The scientists found the bacteria, named Herminiimonas glaciei, buried under nearly 2 miles worth of ice in Greenland. Scientists think that, since it's small even for bacteria, it survives on nutrients trapped in veins of ice and uses its flagella to move within veins to seek food.

It took the scientists almost a year to revive the bacteria and coax it to grow; once it did, it yielded small colonies of purple-brown bacteria. Although not as old as the 8 million year old bacteria resurrected from Antarctic ice in 2007, it does lead the Penn State scientists to believe that they might be able to find and re-grow bacteria from Mars or Jupiter's moon Europa:

All we can say is that because ice is the best medium to preserve nucleic acids, other organic compounds and cells, the potential for finding them in these environments is quite high because of the cold... It gives us hope that if something is there, we can locate it.

Because that turned out well for scientists in Species.

'Resurrection bug' revived after 120,000 years [New Scientist]
Eight-million-year-old bug is alive and growing [New Scientist]

This image was made by Ian Howat, with the BYRD Polar Research Center, showing the crack growing over a period of 7 years. Once the crack gets just a little longer, a huge hunk of the Petermann Glacier will drift into the ocean and melt.

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The crack is 7 miles long and about half a mile wide. It is about half the width of the 500 square mile floating part of the glacier. Other smaller fractures can be seen in images of the ice tongue, a long narrow sliver of the glacier.

"The pictures speak for themselves," said Jason Box, a glacier expert at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University who spotted the changes while studying new satellite images. "This crack is moving, and moving closer and closer to the front. It's just a matter of time till a much larger piece is going to break off.... It is imminent."

Of course an ice-free Arctic could turn Greenland into the center of a new Arctic Circle trade zone. Which might explain why some researchers in the Star Tribune article say there's nothing wrong with a little ice breakup.

Northern Greenland Glaciers Showing Fractures [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]

Even if Mars has had steadily sub-freezing weather for a long time now, glaciers can provide the kind of cover needed to maintain liquid water. We know from Earthling ice sheets that as you go deeper inside them, the temperature tends to go up. Down near the bottom the crushing pressure of miles of ice piled on top can cause melting. Ponds and lakes can even form.

The researchers — headed by Jay Dickson of Brown University — think the same thing could've happened on Mars:

After examining stunning high-resolution images taken last year by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the researchers have documented for the first time that ice packs at least 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) thick and perhaps 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) thick existed along Mars' mid-latitude belt as recently as 100 million years ago. In addition, the team believes other images tell them that glaciers flowed in localized areas in the last 10 to 100 million years - akin to the day before yesterday in Mars' geological timeline.

This evidence of recent activity means the Martian climate may change again and could bolster speculation about whether the Red Planet can, or did, support life.

"We've gone from seeing Mars as a dead planet for three-plus billion years to one that has been alive in recent times," said Jay Dickson, a research analyst in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown and lead author of the Geology paper. "[The finding] has changed our perspective from a planet that has been dry and dead to one that is icy and active."

Images from Mars orbiter.
Source: Geology via Science Blog