Life Confirmed At Extreme Depths 273
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."
Life (Score:5, Funny)
Life always finds a way to survive. Now, evolution has provided us with a website that can anticipate and avoid the slashdot effect.
Re:Life (Score:1)
Re:Life (Score:2)
Re:Life (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it so hard to believe there's life at the bottom of the sea?
Re:Life (Score:2)
Translating that to "microorganisms can survive a million years inside an asteroid" is not directly justified.
That is correct. Thankfully nobody has done any translation from the study two years ago.
What I am referring to was a story in the last couple of months. You can search for it in Slashdot's archives if you wish.
100 miles deep?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Where on earth is there a 100 mile deep ocean? Is our atmosphere even 100 miles deep?
Re:100 miles deep?! (Score:1)
Re:100 miles deep?! (Score:1)
Re:100 miles deep?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:20000 Leagues under the Sea (Score:2)
Re:20000 Leagues under the Sea (Score:2)
You kind of had to see it.
Re:20000 Leagues under the Sea (Score:2)
Kelsea Grammer (plays Frasier on the show Frasier) was the professor, Phil Hartman was Ned Land (or whatever his name was), and I forget who played Captain Nemo.
The professor spent the entire sketch trying to explain that a league is a measure of DISTANCE, not depth. Therefore, the 20,000 leagues was referring to the distance they had travelled, not how far beneath the surface they were. But no one listened, and it was quite hilarious. Phil Hartman does (or did, anyway) a very good job of playing an idiotic Ned Land
100 miles deep?? Explained! (Score:5, Informative)
OK, before we all jump on that "ocean 100 miles deep" claim (as I was about to do), here's the actual quote from the article:
Other bacteria, frozen into chunks of ice in a Washington laboratory, have thrived inside a high-pressure container and went right on reproducing after they were exposed to pressures equivalent to life at the bottom of an ocean 100 miles deep.
So they aren't really claiming to have found oceans 100 miles deep.
Re:100 miles deep?? Explained! (Score:5, Interesting)
Chemosynthesis resources (Score:5, Informative)
Quick image summary of chemosynthesis for the bored [bigelow.org].
Re:Chemosynthesis resources (Score:3, Interesting)
The image on bigelow.com calls C6H12O6 (glucose, dextrose, and fructose all have this composition) a carbohydrate for photosynthesis, but on the chemosynthesis side it calls CH2O (aka formaldehyde) a carbohydrate. Last I checked formaldehyde and glucose had very different effects on most life forms.
Re:Chemosynthesis resources (Score:2)
Re:Chemosynthesis resources (Score:2)
"CH2O" was a common shorthand for "carbohydrate" many years ago-- I expect that is still the case.
All carbohydrates, by definition, have a basic ratio of one part carbon to two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.
Re:Chemosynthesis resources (Score:2)
Glucose and formaldehyde are both technically carbohydrates, but calling formaldehyde a carbohydrate is a bit like calling a tomato a fruit. Scientifically, a tomato is a fruit, but in the real world it's a vegetable. Similiarly, carbohydrate normally refers to carbohydrate compounds with at least 4-5 carbon atoms. This includes pentoses (ribose, found in RNA), hexoses (glucose, fructose etc.) all the way up to starch and cellulose, which are polymers of hexoses.
HTH
Re:Chemosynthesis resources (Score:2)
Re:100 miles deep?? Explained! (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, Please!
Re:100 miles deep?? Explained! (Score:5, Funny)
That is utterly impractical; 3 other things (Score:4, Informative)
Firstly, even an ELE wouldn't blot out the sun COMPLETELY. Secondly, it would only do so for a relatively short period of time - after a century at most, photodensity at the equator would be up to 50% of present levels (enough to farm algae.)
Now, it is true that these chemosynthetic bacteria are a sustainable source of calories, and probably convert geothermal energy (which is where the chemicals they eat come from, in an eventual sense) to sugar at a more efficient rate than a geothermal powerplant could. So, if the earth were ripped from the sun, you might be reduced to this as an option.
