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Expanding on this, from what i understand there aren't too many labs (understandably) that are able to grow extremophiles in lab conditions.

It would be great to run a bunch of experiments at various different conditions and see minimum and maximum on a variety of variables like salinity, acidity, heat, etc

Maybe it is really hard to produce such weak illumination with accuracy?

No, you can practically go down to single photons.

I'd look at the paper and see who they cite for those numbers and theory.

What’s the control?

The control is daylight, where countless species of life survive on a daily basis. You are comparing the hypothesis that life can survive with very little light to the hypothesis that it needs normal amounts of light to survive.