Water, water, everywhere, and yet we continue to search for it in space. Ever wondered why NASA is concentrating on such a seemingly pointless task. Surely they have a water supply in the NASA offices? What’s the big deal? TEPE has you covered.
Every form of life ever found has required water. It is known, to us, to sustain life and it’s as good as any other place to start. It was once thought that no life could survive extreme radiation, temperatures, or darkness, but recently this has been found to be a false assumption. Some bacteria can live in volcanic springs, extremely acidic environments or without light. Bacteria like this are known as extremophiles, for they thrive in what we consider the extremes of life.
Those that live in hot springs are also thermophiles, heat loving bacteria. Thermophiles are responsible for the colour of Grand Prismatic Spring, in Yellowstone National Park, USA.
Aerial view of Grand Prismatic Spring; Hot Springs, Midway & Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park. The spring is approximately 250 by 300 feet (75 by 91 m) in size.
The recent discovery of bacteria living in the salty, alkaline, waters of California’s mono lake, Spirochaeta americana, and similar ones beyond has forced many to reconsider our definitions of a habitable environment for life in general. So we look for life in space through searching for water because it’s the only thing we know anything about. You can’t search for something without some kind of criteria to follow, and we’re chosen water to be the symptom we search for among the stars.
But we’re not just looking for life as we systematically scour the universe for water, we’re also looking to determine where we fit into the bigger picture. Water can help us better understand the origin of water on Earth, and thus it’s place in the galaxy. Many think that the water in our seas came from outer-space, on the back of comets and meteorites, so to find similar water elsewhere could help us understand our own planetary history.
The recent discovery of clay like minerals on Mars, indicating the presence (at some point) of water, is therefore important to us for two reasons. Maybe there’s life up there, maybe there’s not, but with all the water we’re finding we’re closer to understanding where this planet came from. And that’s pretty special too.
TEPE Magazine 