However, the industrial costs to recover the buggers would be fucking immense! The technology required simply to break even on drilling up all that rock - I don't want to go there. The geysers at yellowstone don't produce surplus calories to feed very many people.
We'd be better off stockpiling glucose, or making it chemically from energy produced by nuclear / petrochemical reactors.
Secondly, in either event, write off 99.95% of the human race. Waive, chilren.
In the event of an ELE, the remnant of the human race can live on stored food, or on truly synthetic nutrients (eating electricity is what this amounts too) until the particulate level drops enough to begin farming again, less than a century if you're willing to live on strained algae.
In the event of a nuclear winter, same story except your "farms" have to be enclosed to prevent the crops from being irradiated, and they have to be on land. If the rest of the world is tenderly merciful with Australia you might be able to grow food outdoors pretty quickly, mate.
Sundry #1)
Most of these bacteria are archaebacteria. They come from the SAME great lineage of life (there are two - archaea and eubacteria) as we do, or at least as our cellular DNA. These deep dwelling bacteria are more closely related to you or I than they are to the bacteria with which most of us are familiar in our day to day lives. That's not very close - still about a billion years, give or take.
Sundry #2)
This means that although these bacteria dwell deep beneath the earth, and may very well out-mass all terrestrial life, they are DESCENDED from shallow-water dwelling organisms, just like we are. Life could adapt and survive beneath the crust of IO, but that does NOT mean that it could ARISE there.
Sundry #3)
The pressure-survivability of bacteria is a cute trick that should surprise no-one. Bacteria are just soap bubbles full of protein. Extremely TINY soap bubbles. There are three ways to kill them:
1) Pop the soap bubble. Heat can do this, or sound waves, but not pressure the likes of which can be found on earth; the soap bubble is elastic. This doesn't mean the bacteria can BREED under very high pressures (though some can) merely that high pressure won't kill them.
2) Crunch up the protein. Proteins are just chemicals, so again, heat can destroy them, but pressure can't; extremely high pressure might cause lethal aggregation of proteins but evidently it doesn't. Enough TIME will ruin the proteins.
3) Crunch up the DNA. Heat, not pressure! Vibration can do this as well. Mostly, time can be a culprit here.
So, a bacteria might survive the high pressures of being embedded inside a piece of precambrian rock, unable to reproduce. However, TIME, by way of random chemical events, would destroy the DNA inside the bacteria.
The DNA inside of any bacteria able to reproduce is maintained by evolution - but that which maintains it also changes it.
The upshot - it is impossible to recover DNA from an organism that lived millions of years ago. Sorry.
Re:That is utterly impractical; 3 other things (Score:2)
Why do you think deep bacteria are descended from shallow-water organisms?
Archabacteria and Eubacteria have a common ancestor which almost certainly dwelled in a tide pool (or similar environment in ancient earth.) You can see this when you look at the genetic tree.
-- sounds like a good place for a fragile life form to begin.
I don't want to go into the arguments about why life probably began on the surface of rock in the bottom of a partially evaporated, oily pool, but that is the most likely place for life to have begun. It is POSSIBLE that life arose underground somewhere, died out, and was replaced by the descendents of surface dwelling organisms (that is to say, all known life.) However, it is not the most likely scenario.
Re:That is utterly impractical; 3 other things (Score:2)
Behold, ygdrassil, the tree of life:
Common Ancestor
Mesophile = surface dwelling (basically)
Extromphile = hot vent dwelling (basically)
Now, if the Common Ancestor was an extremophile, the mesophile eubacter and archaebacter should have SEPERATE adaptations to the surface environment. This does not seem to be the case.
If the Common Ancestor were a mesophile, the extremophile eubacter and archaebacter can be expected to have SEPERATE adaptations to high temperature and pressure. This DOES seem to be the case.
Now, the question is complicated by the fact that genetic exchange between eubacteria and archaebacteria HAS occured. However, the amount of gene transfer that would be required to place the common ancestor of the two lineages in an undersea vent or something similar would be rather drastic.
Re:That is utterly impractical; 3 other things (Score:2)
However, there is reason to think that they lived near the point of contact between the water and atmosphere. This was the ancient atmosphere, which had no appreciable oxygen content, but nonetheless, these organisms didn't live deep underground, like on Io.
