News Archive Item
"Frost flower" images receiving international internet attention
Description:
Beautiful images taken by Matthias Wietz for the work of Jeff Bowman and his professor Jody Deming at the University of Washington Astrobiology IGERT have received much attention in the last week from many international media sites. These photos were shared on here on IGERT.org: /highlights/486.html
“These beautiful and other-worldly photographs of ice were taken last year by University of Washington graduate student Jeff Bowman and his professor Jody Deming while they worked on a study combining oceanography, microbiology, and planetary sciences in the central Arctic Ocean as part of the Integrated Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program. Their single focus was the study of frost flowers, a strange phenomenon where frost grows from imperfections in the surface ice amid extreme sub-zero temperatures nearing -22C or -7.6F, forming spiky structures that have been found to house microorganisms. In fact, the bacteria found in the frost flowers is much more dense than in the frozen water below it, meaning each flower is essentially a temporary ecosystem, not unlike a coral reef…”
Visit Astrobiology: Life in a Cosmic Context to learn more about the work of this IGERT at the University of Washington.
