Algae are organisms that depend on getting light in order to preform photosynthesis to get their energy. While this group is very diverse, one of the traits they all got in common is that they use chlorophyll as their main photosynthesis agent. Other than that, they are diverse, ranging from edible kelp found in the ocean to cyanobacteria that only lives inside rocks! 

<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/NSW_seabed_1.JPG</center>
*Algae as most people think of it. But it’s also microorganisms that you cannot see without a microscope. [Image by Toby Hudson, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NSW_seabed_1.JPG)*.

This diverse group of organisms have been found in pretty much all places you can imagine, and they are able to survive in the most extreme conditions. Most people think of algae as something that is found only in water, but there are in fact several species that thrive in terrestrial environments as well in the air, inside lichens or even inside rocks! Today we are going to take a closer look at a special type of microalgae that is found so deep in the snow that no one expected to find a living thing down there! 

<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Sea_ice_terrain.jpg</center>
*Would you expect to find living organisms is these conditions? Image is Public Domain*. 

## The microalgae that lives 2 meters under the snow
[A research team from Aarhus University in Denmark traveled to the Arctic to take a closer look at the algae that lives there](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2017JC013263/abstract), and here they drilled holes in order to collect ice algae samples. Most of the samples were from one meter thick snow, and they were not really surprised by these results. However, they also tried to drill to collect samples from as much as two meters of snow, and this is where they found a new world record!

It seemed that there was algae living at these extreme conditions, deeper in the snow than anyone had known. When there is two meters of snow/ice cover, the light conditions are terrible. [At this thickness only 0.02 % of the light is penetrated, so this means that these algae only get 1/5,000 the regular amount of light compared to algae that lives on the top of the snow cover](https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-02/au-sia020118.php).

<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Diatom2.jpg</center>
*The algae living in these conditions was a diatom, a group of algae that is often found at extreme conditions, and are well-known for their microbial beauty. [Image by Wipeter, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diatom2.jpg)*.

Scientists have never before seen organisms live at conditions that are as dark as these, not to mention that they also have to cope with living in extreme cold and salty water as well as the darkness. The sun is even absent during most of the winter, and as mentioned, only a very small percentage of the light is able to penetrate this deep in the summer, so it’s really insane that these organisms are able to live in these conditions.   

## Breaking records
The general consensus among scientists is that algae is not really able to survive if they have a snow/ice cover that is deeper than 30-50 centimeters, so this new discovery not only broke records, it also made the biologists change their commonly accepted knowledge. 

This newly acquired knowledge might change how we think of algae, and especially when we are looking at the melting of the Arctic. The fact that the algae is living under even such thick sheets of snow and ice means that there is a lot more potential for algae blooms when the snow begins to melt because of climate change, so climatologists might have to keep this in mind in the future. 

## Thanks for reading
Thank you for reading my post about this new discovery. I hope you enjoyed it! As always, follow the links in the text for more information. 

## <center>About @valth</center>
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