The microbes populating the pingos could offer a glimpse at how alien life might survive on other worlds in the solar system -- icy moons with global seas tucked beneath frozen rinds.
" That's because, in winter, life inside the pingo doesn't rely at all on solar energy -- it's only using chemical energy, " says microbiologist Dimitri Kalenitchenko of Norway's University of Tromso, who is leading the project.