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alright so my name is Jackie cordial I'm

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a student here at McGill University and

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today I'm going to talk about university

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valley which is one of the McMurdo Dry

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Valleys on any McMurdo Dry Valleys which

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is classified SI hyper arid cold desert

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there you go so I'm going to knock often

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acknowledgments that's the first thing

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this is actually part of a very very big

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project with a lot of collaborators most

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of whom I'm not mentioning here these

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are kind of the collaborative in my

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immediate vicinity and I'd like to thank

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all of them especially margarita Mara

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Novak's I'm borrowing some of her

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figures and data for this presentation

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and then my financial support this is

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part of a NASA asked up funded project

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and I paid for my groceries on through

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the Canadian astrobiology training

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program so just to give this this talk a

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little bit of context I'll tell you what

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my the bigger context of my project I'm

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and so I'm part of a team that has

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designed a prototype Mars drill and so

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what they've designed is a drill that

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can drill one meter down into the frozen

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ground and it can be operated remotely

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which are two features that would be

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very nice for a drill that you're

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sending to Mars they're also doing all

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sorts of science around this and that's

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where I come in the microbiologist and

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so they were testing this in the in the

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upper Dry Valleys of the Antarctic and

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so why the Antarctic we guys we've we've

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talked about this already Mars is a

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really really cold and dry place and in

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fact it's actually the coldest and

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driest place we have on earth so we're

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going to hear a lot of talks about the

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Arctic and referred but coastal

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Antarctica but the upper dry Valley is

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in the McMurdo Dry Valleys are really

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about the best the best place we have on

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earth them to study that and so it's not

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quite as not quite as cold and dry as

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Mars is today but we think it might have

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it might be comparable to what Mars was

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in the past and so I we've seen a lot of

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pictures of the dr ali is already and i

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really like this photo that I've stolen

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from someone else's publication but I

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really like it because of this small box

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here and what it does is it divides the

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McMurdo Dry Valleys into different areas

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and McMurdo Dry Valleys are not just one

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homogeneous region and I want to just

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kind of point out this this grey or gray

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brown I'm not color blind this brown

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area which kind of which is the upper

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try values of the stable uplands

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of the McMurdo Dry Valleys and this part

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of the Dry Valleys differs from the rest

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of the Dry Valleys because this

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particular area is sublimation dominated

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so water in this area either exist

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that's ice or directly sublimates into

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vapor and this is this is in contrast to

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the other areas which do get a bit of

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precipitation they do get some flying in

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a bit of meltwater but in this area

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sublimation processes dominate and what

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happens is you end up getting a layer of

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dry soil where the sub where the water

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sublimates away and then underneath that

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the ground ice gets stable and so it's

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the only place on earth where you

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actually get a layer of dry permafrost

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overlaying I cemented permafrost which

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is similar to what Brandon's talking

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about yesterday when he was talking

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about the about the Arctic so the upper

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dry valleys are unique analog because

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they are the only place that has dry

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permafrost overlaying grounds overlaying

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I cemented permafrost temperatures air

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temperatures and some of the upper GI

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values never rise above zero and water

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exists this ice or vapor and we've seen

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this photo already with the phoenix's a

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little scoop and the ground ice

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underneath it I mean just to kind of

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Hammer this one point home so we have an

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active layer in permafrost or associated

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with permafrost which is a layer that

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seasonally goes above zero degrees and

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permafrost is defined as ground it's

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technically to find us ground that

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doesn't rise above zero it's every two

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years but we'll just say it's

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permanently frozen for our purposes and

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in a lot of the upper dry valleys and on

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Mars you get this this active layer

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which in some places of the Dry Valleys

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can be as little lists five centimeters

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or cannot exist at all and then you get

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this dry permafrost layer that overlays

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your I cemented permafrost what does

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that look like so if you're on the

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ground you it literally just looks like

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a desert soil so this is maybe a day

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that's maybe you but mine is 20 you can

