Extremophiles, world's weirdest life...

in an image gallery.  Tough little buggers.

Resilient Earthling microbe...

could likely survive on Mars: Tough Microbe Has The Right Stuff for Mars.

Methanosarcina barkeri is a hardy bacterium that can live in oxygen poor environments, produces methane, tolerates wide variation in temperature and can endure long dry spells. So, why not on Mars?

I heart extremophiles.

Life can exist almost anywhere...

on Earth, it seems: Extreme Life Thrives Where the Livin’ Ain’t Easy.

It's alive...

Rip Van Winkle microbe wakes up after 120,000 years.

A tough little bacteria, Herminiimonas glaciei, is alive and vigorous after being discovered about 3 km deep in a Greenland glacier where food and oxygen are scarce.

Why not on Mars?

Extremophiles may provide insight...

into life elsewhere in the solar system. Here's an excellent web page and video that describes the work being done by astrobiologist Richard Hoover, courtesy of the National Science Foundation.

Related: Yellowstone Hot Spring Teeming with Viruses.

New species of archaebacteria...

can survive in high temperatures and pressures (up to 105°C and 1000 times atmospheric pressure) at hydrothermal vents along the mid-Atlantic ridge.

Why not on other planets?

Blood Falls in Antarctica...

yields 1.5 million year old microbes that have been sequestered by the glacial ice cover. The newly discovered chemotrophic organisms live without light or oxygen in a briny fluid and utilize sulfur to extract iron from the underlying bedrock.

Why not on Mars?

Extremophiles rule...

in the most bizarre ecological niches: microbes thrive in hyper-saline environments.

Is there a terrestrial/aqueous environment that can't support life? Seems increasingly unlikely.

Three new species of bacteria...

which are not found on Earth, and which are highly resistant to ultra-violet radiation, have been discovered in the upper stratosphere by Indian scientists. I think this discovery opens the possibility for similar life to exist in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, perhaps.

Isn't science cool?

Extremophiles rule...

other worlds, most likely. I've always held a fascination for creatures able to adapt to seemingly hostile environments (hostile at least to us.) Here's a press release describing new discoveries related to tube worms that populate hydrothermal vents on the deep ocean floor. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find comparable organisms thriving in the ice-covered ocean of Europa, a moon of Jupiter, clustered around similar hot springs.