The genetics laboratory Institute of Nuclear Physics of St. Petersburg (Russia) announced a very interesting new scientific discovery. Russian scientists have found a completely unknown kind of life in a subglacial lake located in Antarctica. This is a new bacterium with unknown DNA from existing catalogs around the world.

To find the bacteria, the researchers took water samples from Lake Vostok, which is located beneath a gigantic ice sheet - about four kilometers of drilling to obtain the samples. It is estimated that the subglacial lake has been covered with ice for over a million years and yet remains in a liquid state.

Why is that so important?

Finding life in extreme conditions is an extremely interesting task for the scientific community. One of the main reasons for the relentless pursuit of life in very low temperatures - and less like atmospheric conditions than we normally encounter - is that it may mean that there is life outside Earth.

Image source: Reproduction / Agência RIAThis same. There are many theories that point to the lack of life in other celestial bodies and planets, precisely due to climatic and atmospheric conditions. Because the conditions of the Vostok subglacial lake are very similar to those in some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, some of these theories would be overturned - making the idea that there really is life off Earth grow stronger.

It is worth mentioning that the bacteria was found by Russian scientists, but it happened in a subglacial lake that is four kilometers below the Antarctic ice surface. It is also necessary to say that although the research has only been released now, the samples were taken in mid-2012. For these two reasons (location and date), there is no chance of the bacteria coming from the meteor that fell in Russia this year. year.