Search

We went to this place near Baker called Little Red Hill. It is a Mars analog site. The rocks are all dark red, like Mars. There isn't any quartz. But, when you turn rocks over you find bright green cyanobacteria living underneath! How can they get any light, living under dark rocks? The answer

On the way back from Death Valley we stopped at an outcrop of rocks from the Crystal Springs formation. These rocks are Precambrian in age, over a billion years old! They are mostly marble. Embedded in them are lovely examples of Stromatolites. I've never seen any like them before. *

Today we went to Death Valley National Park and stopped at Badwater, which is the lowest place in the Western Hemisphere. It looks lifeless, but there is a thriving community of eukaryotic algae and cyanobacteria growing in a layer several millimeters below the surface of the salt crust. *

We are in the waiting place... After thousands of miles and days of travel to know our final destination is just 200 miles away is a little disappointing. As I am learning, seldom is geologic drilling a smooth and problem free undertaking. To expect anything different at the northern most drilling

Nothing can live in sand that's being blown around by the wind. There's too little moisture, nothing to eat, and constantly varying temperatures and light levels as the grains get buried and then uncovered again. At least that's the consensus opinion of all the experts who were with us today. These

So, the undersides of my quartz rocks are green - but how do we know it's chlorophyll? Some minerals are green. University of Nevada graduate student Lauren Lacroix kindly let me use her Ocean Optics USB-4000 visible/near infrared spectrometer to make sure. This instrument is simple: you shine