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literally just pick it up and it's just

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dry dry slow so life in the McMurdo Dry

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Valleys for a really long time the

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McMurdo Dry Valleys were just kind of

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presumed to be dead there's no plant

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life birds don't fly into it you can't

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really see a lot of bacterial life even

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I'm except for an end elliptic

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communities

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I know there were some early

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publications by Horowitz in 1972 where

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he concluded that the that the Dry

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Valleys were essentially sterile and

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this was because they did it based on

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culture based studies now we have a lot

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more molecular techniques but in what a

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line from his papers the Dry Valleys are

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essentially abiotic areas the microbial

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population of the region is probably in

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balanced between influx from the

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atmosphere and mortality on the ground

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essentially what he's saying is a bunch

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of bugs are just flying in there and

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that's what we're seeing nothing's

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actually living there so the upper jaw

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Valley permafrost what is what's this

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like if you're from the microbial point

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of view well it's really dry it's

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illegal traffic there's not a lot of

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nutrients here it's cold you're getting

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a lot of radiation background radiation

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and there's a high physical high

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physical disturbance there's a lot of

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wins there's strong cat abetik winds

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that are kicking up them the soil and so

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going back to this map the region that

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I'm going to be talking about is right

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there on that red arrow this is

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University Valley and it is one of those

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sub in that sublimation dominated area

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of Antarctic so this is what university

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Valley looks like on the ground there's

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a very old receding glacier at the head

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of the valley the valley is about a

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kilometer kilometer in length and half a

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kilometer in width and temperatures in

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University Valley air temperatures never

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go above zero degrees so these are this

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is a weather station data for a year and

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as you can see at 20 centimeters theft

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into the permafrost for the majority of

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the year it's actually quite cold some

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losses at the minus 45 degrees Celsius

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and about the only place that we ever

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see it ever go above zero degrees then

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there we go above zero degrees is in the

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summer times and that's at the surface

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the surface temperatures and that's when

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the Sun is is heating up the soil

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surface okay and if you appreciate my ms

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paint skills and we have x-ray vision so

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this is just a cross section of that

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Valley and so these these are to

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represent the cores these are the

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samples that I've been working with

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that's the glacier at the head of the

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valley

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and this this value is actually really

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really neat because as a function of

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distance from this glacier the dry soil

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permafrost actually has a gradient in

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terms of depth from the surface to depth

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to the permafrost we're not actually

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sure why this happens or how how this

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was actually formed in the first place

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but it's it's a really neat place to

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test out some hypotheses because if

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we're looking for liquid water ice is a

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potential source of liquid water and the

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closer this available liquid water is to

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the surface and more likely we made have

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liquid water at this dry soil I cement

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to ground interface and so we do have

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temperature data from here and over here

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and even though this is closer to the

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surface this actually never rises above

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zero degrees and so I think it's sort of

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like a freeze it's essentially sitting

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on a block of ice whereas over here this

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is where we get that maximum of eight

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degrees Celsius so the Sun is able to

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heat this up except unfortunately it it

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doesn't this this area here never rises

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to a above zero degrees even though this

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gets to 8 degrees Celsius and so what

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this mean what does this mean for life

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it means that in the permafrost it gets

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colder with depth and we know that life

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needs water the colder it is the harder

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it is for water to exist another point I

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wanted to kind of drop on is we're

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actually dealing with really really old

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sediment here or soil sorry so it ages

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about 200 to 2,500 years with every

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centimeter that you go down so this is a

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really really great place to look for

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preserve biomolecules just in terms of

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some direct cell counts on average I'm

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seeing 10 to the 3 cells per gram this

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is very very low biomass neutral pH very

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little nutrients and some most of my

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samples sexually undetectable nitrogen

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organic nitrogen and organic carbon and

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so if you're microbiologist there's some

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common questions that you're going to

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ask you're even asking you know who's

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who's there what bugs are actually there

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where is the source where do these bugs

