the letter:

Dear President Putin,

As you are aware, in Bremerhaven, Germany this week (July 11th – 16th) there will be a special meeting to consider marine protected area (MPA) proposals for the Ross Sea and several areas off the coast of East Antarctica. The Ross Sea remains one of the most intact marine ecosystems on the planet, with robust populations of whales, penguins, seals, albatrosses and other species. East Antarctica is a remote region of high ecological importance, home to a significant proportion of the Southern Ocean’s penguins, seabirds, seals and whales. Russia’s position will be crucial to the protection of these areas which are amongst the most iconic areas for marine wildlife on earth.

Russia was a founding member of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and has an extensive Antarctic exploration history as well as a long tradition of important scientific research. As such, Russia has a critical leadership role to play in determining the future of Antarctica.

CCAMLR’s 2009 decision to establish a network of MPAs was a bold and forward-looking step. Agreeing to designate meaningful MPAs at the CCAMLR meetings this year will help fulfill this commitment. If the Ross Sea and the East Antarctic marine protected areas are designated, they will be the largest in the world and would more than double in size the area of ocean that is afforded significant protection worldwide. This would reaffirm the leadership of CCAMLR member countries on marine conservation of the high seas and leave a substantial legacy for future generations.

The proposed MPAs in these regions offer all CCAMLR Members unprecedented research and monitoring opportunities for scientists to understand how large-scale, fully functioning ecosystems work, and also how such ecosystems are influenced by climate change and ocean acidification. Thus far, the Ross Sea and East Antarctica have been spared the impact of widespread pollution, invasive species, bottom trawling and other large-scale commercial fishing operations that are imperiling other marine areas around the world. But conditions are changing, and the need to take steps to better protect key areas in the Southern Ocean is compelling.

We hope that with your leadership Russia will support the Ross Sea and East Antarctica marine protected area proposals at the Bremerhaven meeting this week. We stand ready to assist in any way.
Kind regards,

Sir Richard Branson James Cameron Jean-Michel Cousteau
Dr. Sylvia Earle Capt. Don Walsh

Polar insects help scientists make gene expression discovery

ORIGINAL: RD Mag

03/13/2013

Although they live in similarly extreme ecosystems at opposite ends of the world, Antarctic insects appear to employ entirely different methods at the genetic level to cope with extremely dry conditions than their counterparts that live north of the Arctic Circle, according to National Science Foundation- (NSF) funded researchers.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers concluded, "Polar arthropods have developed distinct... mechanisms to cope with similar desiccating conditions."

The researchers noted that aside from the significance of the specific discovery about the genetics of how creatures cope in polar environments, the new finding is important because it shows how relatively new and developing scientific techniques, including genomics, are opening new scientific vistas in the Polar Regions, which were once thought to be relatively uniform and, relatively speaking, scientifically sterile environments.

"It's great to have an Antarctic animal that has entered the genomic era," said David Denlinger, a distinguished professor of entomology at Ohio State University and a co-author of the paper. "This paper, which analyzed the expression of thousands of genes in response to the desiccating environment of Antarctica, is just one example of the power that the genomic revolution offers for advancing polar science. "

The collaborative research—which included contributions from scientists at Ohio State University, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research) in France, Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, Stanford University, and Miami University in Ohio—was supported in part by the Division of Polar Programs in NSF's Geosciences Directorate.

Polar Programs manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, through which it coordinates all U.S. research on the southernmost continent and aboard ships in the Southern Ocean as well as providing the necessary logistical support.

The finding also adds to the developing picture of the Polar Regions as having similarities and yet subtle and perhaps very important differences, previously undetected by science. NSF-funded scientists late last year, for example, published research indicating that differing contributions of freshwater from glaciers and streams to the Arctic and Southern oceans may be responsible for the fact that the majority of microbial communities that thrive near the surface of the Polar oceans share few common members.

Although Antarctica's surrounding oceans and coastal margins are home to a variety of large creatures such as seals, penguins and whales, insect life is rare, except on the Antarctic Peninsula.

There, the Antarctic midge, Belgica antarctica, occupies its unique ecological niche.

