Creatures Living In Toxic Volcanogenic Lake Could Be Clues To Alien Discovery

The microbes residing in a boiling lake full of acid and toxic metals near Poás volcano in Costa Rica could guide researchers towards future alien life-hunting missions.
Humans are still looking for planets that possess the right conditions for the common life form on Earth - like themselves and the animals around.
However, new research from the University of Colorado Boulder shows that we seem to be narrowing our search behavior.

Source: University of Colorado Boulder

A scientist wearing a gas mask while doing fieldwork at the "deadly" volcanic lake, where a vast number of microbes are living well.
According to the Daily Mail, in a volcanogenic lake next to the Poás volcano in Costa Rica, scientists have found colonies of healthy bacteria in ... highly acidic boiling water, full of toxic metals.
These bizarre creatures show that the concepts such as “ideal living temperatures” and “suitable habitats / environments” "suitable for life", just seem to be relative.

Source: University of Colorado Boulder

Researcher Justin Wang, lead author, says the extreme organisms they found have evolved a range of adaptive factors.
Not only can they survive in a deadly environment, they also feed in an impossible way: generating energy from sulfur, iron and arsenic!
Such toxic lake environments have been identified on Mars, and they are ancient lakes that appeared during the early stages of the planet.

Source: University of Colorado Boulder

This means finding Martian fossils doesn't just seem to be fiction. One of the places that meet the conditions is Jezero Crater, where NASA's durable Mars rover roams.
The study also revealed that these extreme microbes cleverly "evacuate" to the edge of the lake when an eruption is occurring, as well as develop a series of genes that help them adapt to what most living creatures on earth unable to stand.
This discovery will help expand future missions in the search for alien life: it seems that the act of limiting the Goldilocks zone, a.k.a. Circumstellar habitable zone of star systems to a range of temperatures suitable for Earth organisms, is a huge mistake.

Source: University of Colorado Boulder

Additionally, it would be a crucial omission to only search for chemical signatures of things suitable for common life forms.
The study has just been published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.
H/T: University of Colorado Boulder