Under the 'death ground' of Earth, strange creatures reveal the life of Mars

An area 2-4m deep below one of the deadliest places on Earth has just appeared what could be a "guideline" for astrobiologists.

Not just a living organism but a rich biosphere has been found beneath Chile's Atacama Desert, a land famous as the "death zone" of the Earth.

According to Live Science, this hidden world is one of the deepest biospheres found in the Atacama soil, which could provide information to search for life on Mars.

Earth's "death" land, where extreme creatures have just been found at a depth of 2-4m - (Photo: GFZ-Postdam).

Atacama is known as the "gateway" to the universe, where many astronomical observatories are concentrated.

Because this area is home to the clearest skies on Earth - with about 300 days a year almost cloudless. Very low humidity also helps minimize light absorption, especially in the infrared and near-infrared spectral regions.

But that is also the reason why Atacama becomes a "death zone", exposed to the most ultraviolet rays from the amount of sunlight equivalent to Venus and has almost no water, making it difficult for anything to live. In other words, the environment here is quite similar to Mars.

Therefore, if it can live in this desert, it could be a similar version of the Martian creature.

Group of scientists from the German Geoscience Research Center GFZ-Postdam, Albrecht von Haller Institute of Plant Sciences, Technical University of Berlin, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Research (Germany), Institute of Biology freshwater ecology and Inland Fisheries Leibniz and the University of Antofagasta (Chile) found them.

Published in the scientific journal PNAS , the authors said those strange creatures live at a depth of 2-4m below the Atacama.

This biosphere is dominated by Actinobacteria, a diverse group of bacteria that have been found in other extreme environments, including the Arctic, boiling hot springs and very salty seas.

'Little is known about microbial life in deeper sediment layers. The communities described in this study may represent the upper biosphere of the deep biosphere beneath the hyper-arid desert soils," the authors write.

Scientists also found Actinobacteria living closer to the surface, as well as small numbers of bacteria belonging to the phylum Firmicutes , which are able to recover from high salt concentrations and do not require oxygen to survive.

This discovery not only hints at what we should look for in arid alien lands, but also contributes to expanding our understanding of how organisms in the universe can survive.

Previously, it was believed that a planet with life must receive many conditions such as a sufficient amount of light from the parent star, friendly temperature, liquid water, abundant oxygen.

However, with more and more extreme creatures being discovered on Earth itself - thanks to the development of modern science - perhaps the understanding of the "habitable zone" will have to be adjusted.