Scientists have released video of an expedition under 600 feet of ice sheet in the Arctic, previously thought unable to sustain life. The team sent a camera beneath an ice sheet in what they suspected would be a fruitless attempt to discern how inhospitable and dead the location was, but found that life existed far beyond what they had previously expected possible.
A NASA team launching a remote camera was shocked when suddenly a mysterious shrimp-like creature known as a Lyssianasid amphipod swam in front of the camera and perched itself on the device’s tow cable. The creature was three inches long, and orange with long antenna and bulging black eyes. Had the NASA team been searching another planet it would have most certainly been a surprising find. Of course the area they were searching in had similar conditions to several extra-planetary locations including Jupiter’s moon Europa which has been long suspected of hosting life in a deep subterranean ocean. The find led to several scientists and fans of Jupiter’s moon saying it was clearly indicative that life could survive within Europa’s shielded interior.
Then they found the second life form. A jellyfish tentacle suspected to be over a foot long was discovered and scrutinized to confirm its source, but the rest of the body was never found. Perhaps another creature from this inhospitable environment where life cannot survive ate it. “We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there,” revealed Robert Bindschadler. In the end it turned out that in the tiny sampling of what the team was looking at, they discovered not one but two potential creatures, indicating that the density of complex life forms in this inhospitable environment was actually quite high.
The discovery is already promising to change several opinions in the field of biology on where exactly complex life can survive. Of course in recent years it has been discovered that there is no shortage of evidence indicating that life forms of a different composition, and/or structure could exist outside the known environment of Earth. And this new discovery shows that not only can it happen, but it largely does happen. Even in the harshest environments here. Life, as it turns out, is not as fragile as we thought.
Some have speculated that the tiny hole drilled into the ice into the waters within may have breached a gap between the ocean and the underwater area in which the creatures were observed, and that these organisms may have merely swam ahead of the camera without Scientists noticing. Those affiliated with the team as well as others are not impressed by this explanation. Still, before scientific models are changed forever by this discovery, further research will be required.
Of course even if further research doesn’t turn up any new discoveries, consider the possibilities of an alien planet. Carbon based life forms may be replaced by silicon or some other unknown element, making unstable conditions preferable and even superior to those on Earth. And if need is the father of invention, then hostile environments could certainly breed a whole species of technologically advanced beings.