extremophile

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The Word of the Day for November 19 is:

extremophile   \ik-STREE-muh-fyle\   noun
     : an organism that lives under extreme environmental 
conditions (as in a hot spring or ice cap)

Example sentence: 
     "Cold-loving extremophiles could show us what kinds of 
creatures might live... in parts of the solar system previously 
thought uninhabitable." (Michael Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, 
_Time Magazine_, July 2002)

Did you know?
     No, an extremophile is not an enthusiast of extreme sports 
(though "-phile" does mean "one who loves or has an affinity 
for"). Rather, extremophiles are microbes that thrive in 
environments once considered uninhabitable, from places with 
high levels of toxicity and radiation to boiling-hot, deep-sea 
volcanoes to Antarctic ice sheets. Scientists have even created 
a new biological kingdom to classify some of these microbes: 
Archaea (from "archae-," meaning "primitive"). These 
extremophiles may have a lot in common with the first organisms 
to appear on earth billions of years ago. If so, they can give 
us insight into how life on our planet may have arisen. They are 
also being studied to learn about possible life forms on other 
planets, whose conditions are extreme compared to Earth's.