There is even more reason to think that the common ancestor of the archael and eubacterial lineages (the single cell from which all present day life decended) lived in shallow, salt water.
Re:100 miles deep?? Explained! (Score:2)
Ack, another one... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ack, another one... (Score:1, Funny)
Except, of course, that life has been found so deep in the earth.
Re:Ack, another one... (Score:4, Interesting)
Than again, I'm not a biologist (IANAB) nor do I keep up with the news and happenings, although I agree this is definately nerd news. =)
Re:Ack, another one... (Score:2)
For the record, I like your comment, but I have one little nitpick.
Amino acids are left handed. DNA helices (the natural, common forms) are right handed.
Re:Ack, another one... (Score:2)
Only on 1 planet in nine...
If life as we know it can exist in harsh conditions, then it means that life (as we know it) could exist on a planet (with similar conditions).
P.S. how do you define life?
On the other hand... (Score:2)
Sounds reasonable: all of ours but one are. That one was either right-handed or achiral, I can't remember which.
Re:Your wrong (Score:2)
Personally, I think it's a critically important question to answer, because how we use a resource should be governed at least partly by whether it's renewable or not. Also, the answers should provide insights as to new ways to both use and possibly create resources.
Frex, imagine if a bacterial culture in your gas tank could be fed random garbage, and would output good quality fuel for your car. That's probably wildly optimistic, but you get the idea -- more practically, how about turning a garbage dump into a petroleum factory, by applying the appropriate conditions to the right bacterial culture.
So that's why I say that if we know how it happens, we can potentially USE it to create new resources.
Re:Your wrong (Score:2)
Well, "methane at depth" seems to be a bit more complex than simple CH4 at the surface. Gold points out that methane dissolves other hydrocarbons at greater depths -- see the end of a paragraph just below Figure 1 in this document [cornell.edu]. I think the isomer mixes refer to oil components other than methane, it's just a tad difficult to make 1C-to-4H molecules of shapes different than the methane shape. "The overall hydrocarbon composition corresponds to the equilibrium state at temperatures 1,300 to 1,500 C and pressures of 20 to 40 kb. The estimate is that this is the condition in the upper mantle at depths of 60 to 160 km." [cornell.edu]
Mantle volatile concentrations [mq.edu.au]
Note that these concentrations are pretty much steady state now.
"The calculated primary mantle concentrations include (in ppm) 1.5 N; 335 CO2 (where CO2 =total C); 673 H20,; 32 F; 20 Cl; 0.07 Br; 0.011 I; and 174 S."
Oh, good. Carbon is dissolved in the huge amount of magma material. 335 parts per million... of 4.043 x 10^24 kg [arizona.edu]... is 1.35 x 10^21 kg of carbon in the mantle. That's 1.35 x 10^24 g, compared to 65.5 x10^21 g of carbon in the crust [icsu-scope.org]. Based on those numbers (there are many other estimates), there still is ten times more carbon in the mantle than in the crust.
Carbon in subducted rock has to go someplace. There are five possibilities:
So now it's changed from primordial to subducted....
Yup, I'm listening to you. If the carbon did boil off, then carbon going through subduction zones must have been cycled by the oceanic crusts several times...so I listed those possibilities of what could happen to subducted carbon.
now you have to explain why most of the world's oil is found in failed rift basins far from subduction zones.
Subduction is merely how surface carbon can get back underneath the crust, and my above comments were wondering where it could go...and apparently some of it can dissolve in magma. However, if most of the world's oil is in rift basins...a rift basin is due to at least one fracture in the crust, which is likely to offer a path for hydrocarbons to migrate upward through the crust. So I'm not surprised at the relationship with rift basins (although modify "most of the world's oil" to "many of the known oil fields").
Yup, awful crimes. How was Copernicus punished?
Irrelevant.
Not irrelevant when you're claiming that disagreement with popular opinion is relevant.
I haven't seen him dismissing plate tectonics...
