#extremophiles — Public Fediverse posts

💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: 🍄🪨 Researchers at the University of #Michigan pulled #water from gas wells deep under the #GreatLakes and found a dense #ecosystem.

The water has remained #underground since the #IceAge more than 11,000 years ago. The isolated #environment contains hundreds of fungal species alongside tiny #worms and #tardigrades.

👉 https://www.popsci.com/science/rock-eating-fungi-great-lakes/

#fungi #microrganisms #ecology #science #groundwater #biodiversity #carbon #carboncycle #soil #biology #extremophiles

Memories from Februaries spent in the #Atacama desert. Team members would take nights off to recover from the heat and do laundry in town, pick up supplies at the hardware store.

Often we had to get those foil-faced windshield covers to protect computers that would overheat in the sun.

Driving through that otherworldly #landscape was exhilarating.

#extremophilia #chile #nasa #marsrover #seti #antofagasta #fieldscience #extremophiles #desert #mondaymemories

🔬🐻 Microscope footage shows a baby water bear (#tardigrade) breaking free from its egg after its mother drags babies around in a sack of shed exoskeleton. A tardigrade researcher explains that water bears use two egg-laying strategies – either in the shed skin with smooth eggs, or freely in the environment with ornamented eggs that prevent them from washing away in rain.

👉 https://nautil.us/witness-the-rare-birth-of-a-water-bear-1244573/

#tardigrades #microscopy #biology #science #nature #extremophiles #animals #birth

Simultaneous #aerobic and #anaerobic #respiration in a Yellowstone #thermophile challenges scientific norms

#mightymicrobes #extremophiles #chemolithotroph #genomic #metabolism #bacteria #archea #funded_by_NASA #funded_by_us

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-simultaneous-aerobic-anaerobic-respiration-yellowstone.html