Tittle:
FINDING LIFE IN THE DRIEST PLACE ON EARTH

Abstract:
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is well known for been the driest and oldest desert on Earth. With places with no recorded rains in the last 400 years, in a typical day in the hyperarid core of the Atacama relative humidity reaches 0 in the afternoon hours. The Atacama is also the desert with the highest measured UV radiation levels, and due to it soils having a number of highly oxidizing chemical species, the Atacama is considered one of the most extreme environments for life in our planet, and an analog model of Mars. In this talk Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos (Center of Astrobiology, CSIC, Spain) will show his finding on how life has been able to cope with these extreme environmental stresses, and what can these findings may tell us on where to find life in other bodies of the Solar System.