Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in the most extreme environments on Earth. From the sulphuric hot springs in Yellowstone National Park to the icy Antarctic, these creatures push the limits of what we know about biology, and force us to reevaluate the possibility of extraterrestrial life forms. Scientists are finding an ever-increasing number of these tough little organisms living quite happily in places where we previously believed no life could possibly exist. Extremophiles have even been found nestled in the heart of a nuclear reactor.

The Chernobyl fungus was discovered several years ago, when scientists were using an R.O.V. to inspect the Chernobyl site. To their surprise, they found a dark slime on the walls, living within the reactor and actually feeding on the radiation. The melanin-rich fungus increases rapidly in size when exposed to a high level of gamma rays (and no, you wouldn't like it when it's angry). Other fungi and bacteria have been discovered with the same ability to thrive within radioactive environments. Deinococcus radiodurans, an amazing polyextremophile with the distinction of being considered the world's most durable bacterium, is capable of withstanding 5,000 Grays of radiation (500,000 rads). The discovery of such fungi and bacteria have provided scientists with a dramatic breakthrough in finding organic ways in which to detoxify radioactive waste.

Extremophiles are not just microbes; more highly evolved creatures have also proved to be as durable, and as strange and wonderful, as the Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria.

The Pompeii Worm

This extremophile keeps a cool head even in extreme temperatures. The Pompeii Worm finds a habitat on or near Black Smokers, hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, which give the worm its volcanic name. Nestled within its cozy tube, its body stays at a very toasty 175º F, while its plume-like head protrudes from the tube into water that is a much more temperate 72º F. Weirder still, its fleecy coat is actually a colony of bacteria that lives in a symbiotic relationship with the worm, fed by mucus secretions produced by the worm. Truly an oddity, the Pompeii worm (and its living coat) obviously has a lot to teach us about living in an extreme range of temperatures.

The Tardigrade
The Tardigrade is considered the king of the extremophiles. These microscopic organisms look like clear gummi bears come to life (hence their more common name, "Water Bears") and have proven to be more durable than Twinkies. Tardigrades have been discovered all over the world, and in the most amazing places, from the peaks of the Himalayas to the sea floor, from temperatures approaching absolute zero to temperatures over 303° F.

Like the Chernobyl fungus, these wonderful Water Bears can withstand doses of gamma rays lethal to humans without flinching. Tardigrades can also withstand the extreme pressure of a vacuum, and research is being conducted to test Tardigrades' durability in space. The Tardigrade Space program has been geekily nicknamed... yes, you guessed it... TARDIS.

NASA astrobiologist Richard Hoover is leading the hunt for more extremophiles, hoping to prove that some of these little fellas are not of our world, but interstellar hitch-hikers that came here millions of years ago on meteors. The existence of organisms like Deinococcus radiodurans and the Tardigrades gives weight to the argument that some of these extremophile lifeforms are actually aliens among us. If these creatures can exist in the vacuum of space and withstand such high levels of radiation, then it is just possible that these abilities are evolutionary traits that enabled them to arrive here, on Earth, from somewhere else in the galaxy.

The Extremophile Hunter:

Several years ago Bhathal, a researcher at the University of Western Sydney, suggested that a likely form of extraterrestrial communication would be laser bursts. He set up a facility at his lab which sweeps a nearby volume of space, within about 100 light years, for laser bursts that come in a regular pattern. Any kind of communication would likely be distinguished from background noise by coming in repeated or non-random patterns.

And a few months ago, Bhathal found the kind of regular pattern he's been looking for. He's been analyzing it and seeking a repeat pattern in the same area of space ever since. Though he's cautious about claiming it as a genuine extraterrestrial signal, his discovery has been making local news. Read all about it in The Australian.

Image by Lynett Cook.

Peckman hopes to chat with Obama before he’s elected, when the CIA - gatekeeper of all shadowy information - hands the senator its own version of the extraterrestrial truth. At least one former president did get the full Facts of Intergalactic Life, according to Peckman:

President Reagan’s UFO/ET briefing at Camp David March 6-8, 1981 is described in a twenty-one page alleged transcript that was declassified from “Top Secret” last October 2007. The document suggests that CIA Director William Casey and several other unnamed advisors revealed facts about UFOs and ETs that clearly astonished Reagan.

But Democrats have apparently not have been afforded the same courtesy:

The day after his inauguration, President Jimmy Carter requested information on the UFO/ET issue but was denied the material by CIA Director George Bush Sr. Key Republicans like Bush Sr. are reported to have a big role in keeping information about UFOs from the public.

