WASHINGTON (AP) ? Scientists expect to find microbes in a lake two miles beneath the thick ice of Antarctica. If so, it will illustrate once again that somehow life finds a way to survive in the strangest and harshest places.
And it offers hope that life exists beyond Earth.
Russian researchers reported Wednesday that they had reached Lake Vostok. It’s a pristine body of water untouched by light or wind for about 20 million years.
It doesn’t sound like a place where life could exist, but scientists keep finding germs in places where they don’t expect, from underneath ice to hot mines. There’s even a bizarre germ nicknamed Conan the Bacterium that survives deadly radiation.
Scientists may find similar weird germs deep inside Mars or on the moons of Saturn or Jupiter.
