A groundwater network found beneath an Antarctic valley could support microbial life.

Jill Mikucki of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Slawek Tulaczyk at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and their colleagues studied Taylor Valley using an airborne instrument to measure underground electrical resistivity, which increases as water in soil freezes. The team discovered two systems of briny groundwater, one of which connects to the Ross Sea.

This water could be home to microbes, the authors suggest, because subsurface temperatures at boreholes were within the range that can support microbial life (−3 °C to −20 °C). And an outflow of iron-containing subsurface saltwater from the Taylor Glacier is known to contain microorganisms.

Nature Commun. 6, 6831 (2015)