Theory outline [cornell.edu]
Look at the section entitled 'The Formation Process of the Earth'. Here he asserts that many of the earth's features are formed by impact, heat sources (incorrectly indentified as around the pacific) are the result of chemical reactions, and that the mantle is unmixed
Hmm. Yup, he is saying that there is only partial melting. I see at the end of Interpretations Based on the Carbon Stable Isotopes he points out that subduction cycling also would have affected the isotope ratios. I don't see why you think there are not heat sources around the Pacific "ring of fire", but I do find it hard to dismiss plate tectonics and a molten mantle. I wonder how Gold, the namer of the magnetosphere, presently believes the Earth's magnetic field is generated.
He does state that no gases were incorporated in Earth, so carbon, water, and nitrogen must have come from material within the planet.
That sounds like a direct contradiction to me.
I should have quoted: "very little gaseous material was incorporated", which is different from "no elements which are gases in the Earth's atmosphere".
Abiogenic theories don't care what kind of rock is near the surface, although obviously an impermeable cap is needed for a reservoir where we tap one.
I've been trying to get this into your head - IF abiogenic theories were correct, THEN we would find oil where there was no source rock, or where the source rock had never been heated, BUT we don't.
Look over my previous comments, or start with Gold's deep drilling in Sweden. There are many examples of hydrocarbon finds which are not explained by biogenic source rocks.
There also are issues about the temperature and pressures being insufficient to create biogenic oil in shallow sedimentary rocks.
Care to cite any references?
"Temperatures and pressures in the sedimentary blanket are certainly far from the conditions necessary to account for the isomeric composition characteristic of all natural oils." [cornell.edu]
Carbon dioxide is not methane
Yes, and this is entirely the point; volcanoes are well known for emitting carbon dioxide, but not for methane. It's a pity Gold didn't put in any references for Hawaii, apart from 'eyewitness accounts'. After all, significant non-biogenic methane emissions from Hawaii would actually give him some evidence.
I was just pointing out that there is carbon coming from that Hawaiian hot spot which is a little far from subduction carbon sources. Carbon in any form in this location is interesting, however it has been pointed out to me that the hot spot might be melting ocean-floor carbon deposits, so the carbon could be coming from freshly-melted rock at the edge of the hot area rather than from primary magma.
Mmmmh. Recharge ? (Score:2)
Re:Ack, another one... (Score:2)
Something to do with the effect of ultraviolet light breaking the molecules... if I remember rightly.
So, in an environment where UV is not a problem, lefthanded molecules would be stable.
How low? (Score:3, Funny)
For some reason I thought this story was going to be about Slashdot.
Re:How low? (Score:2)
Actually... When I read, "Life confirmed at extreme depths", I was actually thinking of the previous article on SMP support for OpenBSD [slashdot.org]. Someone get those guys an extension cord... or a flashlight...
Life can be hardy... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's amazing how basic lifeforms can adapt and evolve to thier surroundings. There is also a small cave in the area around the arctic that scientists found that was esentially a bubble inside solid rock, it was found by accident.
It had inside it a small ecosystem with insect life that had evolved completely isolated from the outside world. None of the species had eyes because of the pitch black inside the bubble. Nor did they have any coloring at all, they were all translucent. Unfortunatly I only saw this on a documentry, but the transcript is online.
Link is here [bbc.co.uk]Re:Life can be hardy... (Score:2, Informative)
There is a large lake under the Antarctic icepack. There is considerable debate on whether to drill through 4 miles of ice to get samples of the ancient water, and possibly find ancient bacteria. The anti-drilling side points out that any drilling raises the possibility of contamination with modern bacteria.
Re:Life can be hardy... (Score:3, Informative)
DR SERBAN SARBU (Cave Biologist): We very soon realised that in fact this cave had never had an entrance, a natural entrance, was never opened to the surface and this artificial shaft that we descended was the only possible access into the system.
NARRATOR: It was like a bubble trapped in rock. Until it was broken into nothing from the surface had got into it, perhaps for millions of years. What they had found was a world as dark and isolated as Lake Vostok. To begin with they found nothing out of the ordinary, just a series of cramped tunnels. But when they arrived at a small pool there was a surprise in store for them.