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come from an important question to ask

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is activity

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are these microbes actually live do they

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represent just woolly mammoths did they

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just get deposited in the atmosphere and

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get frozen into the ground are they

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actually doing something in this

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environment and another another thing

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that you could look for our signs of

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life because we're dealing with really

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old old soil that's very good for

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preservation this is a good place to

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look for biomolecules and we're doing

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really really interesting research in

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this but I'm not going to talk about it

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today so you can ask me later if that's

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something you're interested in so one of

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one of the things microbiologist do is

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they try to culture bacteria and general

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writer you mentioned this morning that

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ninety-nine point nine percent of

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bacteria are not actually culturable but

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we spend many months of our lives doing

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it anyway and out of out of these soils

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I've only gotten six isolates to date

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and that's out of maybe eight months of

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trying very hard to get more isolates

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three of them i would i would say are

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particularly interesting and they were

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there interesting because they grow at

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very low temperatures so one mithila

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bacterium i have that grows at minus 10

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another rhodococcus like rosa minus 10

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and i just discovered that as

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sphingomonas grows at minus-5 because i

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left the culture at minus five and then

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check on it a year later it's growing

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but but these are also particularly

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interesting because they're there salt

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tolerant and this is this is a trait

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that you're going to see with permafrost

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some bacteria in general and i know jen

274
00:10:23,629 --> 00:10:21,779
jen is going to be talking about that a

275
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little bit later and elaborating on that

276
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more so besides the culturing to get a

277
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bit more of a holistic view of the bugs

278
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that are in there we can do 16s

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pyrosequencing so we just suck at all

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the DNA and we sequence it and we can

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identify identify the microbes this way

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and this is really really small and you

283
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can't read it and that's okay because

284
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the only point I wanted to say is these

285
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samples are actually very diverse

286
00:10:52,850 --> 00:10:50,790
there's that there's a lot of bugs in

287
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here in fact a lot of these samples

288
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don't share families between the samples

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00:10:59,509 --> 00:10:57,000
even though these are these are scores

290
00:11:00,920 --> 00:10:59,519
with depth and two centimeters away from

291
00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:00,930
each other you'll find samples that

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don't share any bacterial family so

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these are very very diverse samples I'm

294
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just to kind of draw your attention to

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some some sample or some like aspect

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iria that I'm finding

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00:11:17,509 --> 00:11:14,519
so it's so cyanobacteria some affilliate

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ropes décor amonos which is perchlorate

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reducing Falacci bacteria that's a

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common of fairly ubiquitous marine

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00:11:27,319 --> 00:11:25,139
bacterium tons of actinobacteria I've

302
00:11:28,670 --> 00:11:27,329
replicated this particular sample and it

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turns out that I think this just

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happened to be the 5 grams of soil I

305
00:11:34,309 --> 00:11:32,399
sample just happened to have a lot of

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spirit key so they're they're extremely

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heterogeneous soils Wow all right I'm

308
00:11:43,220 --> 00:11:40,860
gonna all right there's bacteria in

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there there's also RK in there this is

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really special because the archaea were

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not really known to be in the upper dry

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valleys until very recently so this is

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really interesting they're not that

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00:11:57,590 --> 00:11:53,610
similar to what we known GenBank already

315
00:12:00,199 --> 00:11:57,600
but I did do some Institute work in the

316
00:12:01,670 --> 00:12:00,209
Dry Valleys I tried to measure any gas

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flux coming off with the permafrost and

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turns out there's not a lot of guests

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flux to measure so in the lab one thing

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00:12:09,620 --> 00:12:07,230
that we can do is we can feed our soil

321
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samples some radioactive food and then

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measure the radioactive carbon dioxide

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that comes off of those samples and this

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is this is what that data looks like

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this is about a year a year long

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00:12:20,990 --> 00:12:19,470
experiment and so I'm if I'm looking at

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00:12:22,790 --> 00:12:21,000
University Valley there's a shallow I

