Thursday, March 25, 2010

Shrimp 600 Feet Below Ice

A few days ago NASA was drilling in Antarctica to explore the underside of the ice. Unintentionally they managed to capture a small shrimp like creature on tape. They actually managed to make two important discoveries. 1. They were the first to capture an image of what the ice looked like in the water under the actual ice. And 2. they discovered that even at such extreme temperatures, life still lived. People have known for a while that the freezing water of Antarctica is teeming with life, but they didn't know that even under the ice there was life. Even more surprising is that the shrimp was bright orange. That's pretty unusual considering the depth and temperature. It was shocking to find single celled organisms in the ice, but to find a massively complex organism is quite amazing.

Feel free to head to http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctic-shrimp.html to watch the video.

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