Astrobiology: Wearing Academic Beer Goggles

By Mrina Nikrad

“I am interested in Astrobiology”. When they hear that phrase, some people look amused, like I was trying to be funny. Others look at me like I’m crazy, a poor misled student with big goals and a disturbed mind (soon to become an even more disturbed scientist using tax dollars). Sure, astrobiology sounds as far out as E.T., more like science fiction than science progress. However, scientists in universities all over the world are working on some aspect of astrobiology. The words some aspect are the keys in that sentence. Before we get any further, let me define what astrobiology is and what all it encompasses.

Astrobiology is also known as exobiology. The main goal of this discipline is to explore the possibility of life on other planets, how life evolved on our planet or other space bodies, whether humans might be able to reach and colonize other planets, and whether terrestrial life can be sustained on other planets. If you think about it, this is a really involved field that requires knowledge about astronomy, chemistry, biology, evolution, statistics, genetics, mathematics, engineering, space flight, and… the list could go on forever. So really, most scientists are studying something that could be applied to the field of astrobiology.

I can almost see most people’s eyes gloss over at the mention of things like “chemistry” and “statistics”. In fact I think my eyes glossed over a little, so maybe I’m just projecting. The thing is, taken separately, these fields are not all that interesting to me. I don’t really care about chemistry… but when I think of astrobiology, the likelihood that statistically there has got to be life on some other planets, suddenly all these disciplines (even chemistry) seem a lot more interesting. Suddenly, I want to know what kind of biology could possibly survive in the nooks and crannies of space, what kind of space ship would I need to get to it, how did it evolve? It’s the equivalent of wearing academic beer goggles. Everything looks a lot more exciting to me when viewed through the lens of astrobiology.

Speculating further about life on other planets, astrobiologists admit that it probably won’t be little green men. We are most likely to find microbial life hidden in subterranean permafrost or thriving near hot vents of a vast alien ocean. Mars has plenty of permafrost and used to be like Earth once. No reason it couldn’t harbor life. Europa is known to have a vast ocean covered with ice; it even has thermal energy to keep that water in liquid form. Not a bad start for a planetoid. Titan has geysers and pools of liquid organic materials, prime environment for a primordial soup. Saturn and Jupiter are massive, who is to say that life couldn’t exist in a small pocket somewhere? The appeal of astrobiology is not in finding E.T. (although that is pretty sexy), but in just being open to the possibilities and allowing the mind to stretch far and be adventurous.

Sunset in the Neumayer channel

Beautiful!!

Farewell Palmer

We said goodbye to all the wonderful people on station today. About 15 people are staying behind to maintain and fix up the station over winter. There won't be another boat coming to the station until August, that will bring more people. However, the winter people won't be leaving until September. We are on the ship saying goodbye in this picture.

We are currently on the ship and we just left the Neumayer channel and entered the Gerlache strait. I have lots of GREAT pictures - they can only begin to touch the beauty I've seen going through this area. We got to experience a sunrise and a sunset a few hours apart. I will be adding more pictures when I can.
A lovely picture of the mountains. Too bad the color of my laptop screen is screwed up (it's completely green) and I can't see the pretty colors right now. So I don't really know which pictures to upload.

Sampling and crabs

On our Monday sampling trip we dodged sea/brash ice. In a little rubber boat even the littlest bit of solid ice hit at slow speed can puncture the boat so Mindy drove very slowly. It was a great day!
On Monday, Mindy (the science coordinator) and I went sampling water together. She drove the boat through very low visibility and snow stormy weather. The surface of the water was relatively calm though and we even saw a leopard seal! They are graceful lovely animals that glide through the water, but they do freak me out a little since they are powerful predators. It lost interest in us before I could get a picture.
CRABS! Spider crabs that one of the groups caught on their way through the fjords. Don't they look... spidery? They certainly are not for eating...
They have a wood stove in the dining room/lounge area in the Bio building and on cold(er) days the fire is blazing all day. On the left is a very good friend of mine, Diane Curran. She is one of the chef's here and I met her in summer (January 2011). I described her in more detail in my previous blog. On the right are Jeff and Paula, two people studying icefish. Yes, they are holding up raunchy magazines which Palmer station sadly subscribes to. Argh.

