After not see any meaningful amounts of precipitation for at least 500 years , Chile ’s Atacama Desert is finally receive some rain . Quite unexpectedly , however , these rains — rather of further life — are doing the exact contrary .
Life on Earth can not survive without water , but for bug extremely adapted to arid shape , the sudden founding of excess water can be utterly withering . Such is the determination of anew paperpublished this week in Scientific Reports . Fascinatingly , these findings , while applicable to biography on Earth , may also practice to ancient Mars — a planet perchance capable of fostering microbic life during its ancient past , but at the same sentence susceptible to ruinous implosion therapy .
Located in northern Chile , the 105,000 - hearty - km ( 40,540 - square - mile ) Atacama Desert is one of the old and driest comeupance on Earth , and it ’s been this way for 150 million years . This desert feature a hyperarid burden , with climate manakin predicting major rainfall events at a paltry rate of once per century . That said , no significant rainfall had been recorded in this part for the retiring 500 years .
But thing are changing in Atacama Desert — and not necessarily for the better .
Since 2015 , this desert has get three significant rainfall events — two in 2015 and one in 2017 . Water from these rainfall collected in super - salty lagoons , which lingered for several months before fool away . In lighter of these unprecedented meteorological events , a squad of astrobiologists from Cornell University and Spain ’s Center for Astrobiology ( CAB ) visited Atacama to see how the rains and these hypersaline lagoons may have sham microbial liveliness in this exceptionally desiccated place .
Water may be scarce in the Atacama Desert , but that does n’t mean the orbit ca n’t stomach lifespan . The soil there contains lot of salt , nitrates , and sulfate . constitutive compounds , not so much . That said , a surprising amount of life sentence is know to subsist in the dry soil , organism that represent all three land of spirit ( bacterium , archaea , and eukaryota ) Extremophile microbes , after evolving for millions of geezerhood , managed to find a niche in this extraordinary environment .
The recent rain , as the fresh study shows , were not kind to these bantam critter . Instead of trigger off a flourishing of life , the rains have induce fantastic devastation to the microbial species that have made the desert their home for millenary .
“ Here we show that the sudden and massive input of body of water in regions that have remained hyperarid for millions of old age is harmful for most of the surface soil microbic species , which are finely adapted to survive with meagerly amounts of liquid water supply , and speedily croak from osmotic shock when water becomes suddenly abundant , ” the author write in the study .
By “ osmotic shock , ” the research worker are consult to a process whereby a sudden alteration in piddle concentration disrupts the normal functioning of a cell . It ’s basically a fancy condition for cellular drowning .
The unprecedented rainwater , the source say , are the solution of exchange climatical atmospheric condition over the Pacific Ocean . An panoptic “ mass of cloud ” come to the desert from the Pacific Ocean — an “ unprecedented phenomenon , ” the research worker say , that occurred double in three years .
The result hurriedness resulted in the widespread extinction of many native microbic species . The local extermination rate , grant to the new study , make as eminent as 85 percentage in the hard - hit piazza . Extremophile organisms , accustom to arid conditions , were unable to grapple with the influx of H2O .
“ The hyperdry soils before the rains were inhabit by up to 16 dissimilar , ancient microbe mintage , ” said Alberto G. Fairén , an astrobiologist at Cornell and a co - author of the new study , in a command . “ After it rain down , there were only two to four microbe species found in the lagoons , ” said Fairen , who is also a researcher with the Centro de Astrobiología , Madrid . “ The extinction event was massive . ”
Among the microbes that survived the liquid onslaught was a newly discover bacterium call Halomonas .
This probe show that the already modest microbic biodiversity found in these utmost environments become even more wasted when weewee short appears on the picture and in copious amounts .
https://gizmodo.com/traces-of-ancient-mega-tsunamis-discovered-on-mars-1777399336
The researchers say these findings could hold implication to our intellect of how microbial life may have been extinguish on Mars , if it ever appeared there ( something we have yet to leaven ) . Mars is a presently a ironic , dusty satellite , but it was n’t always that way . What ’s more , Mars is known to have experiencedcatastrophic floodsin its ancient past .
“ Mars had a first full stop , the Noachian — between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago — in which there was a lot of water on its surface , ” said Fairén .
Eventually , the Red Planet fall behind its atmosphere , and its airfoil water shriveled away . As this was happening , however , from around 3.5 to 3 billion old age ago , gravid volumes of water still flowed on the surface .
“ If there were still microbic communities withstanding the outgrowth of utmost drying , they would have been subjected to processes of osmotic stress standardized to those we have hit the books in Atacama , ” Fairén explained . “ Therefore , our Atacama subject field hint that the recurrence of fluent water on Mars could have add to the disappearance of Martian life sentence , if it ever existed , or else of typify an opportunity for springy microbiota to flower again . ”
It ’ll be interesting to see what happens in the Atacama Desert moving forward . Will our commute clime bring more rains to the desert ? And if so , will these rainwater continue to lay waste to life , or spawn a new ecosystem ? Only clock time will tell .
[ Scientific Reports ]
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