Can microbes live in ice miles beneath the surface? Beth Tyler 06.08.01 Scientists have found dead microbes almost two miles beneath the surface of glaciers. However, they haven’t found any live ones. But that hasn’t kept a physicist in California from thinking they are there. Even though deep ice, which formed thousands of years ago, is very cold and has no sunlight or oxygen, Dr. P. Buford Price believes that microbes could still live there. Deep ice contains veins of liquid water (like the veins in the human body that carry blood). The liquid water could move important nutrients like carbon to the microbes, as well as provide the microbes with water. Scientists even have the technology to search for microbes in deep ice. They could collect a deep ice sample, dye the liquid veins with a colored dye, and examine them under a microscope for microbes. The microbes they might find would probably be very different from anything scientists have seen before. However, until a scientist does something like this, no one knows if microbes live in deep, ancient ice. Price, P. Buford. 2000. A habitat for psychrophiles in deep Antarctic ice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97(3): 1247- 1251. ©2001 The Aurora Collection, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Site Development by: Interactive Multimedia. Inc.