A new discovery of super-salty subglacial lakes in the Canadian Arctic is giving scientists hope that some very cold planets could still harbor life.
Subglacial lakes are nothing new, and researchers know of hundreds already. However, most of the those lakes, which exist below a thick layer of ice that covers and protects them, are fresh water. On a particularly cold planet, or even some of the moons in our own Solar System, lakes like that would have little chance of existing, but a saline-saturated lake could potentially remain liquid even in the face of incredibly low temperatures.
“We weren’t looking for subglacial lakes. The ice is frozen to the ground underneath that part of the Devon Ice Cap, so we didn’t expect to find liquid water,” Anja Rutishauser of the University of Alberta, lead author of the study which was published in Science Advances, explains.”We saw these radar signatures telling us there’s water, but we thought it was impossible that there could be liquid water underneath this ice, where it is below -10C.”
The implications are far-reaching, especially if the hidden salt lakes are hosting microbial life. Many moons in our Solar System are covered in a thick crust of ice, and while we already know that many contain massive oceans beneath their surfaces, the possibility that others could also be hiding frigid lakes is yet another place scientists could discover extraterrestrial life in some form. – READ MORE
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