[LINK] "Antarctic permafrost may not be habitable for microbes – so is Mars?"

[rfmcdonald]

The CBC's Emily Chung and Rachelle Solomon note how the apparent dearth of life in an area of Antarctica known for approximating Martian conditions bodes ill for the potential of finding life on that cooler and dryer world.

Here's some bad news for anyone still hoping life exists on Mars: Antarctic permafrost similar to permafrost on Mars seems to be too cold and dry to support microbes.

Canadian and U.S. researchers were unable to find any micro-organisms that were living or breeding in the permafrost of a dry, high-elevation valley in the Antarctic, they reported this week in the ISME Journal.

"It doesn't mean there's no life on Mars, but what it does mean is it's going to be harder to find," said Jacqueline Goordial, the McGill University researcher who led the study, in an interview with Rachelle Solomon on CBC's Breakaway.

Her doctoral research supervisor, Prof. Lyle White, had an even more pessimistic analysis of the situation.

"If conditions are too cold and dry to support active microbial life on an analogous climate on Earth, then the colder dryer conditions in the near surface permafrost on Mars are unlikely to contain life," he said in a statement. "Additionally, if we cannot detect activity on Earth, in an environment which is teeming with micro-organisms, it will be extremely unlikely and difficult to detect such activity on Mars."