Researchers from McGill University in Montreal have discovered a bacterium living in the frozen permafrost of the high Arctic. The permafrost bacterium,
Planococcus halocryophilus strain Or1, grows and divides at -15°C and can even remain metabolically active at -25°C.
This bacteria is yielding clues about how extraterrestrial organisms might endure extreme conditions - as one of the things that makes it extremely hard for life to flourish in foreboding places like Mars and the moons of Saturn is the punishing cold.
