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BACK TO 1b: THE RESEARCH TOOLS
1c:
EXPLORING THE EXTREMES
INSIDE THE BURNS
TELECOM CENTER, the team sat down at workstations linked to the Internet,
and began to research life in extreme environments. At first they
were looking for all kinds of information, just to see what was "out
there" and what would be most interesting to them.
Some of the topics
you can find under "life in extreme environments":
- "Hyperthermophilic"
life: single-cell organisms that prefer extremely hot environments
(60 degrees C and above)
- "Black
smoker" oases: whole communities of sea life clustered around
hot springs ("black smokers") on the deep-sea floor
- Organisms
that live on the rocks and under the ice in Antarctica's dry valleys,
which may be an environment similar to the surface of Mars
- Lake
Vostok: a liquid-water lake four kilometers under the Antarctic
ice cap, which may contain organisms that have been isolated from
the rest of the earth for two million years. This environment may
be similar to that found on Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter
- Fungi
which thrive in environments with pH near 0 (very acidic)
- The
controversial "deep hot biosphere" theory, which proposes
that a vast number of organisms live deep in the earth's crust
As they surfed,
the team discussed the material they found. Shannon, the team's teacher,
opened up discussions about how to decide which topic to focus on
for their presentation.
The team noticed
that a lot of information was available on the microbes that thrive
in the volcanic "hot pots" of Yellowstone. (Not surprising,
because the university is near to Yellowstone.) They also learned
that a scientist at Montana State University had been part of an Antarctic
team that discovered organisms living in the ice in Antarctica's dry
valleys, where temperatures never rise above 0 degrees F.
