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Fall 2015 The 2015 Annual Astrobiology Workshop A significant focus of UW Astrobiology's graduate program is to provide our students with opportunities for hands-on We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our students and alumni about this component of our curriculum, and many of you have told us that these experiences have been some of the most memorable and valuable aspects of your time in the UWAB program. However, our limited State funding for these workshops means that not all students who are interested in participating in a given field trip are able to do so. This year, we used donations to our Friends of Astrobiology Fund to help support attendance at the workshop. Even a small donation can make a big difference to an individual student, and we are very thankful for your support! UWAB student Jacob Lustig-Yaeger (Astronomy) attended this year's workshop, and reported back on his experience:
Appropriate for an astrobiology workshop, Yellowstone often feels like an alien landscape itself! Besides the erupting geysers and slippery limestone terraces, we saw steaming pools stained bright colors by exotic heat-loving organisms and bubbling mud pots spewing acidic water onto their scorched surroundings. Of course, Yellowstone is also home to more familiar mountain beasts: Charismatic Megafauna proved to be the bane of vehicular mobility in Yellowstone National Park. (And we did not enter the caldera to study human-bison relations!) Amidst a sea of steam and onlooking tourists we conducted experimental measurements on the hot spring microbes, guided by the following questions:
Here are some of the incredible things we learned about Yellowstone… Geology: Hydrology: Microbiology: ![]() Astrobiology: One can imagine that a few billion years ago these phototrophic mats were much more wide spread across the young and more geologically active Earth. Furthermore, one can predict that if live emerged on another, but similar, planet it too may spend time covered in something akin to phototrophic mats. In fact, that hypothetical far-away planet may be covered in phototrophic mats right now as photons reflected off its inhabited surface arrive here, at Earth. With a space telescope designed and built to directly image extrasolar planets, these planets may be observed. But while NASA plans this future telescope, we can use in situ measurements of bacterial mats to predict what these planets will look like. ![]()
Photos: (From Top to Bottom) 1) A view of travertine terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs. These terraces originate from the dissolution of underlying 320 million year old seafloor carbonates. The foreground tree, white at its base, bears evidence of petrification as silicate-rich water is wicked upward and replaces its organic structures. In the background, to the left, is Sheep Mountain.
2) The Grand Prismatic Hot Spring from above shows off its vibrant colors. 4) What strange worlds are these? Just the colors and textures of Yellowstone! Upper left: Calothrix terraces at the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring. Upper right: Orange synechococcus bacterial mats. Lower left: Bacterial mats near Old Faithful composed of a surface layer of cyanobacteria (Synechoccus) and underlayers of anoxygenic phototrophs (Chloroflexus and Roseiflexus. Synechoccus represents the upper temperature limit for photosynthesis (73 C). Lower right: White streamers of Aquificales, the most deeply branching bacterial lineage in the tree or life, flourish in this hydrothermal environment. 5) UWAB students Andrew Lincowski, Rodrigo Luger, Max Showalter, and Brett Morris measuring the temperature, pH, and reflectance spectrum of the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring. |
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