The research team that produced the new findings collected specimens for their research from offshore islands near NSF's Palmer Station on Anvers Island in the Peninsula region.

Surrounded by an ocean, the Antarctic continent is a polar desert where creatures have adapted to life with infrequent access to liquid water. The researchers note that Antarctic midge larvae, for example, "are remarkably tolerant of dehydration, surviving losses of up to 70% of their body water."

The larvae of Belgica antarctica, a flightless midge and Antarctica's only indigenous insect. Credit: Photograph by Richard E. Lee, Jr., NSF

Among Antarctic insects, the ability to tolerate dehydration is an important evolutionary development, allowing the creatures to successful survive the cold and dry southern winter.

"The loss of water enhances acute freezing tolerance," they write. "In addition, overwintering midge larvae are capable of undergoing another distinct form of dehydration, known as cryoprotective dehydration.

Cryoprotective dehydration is a mechanism in which a gradual decrease in temperature in the presence of environmental ice "creates a vapor pressure gradient that draws water out of the body, thereby depressing the body fluid melting point and allowing larvae to remain unfrozen at subzero temperatures". They also note that, in general, "insects, in particular, are at high risk of dehydration because of their small body size and consequent high surface-area-to-volume ratio."

The researchers compared the midge's strategy to those of other terrestrial arthropods that cope with prolonged periods when water is lacking, including the Arctic springtail, Megaphorura arctica and Folsomia candida, which are more widely distributed across the globe; both species are members of a group of arthropods, which are closely related to insects, known as Collembola.

The differences, they concluded, lie in the way that various genes express themselves.

After a detailed analysis of gene expression in the various species, the researchers concluded that "although B. antarctica and M. arctica are adapted to similar environments, our analysis indicated very little overlap in expression profiles between these two arthropods."

They add that "these differences in expression patterns may reflect different strategies for combating dehydration; whereas B. antarctica shuts down metabolic activity and waits for favorable conditions to return, F. candida [instead] relies on active water-vapor absorption to restore water balance during prolonged periods of desiccation."

They further add that because of the taxonomic difference between the Antarctic midge and the collembolan species with which gene expression was compared, more work is needed "to better understand the evolutionary physiology of dehydration tolerance in this taxonomic family."

Source: National Science Foundation

Russia finds 'new bacteria' in Antarctic lake

ORIGINAL: Physorg

March 7, 2013

Russian researchers pose for a picture after reaching the subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica on February 5, 2012. Russian scientists believe they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica.

Russian scientists believe they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica, the RIA Novosti news agency reported on Thursday. 

he samples obtained from the underground lake in May 2012 contained a bacteria which bore no resemblance to existing types, said Sergei Bulat of the genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics.

"After putting aside all possible elements of contamination, DNA was found that did not coincide with any of the well-known types in the global database," he said.

"We are calling this life form unclassified and unidentified," he added.

The discovery comes from samples collected in an expedition in 2012 where a Russian team drilled down to the surface of Lake Vostok, which is believed to have been covered by ice for more than a million years but has kept its liquid state.

Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica and scientists have long wanted to study its eco-system. The Russian team last year drilled almost four kilometres (2.34 miles) to reach the lake and take the samples.

Bulat said that the interest surrounded one particular form of bacteria whose DNA was less than 86 percent similar to previously existing forms.

"In terms of work with DNA this is basically zero. A level of 90 percent usually means that the organism is unknown."

He said it was not even possible to find the genetic descendants of the bacteria.

"If this had been found on Mars everyone would have undoubtedly said there is life on Mars. But this is bacteria from Earth."

Bulat said that new samples of water would be taken from Lake Vostok during a new expedition in May.

"If we manage to find the same group of organisms in this water we can say for sure that we have found new life on Earth that exists in no database," Bulat said.

Exploring environments such as Lake Vostok allows scientists to discover what life forms can exist in the most extreme conditions and thus whether life could exist on some other bodies in the solar system.

There has long been excitement among some scientists that life theoretically could exist on Saturn's moon Enceladus and the Jupiter moon Europa as they are believed to have oceans, or large lakes, beneath their icy shells.

The possibility that the lake existed had first been suggested by a Soviet scientist in 1957. Scientific research drilling in the area started in 1989 and the lake's existence was confirmed only in 1996.

