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| A newly discovered life form that froze on
Earth some 30,000 years ago was apparently alive all that time and started
swimming as soon as it thawed, a NASA scientist reported on
Wednesday, in a finding he said has implications for possible contemporary
life on Mars. |
BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- The discovery that a
life form, froze on Earth some 30,000 years ago, was apparently alive as well as
the latest research released from the European Space Agency make it likely that
life could be found on Mars.
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| Images relayed by a European space probe
reveal the existence of a sea of ice close to the equator of Mars,
scientists said Tuesday at a conference in the Netherlands. The existence
of water or ice would significantly increase the chance that microscopic
life may also be found on Mars. | According to
the NASA scientists, this organism could start swimming as soon as it
thawed.
The organism -- a bacterium dubbed Carnobacterium
pleistocenium -- probably flourished in the Pleistocene Age, along with woolly
mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, according to the report of
Reuters.
Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
in Alabama discovered the bacterium near the town of Fox, Alaska, in a tunnel
drilled through permafrost -- a mix of permanently frozen ice, soil and rock --
that is kept at a constant temperature of 24.8 degrees F (minus 4 degrees
C).
When he looked at a small sample of this
bacteria-laden ice under a microscope, "These bacteria that had just thawed
out of the ice ... were swimming around. The instant the ice melted, they
started swimming. They were alive ... but they had been frozen for over 30,000
years." Hoover was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The European Space Agency announced this week that
images transmited by a European space probe reveal the existence of a sea
of ice close to the equator of Mars, thus the chances of present microscopic
life have become greater. Enditem
(Agencies) |
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