It's been an interesting week here at Palmer! I took a picture of our lab here all set up with sampling bottles and filtering equipment.

Daily Life at Palmer Station

I decided to do a more general blog about life at Palmer. I uploaded a few more pictures but they are all organized messily and out of order- just a warning. It's been interesting being at Palmer when the weather is bad. It's been raining or wildly windy (35+ knots) nearly everyday. The days are also shorter and boating hours are even shorter.




Since Palmer is on an island, scientists use Zodiac rubber boats to get around (see the pic). The big orange boat is the Gould which brings us down here, the little rubber boats are what we use for sampling. Since it's fall/winter the boating hours are only during the few hours of light we get- now that is from 10:45 am to 1:45 pm. Very short amount of time to do science and collect samples. In one of the pictures you can see the fish people catching fish they are studying from tanks.

We also had trivia night in the bar one night. It was fun! The whole station joined in. I didn't know a single answer but boy was it a good time.

We also have a ping pong table which is often used for recreation. See the above pics. Today was a windy day outside, so very loud. Inside it's nice and cozy by the wood stove which has been stoked all day by various people. I did a water color painting of a fairy with some watercolor paints and paper that I found on the station. They have a place called SKUA which has a ton of recreational and art/craft equipment. Anybody on station is allowed to use it and replace it when they are done. Glad I found those paints! I am going to leave the painting here for the winter over crew.

Palmer Update

So I admit it's really hard to update this blog on a normal basis, but it's even harder when I have had so many health issues! When I got to Palmer I had an annoying cough that refused to go away. Then a week in, I got a cold before my cough had healed. It's gotten in the way of me sampling, of 5 or 6 samplings I have only been out 3 times.

Also when I got to Palmer I was on antibiotics for a lymph node infection in my neck. Yeah, in my NECK. Well that went away but I got another infection under my arm. Not sure how, but it happened. So when I got here I asked the doc what I could do. He prescribed another round of a different antibiotic but even after 10 days of those, twice a day, the infection was bigger not smaller. He took one look at it and said we need to cut it out. So I had surgery in Antarctica!

Good thing the physician here is actually a capable surgeon unlike the physician in the summer who was a general practitioner. I am so glad he was here but it was painful. He had to keep the wound open so the infection could drain completely and it could heal from the inside out. Everyday for 3 days he had to clean the wound out with H2O2 and stuff (yes, stuff) dressing into the opening. It's been painful, bloody, and kinda gory. But it's healing :) It's amazing how quickly the human body heals.

I have a picture of the wound but it's pretty gory so I won't post it.

Although I have not been able to use my arm much for a few days (and therefore couldn't go sampling) I've still done my experiments in the lab. Right now we have a bit of a break since the third person from our team is gone on the boat for 3 days into the fjords and I am still unable to sample, which I feel guilty about. But what can I do except heal and not rip the healing flesh? I am sure in a couple of days I will be good to go.

The science has been going relatively well despite all this. We have sampled one of our sites 5 times and then other one 4 times. If we can get both one more time that would be great. I also want to do a brash ice experiment but who knows when that will happen...

In other news, I have also helped cook some Indian food at Palmer. Every Tuesday is Indian food night because people love Indian food! Curry is one of the most demanded things here. I love being in the kitchen, it's therapeutic and rewarding.

Let's get the science on

After 7 miserable unstable days lying mostly supine on the boat, we finally reached Palmer station today. Technically this boat ride should only be 4 days, but there was a massive storm in the already treacherous Drake passage, and we ended up waiting for two full days at the tip of South America for the storm to subside. Having the top bunk while the ship was rocking was a bit of an adventure, but we made it.

Time to get the science on! We got well underway setting up the lab and will be emptying 10 more boxes tomorrow. The weather here is great, people are great, food is brilliant, and even better than I can eat it again :D It's going to be a productive month!