The drilling project is of major importance for the prestige of science in Russia and Russian leader Vladimir Putin was given a sample of water from Lake Vostok last year when the expedition began.

(c) 2013 AFP

Bacteria Found Deep Under Antarctic Ice, Scientists Say

ORIGINAL: NYTimes

By JAMES GORMAN

Published: February 6, 2013

For the first time, scientists report, they have found bacteria living in the cold and dark deep under the Antarctic ice, a discovery that might advance knowledge of how life could survive on other planets or moons and that offers the first glimpse of a vast ecosystem of microscopic life in underground lakes in Antarctica.

Dr. Alberto Behar, JPL/ASU; underwater camera funded by NSF and NASA. The first view of the bottom of subglacial Lake Whillans in Antarctica.

This week: Antarctica’s buried lakes may yield clues to extraterrestrial life; passionate love beyond the first sparks; and the science behind why we slack off until the last minute.

A network of hundreds of lakes lies sandwiched between the continent’s land and the ice that covers it, and scientists had thought that it could harbor life. The discovery is the first confirmation.

“It transforms the way we view the Antarctic continent,” said John Priscu of Montana State University, a leader of the scientific expedition.

After drilling through a half-mile of ice into the 23-square-mile, 5-foot-deep Lake Whillans, the expedition scientists recovered water and sediment samples that showed clear signs of life, Dr. Priscu said, speaking from McMurdo Station in Antarctica on Tuesday. They saw cells under a microscope, and chemical tests showed that the cells were alive and metabolizing energy.

Dr. Priscu said that every precaution had been taken to prevent contamination of the lake with bacteria from the surface or the overlying ice. In addition, he said, the concentrations of life were higher in the lake than in the borehole, and there were signs of life in the lake bottom’s sediment, which would be sealed off from contamination.

Much more study, including DNA analysis, is needed to determine what kind of bacteria have been found and how they live, Dr. Priscu said. There is no sunlight, so the bacteria must depend on organic material that has drifted into the lake from other sources — for instance, decaying microbes from melting glaciers — or on minerals in the rock of the Antarctic continent.

Chris McKay, a NASA senior scientist, said in an e-mail that such analysis could determine if the bacteria in Lake Whillans have implications for the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life. “If it was using a local energy source, it would be interesting," he said. "If it's just consuming organics carried in from elsewhere, it is of much less interest.” The reason, he said, is that elsewhere in the solar system where there is good evidence of liquid water under thick ice sheets, life would have to depend on minerals alone. "There is not going to be oxygen on other worlds,” Mr. McKay said.

Slawek Tulaczyk of the University of California, Santa Cruz, another leader of the science expedition, said that samples were drawn from as deep as four feet in the sediment, and that oxygen decreased with the depth of the sample.

The scientific project, called Wissard, for Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling, was years in the planning and is one of three efforts to investigate the lakes that lie under the Antarctic ice.

A year ago, a Russian expedition penetrated the surface of Lake Vostok, under two miles of ice. They found hints of life on samples from the drill bit, but contamination from the kerosene drilling fluid was a possibility. This year they recovered samples of frozen lake water that are yet to be analyzed.

A British effort to reach Lake Ellsworth, under a mile of ice, was called off in December because of equipment problems.

The American effort, supported by $10 million from the National Science Foundation and other grants, focused on Lake Whillans, which is quite different from the other two lakes. It lies under a half-mile of ice, less than the others, and its water is replenished in about a decade, scientists believe, with meltwater from overlying ice. Lake Vostok is much more sealed off from the surface and is thought to take 10,000 years for its waters to renew. Lake Ellsworth may turn over in about 700 years.

Although Lake Whillans may be more reachable than the other two, doing anything in Antarctica is enormously difficult. It took a tractor convoy 12 days to take the drill and other equipment more than 500 miles over the Ross Ice Shelf to the drilling site from the American research station at McMurdo.

The scientists had four days to collect samples and obtain images of the lake. Several lines of evidence convinced them that they had found microbial life in the lake. First, they saw cells under the microscope and confirmed that DNA was present.

