Microbial life found in subglacial Antarctic lake

BBC : Microorganisms have been discovered in samples collected from Lake Whillans, a body of liquid water buried some 800 m below the ice in West Antarctica. At those depths, there is little sunlight or organic material. Instead the tiny organisms appear to be fueled by inorganic compounds—such as ammonium, nitrate, and sulphides—found in the rock that makes up the lake bed. To ensure the samples were free of surface contamination, the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project took extensive precautions, including the use of ultraclean drilling methods. The discovery of life in such a forbidding Earth environment leads scientists to propose that similar life might also be found in the large volumes of liquid water lying beneath the icy crusts of some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and possibly other celestial bodies.