An article titled How Life Began published in Time magazine on July 29th, 2002, revealed some of the most inconceivable forms of life. Scientists have recently found that microbes can survive in the most extreme of environments. They can thrive in boiling heat, freezing cold, radiation, and toxic chemicals. These findings have triggered a revolution in biology. (1) It's hard to imagine a more inhospitable place on earth than the hydrothermal vents that covers the ocean floor. These cracks in the sea bottom spew water that is superheated by rising magma to as high as 750 degrees F and is contaminated by toxic substances such as hydrogen sulfide, cadmium, arsenic and lead. Unbelievably, even in these lethal conditions there does exist life that not only survives but also thrives. The frozen continent of Antarctica is almost equally deadly, but it sits on the other end of the temperature spectrum. Drilling into a thick ice cap three miles below the surface, scientists reached a body of underground water known as Lake Vostok that rivals Lake Ontario in size. Although, Lake Vostok hovers near the freezing point, cut off from light and outside nutrients, it is teeming with microorganisms. Scientists studying the samples were marveled by this discovery because no one believed that life could exist down there. Remarkable as these discoveries might have once seemed, they have become almost commonplace. Over the past few years, scientists have continued to find microbes thriving in extreme environments. Scientists have been finding life in all sorts of places where biology textbooks say it shouldn't exist, such as at high temperatures, deep underground, in highly concentrated salt water, near toxic metals, and even radiation. In the past, these findings seemed little more than a biological oddity, but the new collective body of evidence has triggered a scientific revolution, forcing researchers to reexamine biology's most basic assumptions about how life began. In addition, when biologists looked carefully at the microorganisms genes, they realized that while these microbes shared bacterias key feature --- the absence of a distinct nucleus --- their genes more closely resembled those of more advanced cells. The implication of this discovery is that life on earth may not have first arisen in a warm tidal pool as Darwin theorized. Consequently, some scientists have started to reexamine Darwins theory of evolution. These findings have also inspired scientists to explore the possibility of life beyond Earth. People once believed that life could only exist in habitable environments as defined by biology textbooks. The recent discovers of life in extreme environments has transformed biology. It is now humbling to find microorganisms where you never imagined they could exist.
