Aug 21, 2014 11:53 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Scientists have discovered microbial life deep below Antarctica's ice in Lake Whillans, a body of water beneath nearly nine football-fields worth of ice.

According to BBC News, the researchers published their work in the journal Nature and examined thousands of microorganisms found in the lake. The discovery was a bit of a surprise and has led the study authors to believe microbial life could exist in such dark, cold conditions elsewhere in space.

The new study comes after a Russian team made a similar discovery in Lake Vostok, another subglacial lake, of which Antarctica is known to have hundreds. The American researchers believe their results are more reliable due to their pristine drilling method that may well have yielded no surface contaminants.

"We went to great extremes to ensure that we did not contaminate one of the most pristine environments on our planet while at the same time ensuring that our samples were of the highest integrity," study chief scientist John Priscu, a professor at Montana State University, said in a press release.

Scientists have found subglacial lakes on two moons away from Earth: Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus. In both cases, as in Antarctica's subglacial lakes, large bodies of water can exist beneath huge amounts of ice.

"To have an ecosystem, it has to be fuelled," study lead author Brent Christner, of Louisiana State University, told BBC News. "In this paper, we demonstrate a community structure that can use the energy sources that are available.

"The action of the ice sheet pulverizes the rock bed, and the mineral particles then go into the water where they become available for chemical and biological alteration."

The team could not find evidence that life forms such as small worms exist in these conditions, but Christner did not rule it out.

"If we found nematodes or tardigrades - that would be huge, amazing," he said. "We have no evidence that they're down there, and perhaps Whillans is just too extreme for them.

"It's OK for micro-organisms but the energy flows may simply not be there for these higher life forms."

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