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00:12:24,620 --> 00:12:22,800
stable in the mid I stable that I table

329
00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:24,630
I just mean that how close it is to the

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surface I was showing in that diagram

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earlier and what we see is at five

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degrees Celsius we do get some

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mineralization in this shallow a stable

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core but it's sub-zero temperatures we

335
00:12:40,189 --> 00:12:37,829
don't actually see anything and these

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are these my control samples are coastal

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Antarctic sample which I thought I'd

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00:12:46,250 --> 00:12:43,380
have better better luck in to just make

339
00:12:48,410 --> 00:12:46,260
sure my my experiment was working so in

340
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the case of the shallow I stable core at

341
00:12:52,250 --> 00:12:49,829
five degrees Celsius we do some

342
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mineralization it's about after 150 days

343
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this is a temperature that these bugs

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would never see at their site and

345
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certainly would not see it for 150

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00:13:04,970 --> 00:13:02,730
consecutive days if you were to ask are

347
00:13:06,319 --> 00:13:04,980
these results because you know let's

348
00:13:07,639 --> 00:13:06,329
make things a little bit more favorable

349
00:13:08,929 --> 00:13:07,649
for any potential microbes in there

350
00:13:10,910 --> 00:13:08,939
let's throw some nutrients in there

351
00:13:12,439 --> 00:13:10,920
let's make it a little bit warmer at 10

352
00:13:14,540 --> 00:13:12,449
degrees Celsius and adding some yeast

353
00:13:16,400 --> 00:13:14,550
extract that actually has no effect

354
00:13:18,860 --> 00:13:16,410
whatsoever on my University Valley soils

355
00:13:20,329 --> 00:13:18,870
but with my coastal Antarctic soils it

356
00:13:25,090 --> 00:13:20,339
actually increases the middle or the

357
00:13:31,310 --> 00:13:28,460
so so is anything actually alive in your

358
00:13:34,100 --> 00:13:31,320
inner University Valley in the

359
00:13:35,810 --> 00:13:34,110
permafrost their / they're not happy and

360
00:13:37,100 --> 00:13:35,820
if anything is alive I'm not able to

361
00:13:40,250 --> 00:13:37,110
detect it using the methods that i'm

362
00:13:44,360 --> 00:13:40,260
using right now but it turns out that

363
00:13:46,340 --> 00:13:44,370
there is life here it's just hidden and

364
00:13:49,040 --> 00:13:46,350
so if you look at these these valley

365
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:49,050
walls and it's a tough job but someone

366
00:13:54,530 --> 00:13:53,010
gets to do it and if you you go up those

367
00:13:57,410 --> 00:13:54,540
sandstone walls and you just whack a

368
00:13:59,630 --> 00:13:57,420
rock you can actually almost any rock

369
00:14:00,910 --> 00:13:59,640
there you can see you can see microbial

370
00:14:02,840 --> 00:14:00,920
life and you can see evidence

371
00:14:05,870 --> 00:14:02,850
unfortunately you can't see how green

372
00:14:07,460 --> 00:14:05,880
this is looked great on my laptop but

373
00:14:09,199 --> 00:14:07,470
you'll see some photosynthetic crypto

374
00:14:10,610 --> 00:14:09,209
and elliptic communities and they're

375
00:14:14,180 --> 00:14:10,620
actually fairly ubiquitous and dry

376
00:14:15,319 --> 00:14:14,190
valleys and at the site so this is one

377
00:14:17,540 --> 00:14:15,329
in the lab and you can stick them under

378
00:14:19,460 --> 00:14:17,550
a microscope and you can see see the

379
00:14:20,690 --> 00:14:19,470
microorganisms there's algae and there's

380
00:14:23,660 --> 00:14:20,700
Santa bacteria and there's plenty of

381
00:14:25,790 --> 00:14:23,670
fungi I pretty much just starting the

382
00:14:27,350 --> 00:14:25,800
activity work on this now I have some

383
00:14:29,389 --> 00:14:27,360
cultures in the lab they are growing at

384
00:14:31,160 --> 00:14:29,399
zero degrees Celsius I'm having a lot

385
00:14:32,960 --> 00:14:31,170
better luck with the trip toilets and I

386
00:14:34,610 --> 00:14:32,970
did with the permafrost islip source

387
00:14:36,800 --> 00:14:34,620
only got six primer crossed eye slits I

388
00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:36,810
have over 40 I slips from the crypto and

