Extremophiles are tough little guys that not only survive but thrive in the harshest environments on Earth; unforgiving places like volcanic vents at the bottom of the sea, lakes of acid, and your bellybutton

To learn more about extremophiles and a whole universe of other microscopic creatures, check out Journey to the Microcosmos at https://www.youtube.com/microcosmos

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! 

If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

Single-species Ecosystem

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10336-gold-mine-holds-life-untouched-by-the-sun/

Extremophile Cheese

https://www.businessinsider.com/belly-button-innie-inside-cheese-bacteria-lint-fungi-2019-7

Fluffy Pink Golden Fungus

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-discover-fungus-capable-collecting-gold-its-environment-180972293/

[Fact Off]

Berkeley pit extremophiles:

https://medium.com/vision-2018/life-from-the-pit-70d3e0fbc0f6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEnWZcG3Nzk

https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/natural-products/Scientists-mine-potential-drugs-Berkeley/97/i18

PCR & Taq polymerase:

https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Polymerase-Chain-Reaction-Fact-Sheet

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/probe/docs/techpcr/

https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/10342020

https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/yellowstone-bacteria-beer-science

[Ask the Science Couch]

Extremophiles:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4187170/

Bacteria vs. Archaea:

http://bio1520.biology.gatech.edu/biodiversity/prokaryotes-bacteria-archaea-2/

https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/archaea/archaea.html

Archaea characteristics:

https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/astrobiology/environments/

https://microbiologyonline.org/about-microbiology/introducing-microbes/archaea

https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/archaea/archaeamm.html

[Butt One More Thing]

Pompeii worm:

https://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/marinesymbiosis/pompeii.html

http://faculty.montgomerycollege.edu/gyouth/FP_examples/student_examples/sathya_ramachandran/pompeiiworms.html