Life is a complex thing.

Not the lives we lead necessarily, but the very act or state of living.

While scientists have proposed hundreds of ways to define it, none have been widely accepted.

But whichever way you want to define it, one thing is for sure - it is tough.

So tough that we have found it living on the fringes of hydro thermal vents deep below the ocean surface and even the dead vacuum of space and now buried over a kilometer beneath the frozen lakes of Antarctica.

Jonathan is joined by John Priscu, Professor of Ecology in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University to discuss his work drilling on the southern continent.