Extreme conditions on Earth are a bit like those on Mars. The average temperature of the neighboring planet ranges from –40 to –60 degrees. But even on Triton, a cold Martian satellite, where the surface temperature is unimaginable -235 degrees, the simplest organisms can inhabit.
A special program - NURP (National Undersea Research Program) is looking for evidence of the existence of life in unacceptable conditions. Scientists working within its framework believe: before looking for extraterrestrial life, it is necessary to understand the fundamental principles of terrestrial forms, their emergence and development.
The habitat of most living organisms on our planet is very limited, since they need a moderate temperature range, sunlight, etc. But it was not always so. 3.5 million years ago, superorganisms dominated on Earth, capable of developing under thermal, chemical and other conditions that are incredible for modern mankind. This innate resistance is still characteristic of microbes. They exist in the most remote corners of the planet - with extremes of temperature (for example, in hot springs), high salinity or acidity.
The lowest temperature on Earth (-89.2 ° C) was recorded at Vostok station in Antarctica. Under such conditions, even carbon dioxide freezes - it turns into dry ice. But under the ice, at a depth of 3603 meters, tiny rod-shaped bacteria live. And New Zealand zoologist David A. Wharton discovered worms in Antarctica that freeze to the state of an icicle, and then thaw and live on.
Some terrestrial bacteria are able to withstand a radiation dose that is 2 thousand times higher than the lethal dose for humans. Even when their bodies are torn into many fragments, they regenerate.
During the summer heat, the soil temperature in the "Sahara of the New World" - the Mojave Desert - rises to 66 degrees. In this arid place, where not a drop of precipitation falls in summer, special lichens live, which are a symbiosis of fungi and algae.
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There is a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park called Punch Bowl Spring. Its temperature is over 200 ° C. The bubbling water is home to unique thermophiles - bacteria that form bright colored spots on the surface of the source.
In hydrothermal vents heated by volcanoes, temperatures can reach +340 degrees. Thermophilic (thermophilic) bacteria also live on their banks and in the water itself. They serve as food for other exotic creatures - annelids.
Once among scientists, it was considered an axiom to believe that any living creature needs the sun's rays. But at a depth of more than 2 kilometers, superorganisms live, which have learned to do without such an extremely important source of energy and cope with great pressure. The ecosystem of the Movile Cave, discovered in Transylvania, also does not know what sunlight is. Discolored scorpions, leeches, centipedes and worms live in it.
In dark caves, organisms live that get energy from sulfur compounds. By absorbing it, they generate waste in the form of droplets of toxic sulfuric acid. That is why many astrobiologists (opponents of the theory of "water chauvinism") agree that at least microbial ecosystems can exist on Venus. Dr. David Grinspoon, Ph. D., has written about sulphurous life forms many times. His theory can explain the strange "droplets" found in the atmosphere of the eccentric "hellish planet", as well as anomalous absorption of ultraviolet rays at an altitude of 60-70 kilometers.
Of course, all information about the existence of life on Mars or Venus is based largely on hypotheses. But the study of the features of the earth's biosphere puts the uninhabitability of other planets in the solar system into question.
Elena Muravyova for neveroyatno.info
