Life exists even at the South Pole, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, with microbiologist Ed Carpenter of the State University of New York in Stony Brook and his colleagues finding between 200 and 5000 bacteria per millilitre of melted snow from the pole. To their surprise, biochemical tests and electron microscope images show that the organisms can grow and divide even at -17 degrees C — the coldest condition the team tested. “Probably they could live at even lower temperatures,” says Carpenter.