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Post Info TOPIC: Pavilion Lake Research Project
Blobrana


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Pavilion Lake
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Looking for the origins of life in a B.C. lake

A team of Canadian and American scientists is exploring two remote B.C. lakes, employing deepwater submersibles to study the living processes behind certain ancient rock structures. They hope these might shed light on the earliest forms of microbe-based life, both here on Earth and in outer space.
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Blobrana


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RE: Pavilion Lake Research Project
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Canadian, U.S. scientists search waters of Cariboo lake, which holds potential cluesto life on Mars

Long before scientists and astronauts from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency descended on the B.C. Cariboo in search of microbialites - a potential clue to life on Mars - there were Doug Pemberton and the Vancouver Pescaderos Dive Club.
It was a hot day in the mid-1980s when Pemberton and his club were driving home from a dive with the migrating sockeye at Adams Lake.
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Blobrana


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Pavilion Lake, in British Columbia, Canada, is home to a biological mystery. Microbialites, coral-like structures built by bacteria, in a variety of sizes and shapes, carpet the lakebed. Thats unusual for a freshwater lake like Pavilion. So unusual that researchers dont know of any other freshwater lake in the world that has microbialites with some of the same strange shapes.
That explains why scientists have established the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) to study the lake. They want to understand whats so unusual about seemingly normal Pavilion Lake, how the microbial structures manage to survive, why they arent destroyed by snails, worms and other grazing animals, as they are elsewhere.

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Blobrana


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NASA and the Canadian Space Agency invite journalists and the public on Tuesday, July 14, to observe the international, multidisciplinary Pavilion Lake Research Project team as it studies the origin of rare freshwater carbonate rock structures that thrive in Pavilion Lake, British Columbia, Canada.
Reporters will have an opportunity to interview Pavilion Lake Research Project scientists from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PDT on July 14 as they study and explore the unique underwater formations and conduct research about life in extreme environments.

Source NASA

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Blobrana


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ASTEP program
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Beneath the ice-covered surface of Jupiters giant moon Europa, a vast ocean circles the globe. It is one of the few places in our solar system where, scientists believe, life may have taken hold. Various ideas have been proposed about how life could survive in that frigid environment. One suggestion is that hydrothermal vents, like those that dot the floor of Earths oceans, are also present in the Europan deep. NASA hopes one day to send a spacecraft to the moons icy waters to learn their secrets.

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Blobrana


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Looking for Life on Mars in a Canadian Lake
At first glance, Pavilion Lake, in British Columbia, looks like just another idyllic vacation spot. But beneath its surface lie some of the most unusual carbonate formations on Earth. Unusual enough that, this summer, researchers hauled a pair of miniature submarines up the lake to whether or not bacteria were involved in building the distinctive structures.

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Blobrana


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There's only so much you can do searching for extraterrestrial life when you're Earthbound. One approach is to locate and study the best terrestrial examples of what might resemble conditions that could support life on another planet.
That is exactly why astrobiologists are getting so excited about Pavilion Lake in British Columbia, Canada. Pavilion's lake floor is scattered with living coral reef–like structures called microbialites that result from microbes and minerals interacting over thousands of years. Although Pavilion's microbialites are believed to date back 11,000 years, they uncannily resemble structures that flourished on Earth some 540 million years ago.

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Blobrana


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UC Davis graduate student Bekah Shepard will be piloting a mini-submersible into the depths of Pavilion Lake, British Columbia, this month as part of an expedition to map strange life forms that could give clues to the history of life on Earth and other planets.
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Latitude:  50°51'52.43"N,  Longitude:  121°44'16.07"W

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The Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) is primarily funded by the Canadian Space Agency's Canadian Analogue Research Network (CARN) program, with additional funding coming from NASA's ASTEP and Spaceward Bound Programs and the National Geographic Society. McMaster University and Nuytco Research are also providing support for the 2008 PLRP field season. The PLRP will be deploying DeepWorker submersibles into Pavilion Lake, Canada (50°51'57"N, 121°44'20"W) from June 23 July 3, 2008. This activity presents a unique opportunity to advance the long-term objective of human exploration of the Moon and Mars. By combining rigorous scientific research on life in extreme environments with high fidelity training in an underwater, remote field setting, this will serve to inform the knowledge base, tools and techniques of future human missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

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