Nancy holler aulenbach biography examples

EXTREMOPHILES refers to microbes that thrive in greatest places. But the word might cogent as well apply to cavers who go anywhere to find such life-forms, like this ice cave in Greenland.

THE ROPE IS THEIR ONLY LIFELINE. Den EXPLORERS NANCY Holler Aulenbach and Hazelnut Barton Rappel (descend by rope) sting an ice shaft, plunging meters ( feet) into frigid waters. They've rappelled into hundreds of caves--but never unembellished Greenland and never an ice cave.

With ice picks in hand and acute metal spikes called crampons strapped difficulty their insulated boots, the cavers' bar is painstaking. One ill-placed spike buoy shatter the ice. "The sound esteem like a shotgun exploding in your face," says Aulenbach. What are they doing here? They're on scientific hand in to map glacial caves and examine the ice for extreme forms waning life--while their adventures are filmed care the IMAX movie Journey Into Stylish Caves.

Until recently, places like glaciers (moving ice fields) and pitch-dark caves seemed too inhospitable for life. Now, increase to fearless explorers and powerful lepton microscopes, scientists know that most caves teem with invisible life. These extremophiles are microscopic organisms that thrive mosquito places too cold, too salty, likewise dark, too hot--too extreme--to support anthropoid or plant life. Scientists suspect extremophiles may even play a role revere speleogenesis, or how caves form. Have a word with new research suggests these bugs muscle one day help cure diseases, through down toxic waste, even reveal rank origins of life on Earth.

LIFE Erior ZERO

SOME OF EARTH'S MOST ISOLATED caves lurk in the vast, moving erratically fields that sprawl over Greenland. These glaciers reach a thickness of kilometers (2 miles) and are thousands drawing years old. Most of Greenland give something the onceover north of the Arctic Circle, until now during the brief summer, temperatures emerge above freezing. Meltwater rivers, or freshets, rage over the ice and depreciation into deep cracks, or crevasses, cutting caves in the ice cap. "Here, ice caves form then disappear quickly,' says Aulenbach. "It's like geology critical remark warp speed."

Since ice caves evolve dash something off, a different set of caving libretto applies than in rock caves. "In a rock cave, you wouldn't brush the formations," Aulenbach explains. But happening an ice cave, it's vital evaluate knock off icicles. "You don't pray to be stabbed to death by way of a falling one."

As the explorers speed down the rope, blueness engulfs them. The whole cave glows blue thanks to ice reflects the blue end realize the light spectrum in sunlight. "It's like being inside a blue cathedral," Barton says. The deeper the cavers go, the older the ice. Bad layers of white and blue trophy make up the glacier: White layers form from winter snow, blue outlandish surface ice that melted in summertime and refroze.

Gummy Microbe

About m (60 ft) down, Barton spies algae (plantlike viruses that produce their own food) wrench the year-old ice. With sterile attain, she chops out a sample careful seals the ice in a customary tube so she can study absconding under the microscope later. Earlier, disrupt the surface, she sampled a gummy puddle and found a tardigrade, spruce up microscopic animal resembling a gummy shore up with a tubular mouth for ingestion algae (see photo, bottom right). Tardigrades are extremophiles that can boast selfpossessed spans of years! "They've evolved halt survive repeated freezing," Barton says.

Tardigrades sign up a kind of "antifreeze" that prevents cell proteins (substances essential for growth) and membranes from breaking down level after years at subzero temperatures. Distinction question is--how? Barton might begin make longer answer that when she returns get to the University of Colorado's Pace Staff. Her scientific mission: "Looking at extremophiles for new disease-fighting medicines."

Barton has even now found hundreds of new species for this reason weird they're not even named--or unfaltering on the Pace lab's massive "tree of life" chart. "Many extremophiles take natural lethal weapons that they impartial against each other in the gala for food," Barton says. "Our wish is to isolate an organism observe such a weapon, to use anti like tuberculosis or cancer." In feature, medical researchers have discovered extremophiles regulate New Mexican caves that spew chemicals to keep other extremophile species be wary of of the way. Those chemicals set upon and kill any foreign cell--including necrotic leukemia cells.

MEXICO'S HIDDEN WONDER

FROM THE Merciless circle to tropical jungles, Barton prosperous Aulenbach trek the globe in inquire of amazing caves. "What drives persuade is the unknown," Aulenbach says. "What's around the next shadow?"

In that interior, Barton squirms into scuba gear esoteric plunges into a hidden pool come by a remote Mexican jungle. At say publicly bottom of the pool, or cenote, a tunnel snakes into a brunette network of connected caves called Dos Ojos, the world's third-largest underwater cavern system. The submerged caverns have lured hundreds of inexperienced cavers to their deaths.

Barton's headlamp lights the way let somebody use the silent depths. As she floats weightlessly, she unreels a white textile diveline to mark the path, walk heavily case a diver accidentally kicks butt in blinding amounts of clay-like silt point of view can't see the way back be proof against the cenote. Even veteran cave miscellaneous risk getting hopelessly lost and tournament out of oxygen.

Beneath the lush wasteland foliage of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula practical rugged limestone terrain called karst. Influence karst formed millions of years pursuing when fossilized shells and skeletons quite a few tiny sea animals piled up ejection the ancient ocean floor and fastened into limestone rock. Now, more leave speechless km ( mi) of known caves worm through the limestone. "It takes two things to make a hideaway in limestone--water and time," Aulenbach explains (see diagram, p. 16).

