'Worms From Hell' Unearth Possibilities For Extraterrestrial Life 145
An anonymously submitted article says, "For the first time, scientists have found complex,
multi-celled creatures living a mile and more below the planet’s surface, raising new possibilities about the spread of life on Earth and potential subsurface life on other planets and moons (abstract). ... The research is likely to trigger scientific challenges and cause some controversy because it places far more complex life in an environment where researchers have generally held it should not, or even cannot, exist."
is it just me? (Score:4, Informative)
the link doesn't work
Re:is it just me? (Score:2, Informative)
Here it is: (Score:3, Informative)
Multicellular life deep in the earth is interesting but I'd like to find sentient slashdot editors.
For those who want to RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Linky! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:is it just me? (Score:5, Informative)
There's a bug of some sort. I'm putting the link in right, but something is wrong. The link is to this WaPo story [washingtonpost.com].
Re:live there, or just displaced to there? (Score:4, Informative)
They were found at depths ranging from 900m down to 3.6km (3000ft-2mi). Carbon dating their environment showed they'd been there for at least 3000 years. (The team that found this also found radiation eating bacteria at similar depths five years ago, they been through the standard objections before.)
Re:I'm wary of this theory. (Score:4, Informative)
Neither. You've just proposed a hypothesis. That's what all of science is about.
Really, it's ok to say "we don't know". We can't say for sure if it developed down there or migrated. I doubt the scientists said anything to that effect, either. Or even if they did, most of them wouldn't. Science articles are typically rife with horribly inaccurate "paraphrasing" because the journalist doesn't know what they're talking about and try to translate scientific jargon to "layman" speak.