President Clinton was also not allowed a briefing from high level government officials. Instead he had to rely in large part on credible witness testimony from former high-ranking military, intelligence agency, and government contractor personnel organized by Dr. Steven Greer of the Disclosure Project.

So does Peckman think he’ll actually win Obama's ear? Probably not. He says the offer “is just a courtesy.” But ultimately, he wants the Democratic Party to force the issue on extraterrestrial disclosure by adding four objectives to its platform:

· To hold open, secrecy-free hearings on the UFO/Extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth.
· To hold open hearings on advanced energy and propulsion systems that, when publicly released, will provide solutions to global environmental challenges.
· To enact legislation which will ban all space-based weapons.
· To enact comprehensive legislation to research, develop and explore space peacefully and cooperatively with all cultures on Earth and in space.

There is no indication that Peckman plans to make a similar offer to Senator McCain. Perhaps McCain is one of those “key Republicans” keeping aliens and their technology under wraps.

[The Extra Campaign]

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Tosca's calculations paint a picture of ancient Mars that'd be a nasty place for young life to try and grow up in, but not all researchers are throwing in the towel yet. From yesterday's ScienceNOW article:

"Tosca et al. are making some very good points," writes planetary geochemist Jeffrey Kargel of the University of Arizona, Tucson, in an e-mail, but "they carry it too far." Perhaps early exploration has been drawn to the most saline and therefore most obvious sites, he writes, missing more hospitable places. Microbiologist Kenneth Nealson of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles also holds out hope for life. Faced with greater challenges, martian life may have evolved even better ways to cope with salty water than Earth's microbes have devised. "Keep on following the water" is the message, say these optimists—and the Phoenix lander is doing just that. Within weeks, it will be analyzing far younger and presumably far fresher water in the martian arctic.

Source: Science

Says Vakoch:

Might not such an attempt to put the best face on our current situation unintentionally reveal a potentially far more dangerous fault of humankind: a tendency to hide from our own problems and to avoid these threats to our very existence?

Here's the crux of Vakoch's argument, as far as I understand it: any interstellar society we encounter is likely to be much, much more advanced than us. After all, the chances of two cultures developing the ability to communicate across interstellar distances in the same part of the galaxy within the same historical moment are infinitessimal. So the aliens will either have been spacefaring for longer than us, or else their space-going era will already have ended — in which case we won't meet them.

So let's assume that a more advanced race, technologically, will also be more advanced in its cultural development. In that case, we'll be like messy, screamy, food-flinging, barfy children to these space demigods. And the most valuable contribution we could make to the interchange would be to remind our new friends of what it's like to be more primitive and id-driven. In any case, if we try to sweep our wars, our environmental destruction and our general crazoid behavior under the celestial rug, they'll probably be able to figure it out and we'll just look like idiots. Our best bet is just to emphasize everything bad about ourselves when we first meet other intelligences, so they'll know what they're in for.

Actually, Vakoch's argument veers sharply towards the end, and he starts talking about how acknowledging our "Shadow" (in the Jungian sense) is just good for us generally, and how we should just own up to our worse natures because it would be therapeutic and healthy. So maybe he's actually got some other agenda, and he's one of those Jungian infiltrators you hear about. [Space.com]

