The twilight Zone

Like a black light poster come to life, a group of bioluminescent fungi collected from Ribeira Valley Tourist State Park near São Paulo, Brazil, emanates a soft green glow when the lights go out.

The mushrooms are part of the genus Mycena, a group that includes about 500 species worldwide. Of these only 33 are known to be bioluminescent—capable of producing light through a chemical reaction.

Since 2002 Cassius Stevani, professor of chemistry at the University of São Paulo; Dennis Desjardin, professor of mycology at San Francisco State University in California; and Marina Capelari of Brazil's Institute of Botany have discovered ten more bioluminescent fungi species—four of which are new to science—in Brazil's tropical forests.

The work, Stevani says, has increased the number of glowers known since the 1970s by 30 percent.

Antarctic Lakes: 145 and Counting, Scientists Say

John Roach
for National Geographic News
November 1, 2004

Don't don your swim trunks just yet, but deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheets are at least 145 lakes that may be teeming with microscopic organisms similar to those that could be thriving beneath the ice on Jupiter's moon Europa, according to scientists.

The lakes lie beneath blankets of ice up to 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) thick and are considered one of the great unexplored frontiers on Earth.

For complete article http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1101_041101_antarctic_lakes.html

It will be better for us to know our planet first,rather than searching for aliens.