The creatures are known as "extremophiles," and they earn the name: They live in toxic Superfund cleanup sites, boiling deep-sea rift vents, volcanic craters and polar glaciers -- some of the planet's ...

Extremophiles are tiny microbes that are able to thrive in hot, salty and even acidic or gaseous environments that would kill other forms of life. Now scientists are using these hardy dwellers of the ...

La Puna, a high-altitude plateau straddling Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, is not for the faint of heart. Visitors must endure a 10-hour drive from the closest city, battle altitude sickness at ...

A tiny amoeba has broken a pretty big record. The newly discovered species of single-celled organism can divide and reproduce at a piping hot 63 degrees Celsius (145 degrees Fahrenheit), higher than ...

High on Mount Erebus, Roberto Anitori climbed into an ice cave near the summit of the second-highest volcano in Antarctica. Although he stood on a massive 12,447-foot mountain, his research involved ...

Never mind New York, New York. If you can make it in Antarctica’s dry valleys, you really can make it anywhere. These valleys are, of course, bitterly cold. There is no vegetation there. There is ...

Thousands of molecules of ribonucleic acid make salt-loving microbes known as "extremophiles" highly resistant to the phenomenon oxidative stress -- the uncontrollable production of unstable forms of ...

They thrive, not just survive. The microbes live in places such as the Antarctic, where temperatures reach -45°C in the summer; on the ocean floor, in constant 2°C waters; or in boiling hot springs.

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