Then they measured evidence of an enzyme that is important in metabolism and a chemical called ATP, for adenosine triphosphate. Molecules of ATP are essentially packets of energy, and their presence was a further indication that the bacteria were living. Further, they found that concentrations of ATP were higher in the lake water than in the water in the borehole, which, Dr. Priscu said, meant that there was more life in the lake and argued against any contamination.

Much further study will be done before scientific results are published and other scientists can look at all the data. Dr. Priscu said that new tests were being done each day, but that DNA tests would have to wait until the scientists returned to the United States.

“Our stateside DNA sequence work will tell us who they are,” he said of the microbes, “and, together with other experiments, tell us how they make a living.”

But he said he was confident that the researchers had achieved the first glimpse of an ecosystem that had been completely unknown. “It’s the world’s largest wetland,” Dr. Priscu said.

Lake Ellsworth Antarctic drilling project called off

ORIGINAL: BBC

Analysis David Shukman Science editor, BBC News

The team burned much of its fuel in a bid to connect the under-ice boreholes

Related Stories

Lake Ellsworth: Mission to the Antarctic's lost world

Antarctic lake bid set to restart

Antarctic lake drilling is halted

An ambitious mission to drill through 3km (1.8 miles) of Antarctic ice to a lake that has been sealed off for thousands of years has been cut short.

The team at Lake Ellsworth decided to call off the mission in the early hours of Christmas Day UK time.

They were unable to join the main borehole with a parallel hole that was to be used to recover drilling water.

The team is now "weatherising" the equipment and it is unclear when they will be able to resume the project.

The £8m ($13m) project, headed by the British Antarctic Survey (Bas), aimed to drill carefully down using near-boiling water to pierce the lake, which has been untouched for as much as half a million years.

The hope had been to find hints of simple life forms existing in the extreme conditions of pressure and temperature, and to find a record of climate in the lake's sediments.

Searching for life in the hidden waters of Lake Ellsworth was one of the most ambitious British science projects of recent years, so this failure in the drilling programme will come as a huge blow.

The team knew that the risks were high, but the idea of exploring an ancient and mysterious body of water isolated for hundreds of thousands of years had inspired passion and determination.

The challenge of designing and engineering equipment that could remain sterilised on the long journey to Antarctica, and then down through the 3km of ice-sheet, was immense and involved hundreds of people.

So the disappointment will be felt far beyond the 12 men at their remote camp on the ice. Engineers, technicians, support staff - and researchers eager for the results - will feel heavy disappointment. They may try again next year. But this was frontier science, a gamble, and it did not pay off.

Read more from David

The programme ran into trouble last week as the main boiler used to heat drilling water broke down, with a replacement part being flown from the UK reaching the remote site last Friday.

With the boiler working, the team aimed to make two parallel boreholes, intended to join 300m below the surface.

A first borehole was drilled and left for 12 hours to create a hot-water cavity. This was to be used to re-circulate drilling water and to balance pressures when the sequestered lake was finally breached.

However, the team were unable to reach the cavity during the course of drilling the second, main borehole.

"We kept trying for over 24 hours to reach that connection but we couldn't do it," said principal investigator of the project Martin Siegert, from the University of Bristol.

"All that time we were losing fuel and water from the ice sheet surface and we got to a critical condition where our calculations showed us we simply didn't have enough fuel to continue any further down into the ice sheet to hit the top of the lake," he told BBC News.

The team is now starting the long process of gathering up its equipment for eventual return to the UK, where it will be serviced.

Once back on UK soil, the team will have to develop a report on what went wrong, and only then can the thought of a return trip be considered.

"It will take a season or two to get all of our equipment out of Antarctica and back to the UK, so at a minimum we're looking at three to four, maybe five years I would have thought," Prof Siegert said.

But he remained hopeful about the future, and said that this year's mission was far from a complete loss.

"We still want to do that testing, they were compelling scientific drivers a few years ago and they remain so. It's very important that we take stock of what we achieved here," he said.

Given the long time that it may take to fund and mount another mission to Ellsworth, it may be that other nations aim for other sealed-off Antarctic lakes in the nearer term.

"We have never depicted it as a race, but it may well happen that others get there first," Audrey Stevens, Bas spokesperson, told BBC News.