389
00:14:43,010 --> 00:14:41,130
lifts already today and so so it's a lot

390
00:14:45,620 --> 00:14:43,020
to work with but they're a lot easier to

391
00:14:47,660 --> 00:14:45,630
work with and so why is that well the

392
00:14:50,840 --> 00:14:47,670
crypto and ellipse besides having access

393
00:14:53,300 --> 00:14:50,850
to the Sun on us an energy source there

394
00:14:54,860 --> 00:14:53,310
it's also a little bit of a warmer and

395
00:14:56,810 --> 00:14:54,870
wetter place so these rocks actually get

396
00:14:58,760 --> 00:14:56,820
heated up by the Sun almost 20 degrees

397
00:15:01,880 --> 00:14:58,770
warmer than avith in the air

398
00:15:03,380 --> 00:15:01,890
temperatures but it also it's it's very

399
00:15:05,840 --> 00:15:03,390
porous in there so that's provides a

400
00:15:07,790 --> 00:15:05,850
surface area for any available water in

401
00:15:09,470 --> 00:15:07,800
that atmosphere to condense upon so it's

402
00:15:10,880 --> 00:15:09,480
a little bit wetter and it's a little

403
00:15:15,110 --> 00:15:10,890
bit warmer and this provides a place for

404
00:15:18,079 --> 00:15:15,120
bacteria for bacteria to thrive so is

405
00:15:29,540 --> 00:15:18,089
anything alive they're not to be cliche

406
00:15:33,900 --> 00:15:31,740
thanks Jackie and we have maybe time for

407
00:15:47,009 --> 00:15:33,910
one question does anyone have a question

408
00:15:49,019 --> 00:15:47,019
for Jackie ok so you fed him yeast

409
00:15:50,449 --> 00:15:49,029
extract and they didn't grow and you're

410
00:15:52,499 --> 00:15:50,459
giving them acetate you're seeing low

411
00:15:54,329 --> 00:15:52,509
remineralization rates do you think

412
00:15:55,439 --> 00:15:54,339
that's just an effective they're not

413
00:15:57,150 --> 00:15:55,449
happy that you're feeding maybe tried

414
00:15:58,470 --> 00:15:57,160
like maybe 14 glucose to see if

415
00:16:02,819 --> 00:15:58,480
different substrate gives you a better

416
00:16:04,110 --> 00:16:02,829
yield um I can't shine 14 glucose this

417
00:16:05,730 --> 00:16:04,120
actually took me a really long time to

418
00:16:07,079 --> 00:16:05,740
do and it's it's worth doing but to be

419
00:16:09,600 --> 00:16:07,089
honest I don't think it's I don't think

420
00:16:13,290 --> 00:16:09,610
it's an issue of the carbon source i

421
00:16:15,569 --> 00:16:13,300
think he was either nothing there to to

422
00:16:17,160 --> 00:16:15,579
actual actively metabolize i just think

423
00:16:19,949 --> 00:16:17,170
its or they're taking a really long time

424
00:16:21,990 --> 00:16:19,959
to recover but that one the one that did

425
00:16:24,030 --> 00:16:22,000
show mineralization at five degrees and

426
00:16:26,129 --> 00:16:24,040
i wish i had more time to kind of dwell

427
00:16:28,110 --> 00:16:26,139
on that image there was a really long

428
00:16:35,490 --> 00:16:28,120
lag period before it started