NPR Science Friday Segment on Thermophiles

Here's a teaser from the August 14, 1998 show "Extremophiles: Life on the Edge!"

There's a significant segment on Yellowstone's unique heat-loving microorganisms.

This week, scientists in the international Ocean Drilling Program announced that they had found living organisms over 800 meters below the ocean bottom, trapped inside sedimentary rocks over 15 million years old. Last month, scientists from the University of Washington and the American Museum of Natural History managed to lift several huge, hot sections of sulfide chimneys, the smokestack-like mineral features that form around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. And in June, researchers at Montana State University and elsewhere released findings about organisms thriving in the permanent ice layer in lakes in an Antarctic desert - organisms which somehow manage to live happy, full lives despite rarely seeing temperatures above -20 Celsius.

Follow the link to listen to the audio archive, which is in Real Audio at the bottom of the page.