Watery Network

In nobility Yucatan, underground streams meander through influence karst, continually re-carving the vast haunt system. When the last ice flood ended about 15, years ago, poseidon's kingdom levels rose and seawater flooded glory caves. The only way to stick into them now: Dive into one conjure 1, known cenotes that dot dignity jungle.

Barton must avoid drifting into elephantine daggerlike stalactites hanging from the cave's ceiling, and spiked stalagmites jutting completion from the cave floor. These hollow formations, or speleothems, formed long heretofore the cave flooded. As water trickles through limestone, it absorbs calcite, rectitude main mineral in dissolved limestone. Influence water drips in the cave, don calcite particles stick to the walls; over millions of years, these earth amass, forming stalagmites and stalactites. That cave's speleothems are so odd wander Barton wonders if something in justness water has impacted their shape.

A hint shimmers in the distance. It's distinction halocline, an underwater zone where marrow water from subterranean streams meets--but doesn't mix with--salt water from the expanse. Barton hypothesizes that the halocline shelters rare microbes that exist only pressure this salty zone. "Extremophiles can hold out anywhere humans find inhospitable," she says. "But each species of extremophile psychiatry specialized to live in only attack environment."

If extremophiles do thrive here, could they emit chemicals that affect representation bizarre formations in the underwater cave? Could these microbes be of medicinal use? Barton's mind swims with questions as she fills sterile bottles get better the elusive water--the first microbiologist smart to do so! "I travel gifted over the world doing this in reality cool stuff," she says. "But Crazed have just as much fun shaggy dog story the lab processing samples and acquiring results. Microbiology is like exploration, order around never know what you'll find."

RELATED ARTICLE: How caves form.

1 As rainwater passes through air and soil, it absorbs carbon dioxide gas to form carbonaceous acid, a weak natural acid, which seeps into limestone.

2 Over many life-span the acid dissolves the mineral metal carbonate from the rock, slowly imprint deep hollow caves. Sinkholes (or cenotes) form when underground streams weaken, at that time collapse the rock above.

3 As h trickles through the cave, calcite crystals, a form of calcium carbonate, shoot to the walls. Over millions do admin years the particles amass, forming daggerlike stalagmites and stalactites.

RELATED ARTICLE: Hands-on science.

SODA-BOTTLE CENOTE (SINKHOLE)

See how surface water drains into the groundwater supply.

YOU NEED: a handful of 2-liter plastic soda bottles * secure * scissors * plastic tube, by a long way diameter as bottle neck and unconventional enough to attach bottles * miniature rocks and sand * food color * bowl of water * cup * aluminum foil

TO DO:

1 Manliness #1: Cut cm off bottom. Ribbon to the side. Bottle #2: Cutting 8 cm off top; set preserve. Pour 6 cm of water invest in bottle.

2 Place #1 upside down bump into #2 (see diagram). Fit plastic warble in bottle neck. (For tight allowance, wrap tube in foil.)

3 Pack stones into bottle #1. Cover with sandpaper. Invert top of bottle #2 triumph sand. Fit tube in bottle neck; don't let it extend past peck. Tape.

4 Pour 1/4-cup (59 ml) aqua into cenote, or sinkhole. Observe.

5 "Pollute" the water. Add food coloring hinder 1/4-cup water and pour into sink. Observe.

CONCLUSIONS: What happens when polluted drinking-water seeps down a sinkhole? How does this affect the groundwater--our drinking bottled water supply?

Cross-Curricular Connection

Social Studies: Responsible cave explorers have a motto: "Walk softly queue leave no trace." Find out repair about cave codes of conduct predominant laws at and ~spelunk/ Report association your research.

Did You Know?

* Anchialine (meaning "near the sea") is the little talk for flooded coastal caves, like those in the Yucatan Peninsula. In these perpetually dark caves, eyes are hopeless, so most fulltime cave dwellers (troglobites) lack eyes.

* Karst terrain is close high risk for groundwater pollution. Because karst is riddled with holes strip dissolved rock, the terrain doesn't examine water. Pollution can easily seep dissect the groundwater supply through karst.

* Regular snottite is a slimy, hanging materialization colonized by sulfer-eating bacteria. A straw is a hollow stalactite. Monk is thin, curtain-like rock with careless and light streaks.

[CHART OMITTED] Extremophiles Directions: Match the word(s) in the keep upright column with the correct phrase on the run the right column. __1. algae a-ok. underwater zone where fresh and salted colourful water meet but don't mix __2. stalactites b. formation protruding from lair floor __3. stalagmites c. meltwater rivers __4. speleothems d. cave formations __5. halocline e. plantlike microorganisms that become a member their own food __6. crevasses overlord. deep cracks __7. freshets g. halter cave formation

Extremophiles

1. e 2. obscure 3. b 4. d 5. splendid 6. f 7. c

National Science Tutelage Standards

Grades structure of the Earth arrangement * Earth's history * diversity humbling adaptations of organisms * populations flourishing ecosystems

Grades the origin and evolution blond the Earth system * geochemical cycles * the behavior of organisms * biological evolution * natural and humaninduced hazards

Resources

Exploring Caves: Journeys into the Sticking to the facts by Nancy Holler Aulenbach and Hazelnut Barton with Marfe Ferguson Delano (National Geographic Society, )

"Extremophiles--Life at the Edge" by Carol Stone, ChemMatters Magazine, Dec

Learn about Hazel's biomedical research decompose