Drake High's Worldwide Artifical Hypoliths Project
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Namibia (Africa) |
Devon Island (Nunavut,
Canadian Arctic) |
White Mountains (California) |
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| Mojave Desert (California) coming soon! |
Western Australia coming soon! |
where next? |
Mountaintops, deserts and polar regions have a lot in common:
They are
extreme environments that appear hostile to life at first, but are full of
hidden surprises,
Thye have beautiful, other-worldly landscapes, remote and empty,
They are fragile environments sensitive to climate change,
And, they all have hypolithic
cyanobacteria.
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Letf: Hypolithic cyanobacteria under quartz rocks in California's White Mountains (elevation 12,500') Right: Their habitat
Astrobiology is the study of life in extreme environments in order to understand how to find life on other planets, like Mars. Cyanobacteria are some of Earth’s oldest, simplest and toughest microorganisms. They live in lots of places, not just in extreme environments.
However, wherever conditions get really tough you find them under rocks ("hypolithic" = "under rocks.") Hypolithic cyanobacteria are best known from the Arctic (Devon and Cornwallis Islands) and the Antarctic Dry Valleys.
They prefer translucent rocks like quartz and marble. The rock acts like a little greenhouse window, transmitting some visible light but blocking a lot of the harsh ultraviolet light that can harm living cells. The rocks also trap moisture under them, and protect the cells underneath from extremes of heat and cold.
There's a lot that isn't known about hypoliths. Their growth is difficult to quantify, since it responds to the contours of each rock. However, if you place pre-cut rocks of standardized dimensions in extreme environments, you can rigorously control for variables like light transmission, surface composition and roughness, starting inoculations, and time.
Starting in 2010, Sir Francis Drake High School has begun to deploy an array of artifical hypoliths in extreme locations around the world. Each array is approximately one square meter in area and includes 60 - 100 stones. The "stones" are glass and marble tiles from building supply stores. They have standard dimensions. Variables include:
Light transmission (3 levels),
Innoculated with local cells vs. sterile when placed into the environment,
Hot deserts vs. cold ones.
Places we can put them include California's White Mountain Peak, the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, and (with help from professional scientists who go there) the Arctic, Antarctica, the Atacama, and the Namib.
Lots of people and organizations have helped us:
This project resulted from NASA's Spaceward Bound program, in particular the Mojave 2009 and Namib 2010 expeditions.
We are indebted to NASA scientist Dr. Chris McKay, Dr. Henry Sun of Nevada's Desert Research Institute, and Professor Donald Cowan of the University of the Western Cape in South Africa for teaching us about hypoliths.
We are indebted to Dr. Pascal Lee and Ms. Kira Lorber of the Haughton Mars Project for hosting us at Devon Island and encouraging us to place an array there.
We are grateful to NASA, the Haughton
Mars Project and the Drake
Fund for logistical and financial support for this project, and to our
Principal Mr. Don Drake for his support and confidence in us.
Below are some pics of Drake students preparing artificial hypoliths which were depolyed by Michael Wing in the Namib Desert, April 2010 at 23 degrees, 33 minutes South, 15 degrees 9 minutes East.
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This project was reported in a South African newspaper with a circulation of 250,000. Click here to see the relevant page of the article.