Life Confirmed At Extreme Depths

SEWilco writes "A few years ago the life forms around deep-ocean thermal vents were a surprise. Now ancient bacteria alive in rock 2 miles down have been found. The story is in the San Francisco Chronicle. It is also at Nature.Com, but that server is already rejecting connects. Other bacteria survived frozen in the pressures of an ocean 100 miles deep. This increases the known limits of where life can exist on any planet. Thomas Gold undoubtedly is not surprised at hot, deep bacteria living on hydrogen."

100 miles deep?!

[roseblood]

"Other bacteria survived frozen in the pressures of an ocean 100 miles deep. "

Where on earth is there a 100 mile deep ocean? Is our atmosphere even 100 miles deep?

Um, 100s of miles?

[EraseEraseMe]

Other bacteria survived frozen in the pressures of an ocean 100 miles deep

I was under the impression that the deepest part of the ocean, the Marianas trench in the Pacific ocean was 'only' 11033 metres below sea level; rougly 6-7 miles deep..Nowhere near the 100 miles in this writeup. Was this explained better in the nature.com article?

Oilfields auto-replenishing

[Reality Master 101]

Who's the guy that had the theory that oil in the ground is NOT old dinosaurs, but actually bacteria in the hot ground? And that we will never run out of oil because it will replenish itself?

I would imagine that theory gets some boosting from this.

Life yes, but intelligent?

[sterno]

At this point, it seems pretty clear that life is a pretty common phenomenon. The only ingredients that are seemingly necessary are water, and carbon. These are ingredients that are spread throughout the universe in vast quantities.

Some day soon, they will finally find bacteria on someplace like europa and we can put to rest any question that there is life out there. The conditions needed to support basic life are pretty minimal. The basic requirements for intellgient life are an entirely different matter. Can a civilization be built around hot thermal vents or two miles deep in ice?

Re:100 miles deep?? Explained!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately you probably not going to be able to use it as food as it is outside the 4 major food groups. We have to rely on something that is a bit higher on the food chain that can digest these bacteria.

Pressure? So what?

[A non moose cow]

Human beings seem to be hung on the idea that living in high pressure environments is an amazing thing simply because we can not do it.

Human life depends heavily on gaseous exchanges, which behave differently at different pressures. Since liquids and solids are hardly compressible, it seems like a no-brainer that organisms that do not rely on gaseous exchanges can reamin intact perfectly well in extremely high pressures.

I would have been more surprised if they had been destroyed.

Re:Humans are natually Bigots

[kmellis]

"

I don't think if you go down to a basic level I am sure most people would have to agree that there is almost definetly life on other planets." -- nich37ways

I disagree. Yes, opinion has been changed somewhat in the last twenty years; but it wasn't so long ago that much of the scientific establishment was laughing behind Sagan's back for his exobiology studies. And that represented scientific opinion, not general opinion.

Among the general population my intuition is that there are probably about three distinct groups of people. The really credulous people that believe in alien life because they believe in UFO visitation; the supposedly hard-headed (but really just very anthropocentric) people that think that Earth is the only place in the universe with life; and the much smaller group of we who are skeptically-minded but nevertheless believe in the almost certainty of alien life somewhere and somewhen.

But I think that the largest group of general opinion doesn't believe in life anywhere else in the universe. Consider that the majority of people in the US are Christian, and consider that their theology has no place whatsoever for life away from Earth. I mean, c'mon, a significant minority of Americans don't believe in evolution.

The idea of vampires and elves are widespread in our popular culture. That doesn't mean that many people really think they exist.

Part of why I think that few people believe in extraterrestrial life is because I think that most people are still incredibly anthropocentric. An example is that a large number of people, perhaps the majority, aren't willing to even attribute even rudimentary thought and emotion to higher life forms on out planet, all evidence to the contrary. People still believe that we're so incredibly special, that we must be unique. That hasn't changed that much outside of scientific circles, and not so much even there.

I always do wonder

[Smid]

Why the obsession with outer space and the masses of energy expended to get there...

When there's massive amounts of extreme environments unexplorer on our own planet which can turn out such wonders as our potential origins...

A map 100 years ago had vast regions not filled in because they had been unexplored. They are still largely unexplored, but now we have pictures of them from space, and I guess thats enough for the human being, so see them, rather than to have visited them...
I'm not just talking deepest africa, deepest oceanic crevices too. We're setting up permanent residence in a vacuum, why not in high pressure?