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E. coli Bacteria |
The two most common bacteria – E. coli and Shewanella oneidensis (SO) – have astonished scientists because they can survive under experimental pressures more than 17,000 times greater than normal atmospheric pressure and in water contaminated with formate (the salt of formic acid).
American scientists from Carnegie Mellon University obtained millions of E. coli bacteria from the human colon and an equivalent amount of SO bacteria from manure, inoculating them into water mixed with formic acid. This entire experimental sample was then placed in a high-pressure apparatus used for creating synthetic diamonds. Under pressures reaching 249,000 pounds per square inch (249,000 x 45.4 kg/25.4 mm²), the water mass transformed into a crystal much denser than ordinary ice, referred to as Ice-6. After several hours under this pressure, the Ice-6 crystal was analyzed, and researchers were amazed to find that more than 1% of one million bacteria still survived normally. Even more remarkable was that these surviving bacteria utilized formate as a nutrient through a special metabolic process, converting formic acid into carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
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Extremophiles |
This experiment demonstrates that simple to complex life forms can exist even at depths of several tens of kilometers underground. Previously, these scientists discovered a type of bacteria known as extremophiles that thrive in environments with high temperatures, heavy radiation, and intense acidity. These findings indicate that limiting the search for life on other planets to conditions similar to those on Earth is inadequate.
Historically, NASA satellites have only explored the surfaces of alien planets and hastily concluded that there is no life there, which is a mistake. Life may be hiding beneath their surfaces, and thus the areas previously defined by scientists as habitable in the universe could need to be significantly expanded.
The conditions of the recent experiment compared to the environments on the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter are incredibly harsh and unimaginable. Therefore, the existence of lower life forms in the ice present on those planets is conceivable. As for other planets, following the experiment, no one can definitively claim that they are “dead lands.”
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