More on This Story

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Lake Ellsworth: Mission to the Antarctic's lost world19 DECEMBER 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

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Antarctic lake drilling is halted17 DECEMBER 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

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Beneath 50-foot ice layer, an Antarctic lake full of life

ORIGINAL: LA Times

By Jon Bardin

November 27, 2012, 9:07 a.m.

Lake Vida, an Antarctic lake sealed under 50 feet of ice, is nonetheless teeming with bacteria, according to a new study. Above, the researchers' field camp at Lake Vida during the study.(Emanuele Kuhn / Desert Research Institute)

Arctic has undergone unexpectedly warm periods, core data shows

Beneath a 50-foot-thick sheet of ice, the salty, frigid Antarctic Lake Vida is somehow teeming with life. That’s according to a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lake Vida provides a unique test of what happens to life over long periods of time when organisms are exposed to extremely harsh conditions. The layer of ice completely seals off the lake. The water is 13 degrees below zero Celsius, is very salty and contains no oxygen.

Nonetheless, when researchers drilled through the ice to carefully sample what lies below, they found the lake was full of life even though it has been sealed off for around 2,800 years: Vida contained about one-tenth the microbial life of a lake in a mild climate under average environmental conditions, an amount far above what the researchers expected.

Researchers using DNA analysis identified 32 species of bacteria from eight phyla but found no archaea, a category of microbes considered distinct from bacteria that tend to live in extreme environments.

Based on the amount of time the lake has been closed off, the researchers had anticipated that it would be nearing the end of its energy stores. But given the robust bacterial world they found, that seemed not to be the case.

That means a major source of energy is likely coming from elsewhere — potentially from hydrogen released via chemical reactions taking place between the water and iron contained in the rocks on lake floor. But the researchers remain unsure exactly how life has survived under the ice of Lake Vida.

It’s a topic certain to receive further attention, both because it may shed light on how life evolved on Earth, and it may provide clues as to how life could potentially exist on other planets that have environments unlike the one we are used to.

Return to the Science Now blog.

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

NASA Researchers: DNA Building Blocks Can Be Made in Space

ORIGINAL: NASA

08.08.11

NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a "kit" of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life.

"People have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960's, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life," said Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space." Callahan is lead author of a paper on the discovery appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a "kit" of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center) › Download this and related videos from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio

The discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that the chemistry inside asteroids and comets is capable of making building blocks of essential biological molecules. For example, previously, these scientists at the Goddard Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory have found amino acids in samples of comet Wild 2 from NASA’s Stardust mission, and in various carbon-rich meteorites. Amino acids are used to make proteins, the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions.

In the new work, the Goddard team ground up samples of twelve carbon-rich meteorites, nine of which were recovered from Antarctica. They extracted each sample with a solution of formic acid and ran them through a liquid chromatograph, an instrument that separates a mixture of compounds. They further analyzed the samples with a mass spectrometer, which helps determine the chemical structure of compounds.

Meteorites contain a large variety of nucleobases, an essential building block of DNA. (Artist concept credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith)

The team found adenine and guanine, which are components of DNA called nucleobases, as well as hypoxanthine and xanthine. DNA resembles a spiral ladder; adenine and guanine connect with two other nucleobases to form the rungs of the ladder. They are part of the code that tells the cellular machinery which proteins to make. Hypoxanthine and xanthine are not found in DNA, but are used in other biological processes.

Also, in two of the meteorites, the team discovered for the first time trace amounts of three molecules related to nucleobases: purine, 2,6-diaminopurine, and 6,8-diaminopurine; the latter two almost never used in biology. These compounds have the same core molecule as nucleobases but with a structure added or removed.

It's these nucleobase-related molecules, called nucleobase analogs, which provide the first piece of evidence that the compounds in the meteorites came from space and not terrestrial contamination. "You would not expect to see these nucleobase analogs if contamination from terrestrial life was the source, because they're not used in biology, aside from one report of 2,6-diaminopurine occurring in a virus (cyanophage S-2L)," said Callahan. "However, if asteroids are behaving like chemical 'factories' cranking out prebiotic material, you would expect them to produce many variants of nucleobases, not just the biological ones, due to the wide variety of ingredients and conditions in each asteroid."