• The 1975 movie was based on the 1968 book of the same name by Alexander Key. Sadly, most of his novels, including Sprocket: A Little Robot and Bolts: A Robot Dog, are out of print. You can read and download some of these here.
• Don't let the name fool you, Escape To Witch Mountain isn't about witches at all, but about super-powered alien kids who don't know they're aliens.
• Remember the creepy and slightly spooky overture music? If not, you can hear it right here.
• In fact, want to watch the opening credit sequence? Well, here you go.
• Tony and Tia, the original Wonder Twins, both possess telekinesis, although Tony can only use it when he plays his harmonica. Tia can also telepathically speak to mammals, and to Tony. Looks like she got the lion's share of the cool stuff.
• Unlike Zan and Jayna, Tony and Tia have difficulty controlling their powers, which leads to several mishaps. Like Tia having to free every captive animal who can talk to her.
• Tony was played by Ike Eisenmann, who Trek fans will immediately recognize as Midshipman Peter Preston, who Scotty brings to the bridge of the Enterprise in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Perhaps if he'd taken the mortally wounded kid to sick bay, he might have survived.
• Kim Richards, who plays Tia, is the aunt of both Nicky and Paris Hilton, which isn't really that interesting, but more mind-boggling.
• Both Ike and Kim would be reunited as brother and sister in the extremely forgettable Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell TV movie in 1978.
• The Twins' Uncle Bene is played by Denver Pyle, better known as Uncle Jesse from The Dukes of Hazzard, which Kim Richards later appeared on as Cooter's daughter. Now that's just weird.
• They encounter Jason O'Day (Eddie Albert) who lives in a Winnebago and travels around the country. He ends up helping them out, and probably made kids everywhere think Winnebago's were cool. (I know it did for me, in fact my parents bought me a little scale model Winnie after I saw this movie).
• The bad guy in the movie, Aristotle Bolt, seems like a genial rich man who just want to save kids from the orphanage. Of course, he really wants the twins for their abilities. However, he does have a pretty cool name and lived in a replica of a Byzantine castle that was built by Templeton Crocker between 1926 and 1934 from lava rock from Mt. Vesuvius and materials gathered all over Europe.
• The twins eventually discover (via their little leather "star case") that they are actually aliens from a binary star system who fled to Earth because their own world was dying. They're reunited with others from their planet, and they fly off in their spaceship for the sanctuary of Witch Mountain, never to return.
• That is until Disney made a sequel, Return From Witch Mountain, in 1978. In this movie, Tony and Tia have been training hard to use their powers and to learn about their own kind. In fact, they've been working so hard that the elders let them have a vacation in Los Angeles. What, two superkids on a vacation in L.A.? Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?
• If you want to see a movie trailer that says 1970s as loud of possible, then you're in for a treat. This trailer for Return features Christopher Lee, Bette Davis, andthe words "far out," "molecular mobilization," and "intergalactic energization." Is it me, or does that announcer sound like the guy from the old Batman TV show?
• In the sequel, Christopher Lee plays evil mad scientist Dr. Victor Gannon, and he uses a mind-control device he's invented on Tony, eventually pitting twin against twin in a battle of telekinesis. Bette Davis plays Letha Wedge (what a name), who has been financing the bad doctor's experiments.
• Sadly, there's no Eddie Albert in the sequel. It was also Jack Soo's final film, having been best known for playing Det. Sgt. Nick Yemana on Barney Miller. It was probably the coffee.
• In 1982 Disney made a television pilot called Beyond Witch Mountain, which featured a return of Eddie Albert as Jason and his Winnebago, but they recast everyone else, from the kids all the way to down to Aristotle Bolt. This was meant to become an ongoing series with the kids and Jason finding other alien kids and helping them get back home, but it never got that far and never went to series.
• Disney remade the original film back in 1995, with some major changes to the script. The twins are now named Danny and Anna, and they are separated as infants (who have full-fledged telekinesis), but are later reunited accidentally when they're older. Land developer Edward Bolt (the always evil Robert Vaughn) finds out about their powers, and plans to use them to blow up the entrance to Witch Mountain... without explosives. Way to use that power, Edward.
• It wasn't as charming as the original movie, and wasn't nearly as well received. You can find out why by watching the first 10 minutes right here.

According to an early release about her scientific paper:

Scientists have long known that most compounds in living things exist in mirror-image forms. The two forms are like hands; one is a mirror reflection of the other. They are different, cannot be superimposed, yet identical in their parts.

When scientists synthesize these molecules in the laboratory, half of a sample turns out to be "left-handed" and the other half "right-handed." But amino acids, which are the building blocks of terrestrial proteins, are all "left-handed," while the sugars of DNA and RNA are "right-handed." The mystery as to why this is the case, "parallels in many of its queries those that surround the origin of life," said Pizzarello.

Years ago Pizzarello and ASU professor emeritus John Cronin analyzed amino acids from the Murchison meteorite (which landed in Australia in 1969) that were unknown on Earth, hence solving the problem of any contamination. They discovered a preponderance of "left-handed" amino acids over their "right-handed" form.

"The findings of Cronin and Pizzarello are probably the first demonstration that there may be natural processes in the cosmos that generate a preferred amino acid handedness," Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif., said at the time.

The new PNAS work was made possible by the finding in Antarctica of an exceptionally pristine meteorite. Antarctic ices are good "curators" of meteorites. After a meteorite falls — and meteorites have been falling throughout the history of Earth — it is quickly covered by snow and buried in the ice. Because these ices are in constant motion, when they come to a mountain, they will flow over the hill and bring meteorites to the surface.

"Thanks to the pristine nature of this meteorite, we were able to demonstrate that other extraterrestrial amino acids carry the left-handed excesses in meteorites and, above all, that these excesses appear to signify that their precursor molecules, the aldehydes, also carried such excesses," Pizzarello said. "In other words, a molecular trait that defines life seems to have broader distribution as well as a long cosmic lineage."

ASU Researcher May Have Discovered Key to Life Before Its Origin on Earth [Eurekalert]