Aeolian transport of viable microbial life across the Atacama Desert, Chile: Implications for Mars.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Azua-Bustos A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6706390 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Aeolian transport of viable microbial life across the Atacama Desert, Chile: Implications for Mars.
Azua-Bustos Armando A González-Silva Carlos C Fernández-Martínez Miguel Ángel MÁ Arenas-Fajardo Cristián C Fonseca Ricardo R Martín-Torres F Javier FJ Fernández-Sampedro Maite M Fairén Alberto G AG Zorzano María-Paz MP
Scientific reports 20190822 1
Here we inspect whether microbial life may disperse using dust transported by wind in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a well-known Mars analog model. By setting a simple experiment across the hyperarid core of the Atacama we found that a number of viable bacteria and fungi are in fact able to traverse the driest and most UV irradiated desert on Earth unscathed using wind-transported dust, particularly in the later afternoon hours. This finding suggests that microbial life on Mars, extant o ...[more]
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