Labels: text | wheel | auto part | screenshot | machine | tire OCR: THE SEARCH FOR LIFE METEORITES THE SETI PROGRAM Life in terrestrial permafrost The conditions to which living organisms would be subjected on Mars are equivalent to those in terrestrial permafrost. Life might seem impossible in these permanently frozen layers below the Earth's surface. But, specialists at the former Soviet Institute for Soil and Photo- synthesis Sciences and the Hamburg Botanical Institute have discovered active nitrogen-fixing bacteria at a depth of 35 meters in the Siberia subsoil, a layer of permafrost that is several million years old. Encapsulated in bubbles in the Arctic permafrost, these bacteria live in cryobiosis, in other words they have survived this extreme cold in a "dormant" state for three million years, and return to their normal life cycle when conditions are again favorable. The study of Antarctic permafrost may one day show that such bacteria are able to live as long as 30 million years. This would certainly help us estimate our chances of finding any surviving primitive forms of life on Mars. MARS BETAT
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