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| The Atlantis crew shuttles additional members of the science party to the ship from the Gyre. Image courtesy of Expedition to the Deep Slope. |
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A group of very old tubeworms (Lamellibrachia luymesi and Seepiophila jonesi) living on the same piece of carbonate rock as large colonies of the gorgonian Callogorgia Americana americana, with brittle stars and a galatheid crab crawling on the gorgonians.
Credit: Derk Bergquist |
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A computer enhanced multibeam bathymetry map of the northwestern and northern Gulf of Mexico continental shelf and slope. The continental slope surface reflects an array of intraslope basins, sites of thick accumulations of sediment, surrounded by higher relief features in the form of ridges and domes that are the expressions of salt masses in the shallow subsurface. Major lease areas established by the Minerals Management Service are superimposed on the image and important features like the Sigsbee Escarpment at the base of the slope are labeled.
Credit: Harry H. Roberts |
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| Chemoautotrophic whale-fall community, including bacteria mats, vesicomyid clams in the sediments, galatheid crabs, polynoids, and a variety of other invertebrates. The 35 ton gray whale was originally implanted on the seafloor at 1674 m depth in the Santa Cruz Basin in 1998. This image was captured 6 years later by Craig Smith from the University of Hawaii. |
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A small orange crab near a few scattered tubeworm individuals at 2180 meters depth in Atwater Valley. Image courtesy of Expedition to the Deep Slope.
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| A unique glacial spring on northern Ellesmere Island in Canada´ High Arctic, just 9° south of Earth´ north pole. Credit: AINA |
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| Vented Type I Container with fly cassette and air holes. Credit: NASA |
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| The image shows Drosophila (fruit fly) larvae and adults. A "sensitized" background line with increased incidence of tumors will allow larvae to be irradiated on the ground and then sent into space to experience a microgravity environment. Credit: NASA |
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| Penny Boston collects rock and soil samples for laboratory analysis. Credit: Henry Bortman |
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| The circular depression in this rock may indicate that life is present even in the driest region of the Atacama Desert. Credit: Henry Bortman |
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The gray veins in this salt rock from the Atacama Desert indicate the presence of photosynthetic bacteria.
Credit: Henry Bortman
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| Jacek Wierzchos, the chemist who discovered bacteria living inside salt rocks in Yungay, Chile, the driest place on Earth. Credit: NASA |
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At dawn, after a particularly cold desert night, light and moisture enable photosynthetic bacteria to come to life inside salt rocks like this one.
Credit: Henry Bortman |
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Life has gained a foothold in the salar, or salt flat, that extends for several square miles behind the desert research station in Yungay, Chile.
Credit: Henry Bortman |
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Life has gained a foothold in the salar, or salt flat, that extends for several square miles behind the desert research station in Yungay, Chile.
Credit: Henry Bortman |
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| Credit: Justin B. Ries, Johns Hopkins University |
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| Justin Ries Credit: Johns Hopkins University |
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| Chris McKay searches for life in some of the driest places on Earth. |
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| When the food supply dries up, solitary Dictyostelium discoideum cells congregate and fuse into a spore-producing tower. A newly discovered hybrid enzyme called Steely2 (shown in cartoon form) forges the basic structure of the chemical signal (DIF-1, shown here as a stick model) that orchestrates this vital step in the life cycle of Dictyostelium: the transformation of omnipotent cells into dedicated spore or stalk cells. Credit: Image by Mike Austin using a photo by Rob Kay |
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| Image of gram negative Salmonella typhimurium. Credit: NASA |
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| Scanning Electron Micrograph (SEM) of gram negative Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Credit: NASA |
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| Image of Candida albicans. Credit: NASA |
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| black smoker hydrothermal vent and tube worms |
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| Collecting sulfur spring samples are Marie-Eve Caron and Dahmnait Gleeson. Image credit: Stephen Grasby |
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| Sulfur spring runs down the face of the glacier at Borup Fiord on Ellesmere Island. Image credit: Stephen Grasby |
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| These close-up images, taken by an electron microscope, reveal tiny one-cell organisms called halophiles and methanogens. Studies show these microbes can survive at below-freezing temperatures and are within the temperature range on present-day Mars. Credit: Maryland Astrobiology Consortium, NASA and STScI |
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| The diagram shows where the photograph was taken with respect to the discovery. Image courtesy of Duane Moser. |
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About two miles below the ground in a South African gold mine, co-author Duane Moser stands next to the fracture zone (white area) where the one-of-a-kind bacteria were found. Image courtesy of Li-Hung Lin.
