Xtreme Life on Earth April 29, 2007

The more people study life on Earth, the more they learn how amazingly resilient it is. Virtually everywhere you look, even in places previously thought to be completely inhospitable to life, you find creatures not just surviving, but thriving. They find organisms evolved to take advantage of nearly every form of energy and to exploit every available resource. The knowledge about life has grown in recent decades, so has the idea that Earth might not be the only place that life could survive. Astrobiologists - scientists interested in the understanding the prospects for life beyond Earth - study life in some of Earth's most "extreme" environments in order to understand the full range of life's capabilities and limitations. By comparing these findings to the range of environmental conditions presented by other bodies in the solar system, they identify potentially "habitable" environments beyond Earth. 'Xtreme Life' examines some of these Earthly extreme environments and the amazing life forms that inhabit them, and explores the possibilities for life elsewhere in the Universe.