The second piece of evidence involved research to further rule out the possibility of terrestrial contamination as a source of these molecules. The team also analyzed an eight-kilogram (17.64-pound) sample of ice from Antarctica, where most of the meteorites in the study were found, with the same methods used on the meteorites. The amounts of the two nucleobases, plus hypoxanthine and xanthine, found in the ice were much lower -- parts per trillion -- than in the meteorites, where they were generally present at several parts per billion. More significantly, none of the nucleobase analogs were detected in the ice sample. One of the meteorites with nucleobase analog molecules fell in Australia, and the team also analyzed a soil sample collected near the fall site. As with the ice sample, the soil sample had none of the nucleobase analog molecules present in the meteorite.

Thirdly, the team found these nucleobases -- both the biological and non-biological ones -- were produced in a completely non-biological reaction. "In the lab, an identical suite of nucleobases and nucleobase analogs were generated in non-biological chemical reactions containing hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and water. This provides a plausible mechanism for their synthesis in the asteroid parent bodies, and supports the notion that they are extraterrestrial," says Callahan.

"In fact, there seems to be a 'goldilocks' class of meteorite, the so-called CM2 meteorites, where conditions are just right to make more of these molecules," adds Callahan.

The team includes Callahan and Drs. Jennifer C. Stern, Daniel P. Glavin, and Jason P. Dworkin of NASA Goddard's Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory; Ms. Karen E. Smith and Dr. Christopher H. House of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa.; Dr. H. James Cleaves II of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC; and Dr. Josef Ruzicka of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Somerset, N.J. The research was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, the NASA Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program, and the NASA Postdoctoral Program.

Related Link

› Related videos from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio

Bill Steigerwald
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Russians drill Lake Vostok ice, race for alien-like life

ORIGINAL: EarthSky

Russian scientists have penetrated miles of Antarctic ice at Lake Vostok as others race to analyze waters for alien-like life.

Russian scientists penetrated miles of Antarctic ice to reach Lake Vostok. (Russian Geographical Society)

Russian scientists have penetrated miles of Antarctic ice as others race to analyze its waters for alien-like life, according to the news agency Reuters.

An artist's cross-section of Lake Vostok, the largest known subglacial lake in Antarctica. The depth of the drill core has increased since the diagram was created. Credit: Nicolle Rager-Fuller, NSF

Valery Lukin is head of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute that oversaw the scientific drilling in the sub-glacial lake of Antarctica’s Lake Vostok. He said:

It’s like the first flight to the moon

After 30 years, Russian scientists finally announced on February 8, 2012, that they had penetrated 3769.3 meters of glacial ice to reach the waters of Lake Vostok, which hasn’t seen the light of day in over 15 million years.

Russian researchers at the Vostok station work in a snow bore pit. (Russian Geographical Society)

Oceanographer Chuck Kennicutt of Texas A&M heads the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, which coordinates research in the area. Kennicutt told EarthSky:

This is truly a breakthrough event. Our Russian colleagues should be congratulated on an outstanding feat of accomplishment, technologically. This has been a long time in the planning. There’s been great interest for more than a decade, that these are very unusual environments that we know little about, primarily because they’ve never been penetrated.

So this first entry, in and of itself will only be the beginning of providing information about what might be living in the lakes, how have these lakes evolved over time, do these lakes impact the overlying ice sheets, are ice streams associated with accumulations of water, and just a whole range of scientific knowledge will ultimately come from the exploration of these environments.

Russian Vostok station and 5G drill tower. (Russian Geographical Society)

Russian scientists call Lake Vostok “the pole of cold,” with average surface temperatures a chilly -56 degrees Celcius (-68.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Scientists worldwide suspect that microbes might be living in the sub-glacial waters of Lake Vostok. The extreme conditions there are similar to what life on other worlds might face. Dr. Kennicutt explained the search for alien-like life at Lake Vostok:

Fundamental to the existence of life as far as we know it is the existence of liquid water. That has always been the touchstone for looking for where life might exist beyond planet Earth. This is particularly true in our own solar system such as the discovery of icy moons like Europa, that we’re convinced now from studies does have liquid water beneath a thick ice sheet; and also the moon of Saturn, Enceladus. We do know that there are places in our solar system that have thick ice sheets over what appears to be liquid water. And that’s the analogy that’s often given.