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Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution of Washington checks out the red beds from Sverrefjelle.
Image credit: AMASE |
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Diagram of the CheMin instrument.
Image credit: LANL |
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| Svalbard |
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| Credit: Princeton University |
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| Satellite photo of the Nile |
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| In parts of Monterey Bay, sulfide seeps up through the muddy seafloor. Clams living in the mud absorb this toxic chemical through their feet. The clams carry the sulfide to bacteria living inside their bodies. The bacteria use the sulfide to make food, which in turn provides nutrients for the clams. These are having size upto 4 inches (10 cm) or larger. Credit: All the Sea |
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| This image shows gas hydrate forming beneath a rock ledge above a seafloor cold seep approximately 250 miles east of Charleston, S.C. Credit: Carolyn Ruppel |
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Salt-lovers : immense bloom of a halophilic ("salt-loving")
archaean species at a salt works near San Quentin, Baja California Norte, Mexico.
Credits: Berkeley |
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| A New Domain : In the late 1970s, Dr. Carl Woese spearheaded a study of evolutionary relationships among prokaryotes. Instead of physical characters, he relied on RNA sequences to determine how closely related these microbes were. He discovered that the prokaryotes were actually composed of two very different groups -- the Bacteria and a newly recognized group that he called Archaea. Each of these groups is as different from the other as they are from eukaryotes. These three groups are now recognized as three distinct domains of life. Credits: Berkeley |
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| Stromatolites in a pool at Cuatro Ciénegas, Mexico. Photo credit: Tommy Lavergne of Rice University, Houston, Texas. |
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Pool at Cuatro Ciénegas, Mexico. Photo credit: Tommy Lavergne of Rice University, Houston, Texas
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Stromatolites in a pool at Cuatro Ciénegas, Mexico. Photo credit: Tommy Lavergne of Rice University, Houston, Texas
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Valley of Cuatro Ciénegas, Mexico. Photo credit: Tommy Lavergne of Rice University, Houston, Texas
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| Three enigmatic Archaea plucked from a pink scum, or biofilm, in California's Richmond Mine. Transmission electron micrograph (TEM) images like these show that most have protrusions (B), dark areas that probably are packed ribosomes (C) and unidentified dark inclusions (D). The 100 nanometer scale bar is approximately one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Credit: Brett Barker/UC Berkeley |
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| Sampling pink biofilms growing in acid mine drainage deep underground in the Richmond Mine, Iron Mountain, Calif. The water is almost as acidic as battery acid, with a pH of about 1. Credit: Paul Wilmes |
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| The findings show how cholera cells are able to obtain energy to power essential cell components, like the flagella that keep them motile. Credit: Virginia Tech |
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| A NASA researcher captured this 2005 photo of the Antarctic ice sheet in West Antarctica. Credit: NASA |
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| From December 2003 to December 2005, MODIS captured these two images showing a draw down of water in a subglacial lake (left)and the rise of water in the same subglacial lake (right). Color coded ICESat tracks across both images indicate rises and falls in the elevation of the lake's water. Credit: NASA |
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The fossilized remains of Calothrix, a common bacterium in Yellowstone National Park hot springs, show like branches of a shrub in this microscopic image.
Image credit: Arizona State University, Jack D. Farmer |
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Close-up of famous shapes measuring 20 to 200 nanometers across in Allen Hills
meteorite [ALH84001], found at Allen
Hills, Antarctica, showing what has generated controversy around ancient fossilized microbial life.
Image Credit: NASA |
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