back to article Ice 'lightning' may have helped life survive Snowball Earth

The ice sheets and glaciers that extend over roughly 11 per cent of the Earth’s land mass are home to a surprisingly abundant source of life. Sections of liquid water beneath and inside the ice provide a habitat for a genetically diverse variety of microbes. And studying these organisms gives us some clue what life may have …

  1. AbelSoul
    Coat

    Cool research.

    Aherm

    Mine's the one with "Snow business like show business" in the pocket.

  2. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Boffin

    Interesting

    So, a bit like certain moons of gas giant planets then.

    Perhaps...

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Interesting

      Indeed, the possible implications for life on other planets is one of the motivations for studying terrestrial microbial life in environments the we humans would find extreme.

      Deep sea vents, arsenic-rich lakes (though it turns out that a bacterium can't substitute arsenic for phosphorus after all, as was originally reported), glaciers etc

  3. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Hmmm, so if we grind up all our old silicon, dump it in the sea, we can ease the hydrogen drought? I see a Lotto grant coming...

    1. g e

      Splitting water without leccy?

      A patent forthcoming ?

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Splitting water without leccy?

        >Splitting water without leccy?

        Creating glaciers is possibly not the most efficient means of doing so!

        1. Fink-Nottle

          Re: Splitting water without leccy?

          > Creating glaciers is possibly not the most efficient means of doing so!

          No, but it adds a Slartibartfastian grandeur to the process.

  4. Tom 7

    ISTR something about sub-zero RNA chain records

    where (IIRC) the longest spontaneous formation of chains of RNA (~100bases?) where formed at -18c.

    It may even be that life was formed in the ice slush in a bay where the massive early tides ground the ice and rock into a pulp around a smoker.

  5. arctic_haze
    Holmes

    Does not compute

    Life could survive in sub-glacial lakes but not photosynthetic species. We know that cyanobacteria produced oxygen long before the global glaciations. In fact, the oxygen concentrations increased shortly after the "snowball" episodes. There is no light under hundreds of meters of ice so something is deeply wrong with this new hypothesis. I would rather bet volcanoes sticking through the ice provided heat for surface lakes or lagoons to exist during the global glaciation.

    1. Grikath

      Re: Does not compute

      All the bits together actually do compute, and this sparking theorydoes fit a couple of the holes with regards to "how did stuff survive/get nutrients" . Especially since silt particles are *still* extremely important for quite a number of (semi)catalytic reactions that , amongst others, make the difference between "good" and "poor" soil.

      Incidentally, all cyanobacteria are quite capable of surviving without a shred of sunlight. They have a Sulfur-based anaerobic chemotrophic backup. So any sulfur rich environment will do them just fine. Which young Earth certainly would have provided. Between the thinner crust, and the rather stronger tidal forces from a Moon in a much closer orbit, volcanoes would have been a dime a dozen, covered under ice or not. Those cyanobacteria would have been quite happy under the ice..

  6. Paul Smith

    What has biodiversity got to do with it?

    Why does the article keep referring to sustaining biodiversity when describing a hypothetical environment that could only be exploited by a very highly adapted mono-culture?

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: What has biodiversity got to do with it?

      Why do you think it is a mono-culture?

      The second sentence of the article is "Sections of liquid water beneath and inside the ice provide a habitat for a genetically diverse variety of microbes." and contains a hyperlink in blue to an abstract:

      "Molecular evidence for an active endogenous microbiome beneath glacial ice.

      Here, using RNA-based approaches, we demonstrate the presence of active and endogenous archaeal, bacterial and eukaryal assemblages in cold (0-1 °C) subglacial sediments sampled from Robertson Glacier, Alberta, Canada.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Freeze Lightning Shirley!

    I believe the correct term is 'Freeze Lightning' ... coined by a Dr Malcolm Tunney (Dr Rodney McKay obviously had nothing to do with it whatsoever)

    1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Freeze Lightning Shirley!

      Upvote for SG1 reference

      1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Freeze Lightning Shirley!

        My bad, it was Stargate Atlantis. One of the later episodes of season 5 I believe.

        Kinda feel like a tool now...

  8. Primus Secundus Tertius

    Micro life only

    The article, at least as reproduced in El Reg, explains how microbes might survive. But the two most recent episodes of snowball earth were at 700 my ago and 600 my ago. By then life had evolved to algae and to animals with no shells or bones.

    These relatively evolved life forms would probably need something like the volcanic havens suggested in a previous comment.

    1. Grikath

      Re: Micro life only

      Well the first thing that comes to mind are sponges, or at least: organisms with the same basic cooperative setup, which can still function as individual cells when needed. And yes, they'd need "volcanic havens" , but those would have been pretty common. Given that ice is a pretty good insulator, those "havens" wouldn't have been small either.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon