WASHINGTON — In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimplike creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet.
Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That’s why members of a NASA team were surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimplike creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera’s cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they think came from a foot-long jellyfish.
“We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there,” said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will present the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. “We were just gaga over it.”
The discovery is likely to inspire experts to rethink what they know about life in harsh environments, including other planets.
