We're trying to find examples of the most extreme environments we can on Earth, we're trying to get into places where biology runs headlong into the inorganic part of the Earth, where any nutrient you want to pick up you've got to get from a rock or the atmosphere.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

Categorized in : Science

Nearly every organism in this community is dependent on some other organism's waste product or byproduct.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

Any perturbation has the potential to have catastrophic consequen... by Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

Any perturbation has the potential to have catastrophic consequences.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

These are incredibly diverse microbial communities with hundreds of different organisms, if you were counting animals in the Amazon, you wouldn't come close to the diversity of these biological soil crusts.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

Biological soil crusts are an outstanding example of nature coping with a really challenging set of environmental conditions, we're pushing as close as we can to extreme environments on other planets.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

If you've been there or seen pictures, you know how barren that landscape is, in terms of fundamental nutrient availability of carbon and nitrogen, these things are tough to get your hands on when you're in a biological soil crust.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

It was a very minimal media, if something's growing on there, you know it's able to fix carbon and nitrogen out of the atmosphere, or using one of the specifically chosen carbon and nitrogen compounds we add to the media. Either way, these organisms are very efficient recyclers of organic material.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

One of the things that constantly surprises me is, wherever people seem to go on the planet, there's life, anywhere we go on Earth, life has figured out a way to penetrate that niche and take advantage of some aspect of that environment.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

The interesting thing is that the Bacillus sends out these little shuttles to hopefully get ahold of iron and bring it back, but there is no guarantee.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

Each microbe has a specialty and they are complementary. by Alien Life -RSB- Raymond

Each microbe has a specialty and they are complementary.

Alien Life -RSB- Raymond