These lakes in Antarctica are similar, though there are much more severe conditions once you get off of planet Earth. There is at least the analogy that these are locations that organisms could possibly have colonized that are beneath large ice sheets in liquid water. That’s the connection that people make in trying to understand where is the most likely place to look for life beyond Earth.

Jupiter's moon Europa, which scientists also suspect might harbor life beneath miles of ice.

Bottom line: Russian scientists penetrated miles of Antarctic ice to reach Lake Vostok, and scientists worldwide are racing to analyze samples for possible alien-like life.

THE LOST WORLD OF LAKE VOSTOK

In 1957 the Russians established a remote base in Antarctica -- the Vostok station. It soon became a byword for hardship -- dependent on an epic annual 1000km tractor journey from the coast for its supplies. The coldest temperature ever found on Earth (-89°C) was recorded here on the 21st July 1983. It's an unlikely setting for a lake of liquid water. But in the 1970's a British team used airborne radar to see beneath the ice, mapping the mountainous land buried by the Antarctic ice sheet. Flying near the Vostok base their radar trace suddenly went flat. They guessed that the flat trace could only be from water. It was the first evidence that the ice could be hiding a great secret.

But 20 years passed before their suspicions were confirmed, when satellites finally revealed that there was an enormous lake under the Vostok base. It is one of the largest lakes in the world -- at 10,000 square km it's about the extent of Lake Ontario, but about twice as deep (500m in places). The theory was that it could only exist because the ice acts like a giant insulating blanket, trapping enough of the earth's heat to melt the very bottom of the ice sheet.

Pingüino "Blanco", que semeja un albino, ha sido encontrado en la Antártida

ORIGINAL: NatGeo

Descubierto por turistas, la rara ave tiene una mutación que diluye los pigmentos de las plumas.

Los pingüinos barbijo tienen una condición rara llamada isabelinismo, dicen los expertos.
Fotografía cortesía de David Stephens, National Geographic Expeditions

Christine Dell'Amore

para National Geographic News

Publicado 12 de enero 2012

Dios los cría y ellos se juntan por lo general-pero no en el caso raro de "Blanco" el pingüino mutante,  descubierto el Lunes en una colonia de pingüinos de barbijo en la Antártida. (Vea el video de los límites de pingüinos).

El pingüino "rubio", visto en la orilla de una de las islas Shetland del Sur (mapa), "asombró" a los turistas en viaje de crucero de la National Geographi a la Antártida, según escribiño en su blog el naturalista David Stephens, de la compañía de cruceros Lindblad Expeditions.

(La National Geographic Society es propietaria National Geographic News y National Geographic Expeditions, que operaba el crucero en asociación con Lindblad Expeditions).

A pesar de que el pingüino se parece a un albino, el ave en realidad parece tener isabelinismo, dijo experto en pingüinos  P. Dee Boersma de la Universidad de Washington en Seattle.

"La condición es una mutación genética que diluye el pigmento en las plumas de los pingüinos", según un estudio de 2009 sobre isabellinism publicado en la revista Marine Ornitology.

Esto se traduce en una "iluminación uniforme" de los colores oscuros de un ave, convirtiendo al animal a un color marrón grisáceo o amarillo pálido, según el estudio.

(Ver "Las tres cuartas partes de los Grandes Colonias de pingüinos antárticos van a desaparecer?")

Pingüinos "Isabelinos" no Albinos

A pesar de que técnicamente representan condiciones diferentes, los términos "isabelinismo" y "leucismo" a veces se utilizan indistintamente. Leucismo es una mutación que impide la melanina que se produce en absoluto en las plumas. El albinismo se presenta cuando un animal no produce melanina en absoluto a lo largo de todo su cuerpo.

(Ver fotos de animales albinos.)

"Muchas especies de pingüinos que unos pocos individuos raros con este patrón de color", dijo Boersma por correo electrónico.

