#Moon lunar hologram desktop full

In order to capture images of microbes 'a-moving' on another world, Nadeau and her colleagues, including Mory Gharib, the Hans W. Indeed, when Leeuwenhoek wrote about observing samples of the plaque between his teeth, he described seeing 'many very little animalcules, very prettily a-moving.' And Nadeau adds, 'No one doubted Leeuwenhoek once they saw them moving for themselves.' 'He immediately recognized that they were living things based on the way they moved,' Nadeau says. Think, she says, of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology, who used simple microscopes in the 17th and 18th centuries to observe protozoa and bacteria. 'We suspect that if we send back videos of bacteria swimming, that is going to be a better proof of life than pretty much anything else.' 'Our big overarching hypothesis is that motility is a good biosignature,' explains Jay Nadeau, a scientific researcher at Caltech and one of the investigators on the holographic microscope project, dubbed SHAMU (Submersible Holographic Astrobiology Microscope with Ultraresolution). The ultimate goal? To send the microscope on a spacecraft to search for biosignatures-signs of life-on other worlds such as Mars or Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. The researchers are testing a holographic microscope that they have designed and built for the purpose of observing microbes that thrive in such extreme environments.

#Moon lunar hologram desktop full

Now the same researchers are planning a trip to California's Mojave Desert, where they will study Searles Lake, a dry, extremely salty basin that is naturally full of harsh chemicals like arsenic and boron.

In March of this year, a team of bioengineers from Caltech, JPL, and the University of Washington spent a week in Greenland, using snowmobiles to haul their scientific equipment, waiting out windstorms, and spending hours working on the ice. It was a warm day for Greenland, so finding ice of sufficient depth was challenging that day.

For the first deployment of the instrument in Greenland, the team investigated sea ice just behind the Nuuk Municipal Pool.