Life thrives in the deepest, darkest recesses of Earth’s crust—from methane seeps in the ocean floor to the highest reaches of Arctic permafrost—and it is unlike anything seen on the surface. Karen Lloyd, author of Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth, draws on her experiences and those of her fellow scientists working in challenging and often dangerous conditions to describe subsurface life that is truly alien: microbes living in environments as extreme as boiling water, pure acid, and bleach, with some of these living cells surviving for hundreds of thousands of years or longer. Their findings are broadening our understanding of what life is, how its earliest forms may have evolved, and the prospects of finding life on other planets.

Karen G. Lloyd is the Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in leading publications such as Nature and Science as well as two TED talks.

We invite you to support the author by purchasing a copy of their book from Browseabout Books by clicking HERE. Call-in orders are accepted at (302) 226-2665 or you can stop by the store to purchase a copy. For store hours, please visit their website.

This presentation is co-sponsored by the AAUW of Delaware. 

The library's “Science and Society - Making Sense of the World Around Us” lecture series is co-organized and moderated by Fred Dylla, Executive Director Emeritus of the American Institute of Physics and author of Scientific Journeys, Linda Dylla, former public information officer at the Jefferson Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy, and Colin Norman, the former News Editor at Science.

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