Antarctic Lake Hides Bizarre Ecosystem | Wired Science. In the eerie bluish-purple depths of an Antarctic lake, scientists have discovered otherworldly mounds that tell tales of the planet’s early days. [partner id="sciencenews" align="right"]Bacteria slowly built the mounds, known as stromatolites, layer by layer on the lake bottom. The lumps, which look like oversize traffic cones, resemble similar structures that first appeared billions of years ago and remain in fossil form as one of the oldest widespread records of ancient life. The Antarctic discovery could thus help scientists better understand the conditions under which primitive life-forms thrived.
“It’s like going back to early Earth,” says Dawn Sumner, a geobiologist at the University of California, Davis. Sumner and her colleagues, led by Dale Andersen of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, describe the discovery in an upcoming issue of Geobiology. “These are just incredibly beautiful microbial landscapes,” she says. See Also: Science News. Science News. Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology. Tutorial : Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Age | Distances | Bibliography | Relativity What is the currently most accepted model for the Universe?
The current best fit model is a flat ΛCDM Big Bang model where the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, and the age of the Universe is 13.7 billion years. Back to top. What is the evidence for the Big Bang? The evidence for the Big Bang comes from many pieces of observational data that are consistent with the Big Bang. None of these prove the Big Bang, since scientific theories are not proven. Many of these facts are consistent with the Big Bang and some other cosmological models, but taken together these observations show that the Big Bang is the best current model for the Universe. The darkness of the night sky - Olbers' paradox. Why do we think that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating? The evidence for an accelerating expansion comes from observations of the brightness of distant supernovae. X 6.002. iPad Falls From Edge Of Space - And Survives. EurekAlert! - Science News.