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Life on Ice

Life on Ice

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 The ice sheets that cover Antarctica and Greenland were once thought to be sterile, inhospitable places. But recently, scientists have discovered they hold vast populations of life. There were times in Earth’s history when there was no polar ice at all. And many times, like today, when ice sheets formed at the poles. In the Antarctic today, ice sheets cover 5 million square miles with over a mile of ice that’s up to 1 million years old. In subglacial polar lakes, this life may not have seen the light of day for 20 million years. This enormous quantity of ice has been shown to harbor microbes in huge numbers. Scientists estimate their total organic carbon biomass would be about ten times that of all humans on Earth. And, perhaps not so surprisingly, with ice this old, the bacteria are ancient, too. Viable species hundreds of thousands of years old have been discovered in ice, frozen there all that time in a sort of suspended animation. But once liberated and revived in labs, some started to replicate as normal. With them are previously unknown viruses, and certainly new microbes that are yet to be discovered. And this has scientists both concerned and excited. With continued polar ice melt, some of these microbes could bring ancient diseases…while some could bring new cures for existing ones. Of course, this has prompted research; and we’ll look into that in a future EarthDate.
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