Por ejemplo, los científicos han observado la mayoría de los casos de isabelinismo en pingüinos papúa, que se encuentran a lo largo de la Península Antártica. Los pingüinos de Magallanes, que viven en las costas de América del Sur, parecen tener la menor incidencia de la enfermedad. (Ver imágenes de pingüinos).

En el océano, la espalda de los pingüinos es un camuflaje negro a las aves de predador y de presa que nadan por encima, por lo que Boersma sospecha que el isabelinismo afectaría la supervivencia de la aves en Shetland del Sur, aunque no existen estudios sobre el tema, dijo.

De hecho, a bordo de la nave Nacional Geographic Explorer cruceros ", muchos se preguntaban sobre las pocas posibilidades de éxito de esta ave poco común", escribió Stephens Lindblad.

En el lado positivo ", en tanto que la coloración extraña puede hacer que la pesca les sea un poco más difícil", dijo, "se encuentran regularmente como aves de cría".

Descubren un "Mundo Perdido" bajo la Antártida

ORIGINAL: ABC.es

De Jose Manuel Nieves (el 04/01/2012 a las 01:11:06, en Ciencia)

No se trata del hallazgo de una sola especie, sino de todo un ecosistema completamente nuevo para la Ciencia. Comunidades enteras de especies hasta ahora desconocidas y que han sido descubiertas bajo los hielos perpetuos de la Antártida, prosperando al calor de fuentes hidrotermales del fondo marino, en un ambiente oscuro y al que no llega la luz del sol. El descubrimiento, recién publicado en PLoS Biology por un equipo de investigadores de las Universidades de Oxford y Southampton, incluye nuevas especies de cangrejos, estrellas de mar, percebes, anémonas y el pulpo albino que aparece sobre estas líneas.

El espectacular hallazgo ha sido posible gracias al uso, por primera vez, de un vehículo operado por control remoto (ROV) para explorar la cordillera de East Scotia, en lo más profundo del Océano Antártico, una zona en la que los vientos hidrotermales crean un ambiente único, totalmente carente de luz solar pero en el que abundan diversos elementos químicos esenciales. En la zona existen fuentes hidrotermales (chimeneas negras) que alcanzan temperaturas de hasta 382 grados centígrados.

"Las fuentes hidrotermales -afirma el profesor Alex Rogers, del Departamento de Zoología de la Universidad de Oxford y autor principal del estudio-  son el hogar de animales que no se encuentran en ninguna otra parte del planeta y que no obtienen su energía del sol, sino de compuestos químicos como el sulfuro de hidrógeno (o ácido sulfhídrico). El primer estudio de estas fuentes, en el Océano Antártico, ha revelado un mundo perdido oscuro y caliente, en el que prosperan comunidades enteras de organismos marinos hasta ahora desconocidos".

Los datos obtenidos por el ROV incluyen imágenes que muestran grandes colonias de una clase desconocida de cangrejo (arriba), posiblemente la especie dominante del ecosistema y cuyos individuos se arraciman alrededor de las chimeneas submarinas. 

El vehículo también descubrió una estrella marina de siete brazos, un voraz depredador que se arrastra a través de "campos" de criaturas que recuerdan a los percebes. A 2.400 metros de profundidad, el ROV se topó también con un raro pulpo de piel pálida que nunca había sido visto hasta ahora.

En su artículo, los investigadores se muestran sorprendidos por no haber econtrado ni una sola de las especies que son comunes en las fuentes hidrotermales del Pacífico, el Atlántico o el Índico. "Sencillamente - dice Alex Rogers- todas esas especies no estaban allí".

Rogers y su equipo creen que las diferencias entre los grupos de animales hallados en el Antártico y las que se encuentran en todos los demás océanos es una prueba de que las fuentes hidrotermales pueden tener mucha más diversidad y complejidad de lo que se pensaba. "Estos hallazgos -afirma Rogers- son una nueva muestra de la maravillosa diversidad que puede encontrarse en los océanos del mundo. En cualquier sitio que miremos, desde los soleados arrecifes de coral de los mares tropicales a estas fuentes de calor bajo la Antártida, sumidas en una oscuridad eterna, encontramos ecosistemas únicos que es necesario comprender y proteger".