SERBAN SARBU: The first surprise that I experienced was that we found a lot of animals present and when I say animals I think of spiders, centipedes, wood lice.
It wasnt in Vostok, it was in Romania.
Re:Life can be hardy... (Score:3, Informative)
Cave critters without eyes are not new. The new thing in this was that there were hydrogen sulfide eating bacteria which formed the base of the food chain.
Pity you didn't put that in your original post. It would have been quite interesting. Consider this: the same article has speculation that Lake Vostak may have been a rift valley. That might imply the same sort of hot springs which made the ecosystem in Romania possible.So you read the article, but didn't summarize it well enough for me to be able to tell what your point was. Sorry for the unjustified criticism.
Re:Life can be hardy... (Score:2, Funny)
Am I the only one that sees the link between that bbc article and Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness?
Giant cavity beneath ice in the middle of antarctica, surrounded by mountain ranges, and previously unknown lifeforms, millions of years old, evolved separately from the life on the rest of the planet. How long until we meet the Elders?
I recommend the book to everyone, really good one.
Um, 100s of miles? (Score:1, Insightful)
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?
Re:Um, 100s of miles? (Score:5, Funny)
-- Other bacteria, frozen into chunks of ice in a Washington laboratory, have thrived inside a high-pressure container and went right on reproducing after they were exposed to pressures equivalent to life at the bottom of an ocean 100 miles deep.
Oh, right. Forgot that no one reads the article anymore...
m-
Re:Um, 100s of miles? (Score:2)
Well, it would be easy to RTFA if Slashdot wouldn't absolutely destroy any chance of actually READING the article. Therefore, I had two options, comment on the submission text or wait for someone to post the text of the original article. Guess what? I went with the submission text because I (incorrectly) assumed that the submitter had done some basic fact-checking before it had been submitted.
Please, PLEASE submitters....I know you get excited when you come across an article you can submit to Slashdot, but please take the time to actually fact-check your submission. In all likelihood, the page/server it's hosted on will disappear within 5 minutes of being posted.
Next... (Score:1, Funny)
ok, not funny, but it had to be said.
truly amazing. next thing you know, they will discover a silicon based life form (besides pamala anderson), and call in mulder and scully...wait...i already saw that episode...
-frozen
The importance of this.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The importance of this.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Humans are natually Bigots (Score:3, Interesting)
Humans (which I am one) tend to view the world through a very narrow perspective. We see things on the terms which we live within. Our existance is within a small thin band of possible environments.
I mean does anyone seriously think that all that oil in the ground came from prehistoric vegetation?? This rock we call home is literally infested with life to the core (well to the mantle atleast).
With this new realization, is there any doubt that there exists life on other planets?
Re:Humans are natually Bigots (Score:5, Funny)
You KNOW you're hanging out at the wrong forum when someone has to preface their comment with THAT.
Re:Humans are natually Bigots (Score:2, Interesting)
Jumping to conclusions (Score:2)
Yes, there is still plenty of doubt. Nothing about this suggests an extraterestrial origin of any life that has been found. We just don't know if there was some unique accident that started it all, or if the earth was infected from an outside source.
It is an interesting data point, and it certainly is suggestive, particularly if we don't find any variety of simple life forms in any of the "extreme" environments in the solar system. Logically, the emergence of life is a pretty amazing thing, and I wouldn't believe it was even possible if we, ourselves, were not an existence proof.
On the level of pure speculation, it seems awefully strange for the origin of life to be a unique event in the universe, so either we are not alone, or there is some sort of multi-worlds thing going on and we are in one of the lucky worlds where life got started.
Of course, the other problem in trying to meet the neighbors is that they might be so out of scale with us that we wouldn't know they exist even of we overlapped in physical range.
Re:Humans are natually Bigots (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Humans are more than animals. (Score:2)
Not news... (Score:2, Funny)
I thought this... (Score:2, Redundant)
Then I realized they weren't talking about depths of depravity...oh well.
Not really new. (Score:2)
I think the most news worth portion of this article is the fact that this guy has acquired a multimillion dollar NASA grant, not that he has found anything new.
Here's the text if the link is down: (Score:5, Informative)
San Francisco, December, 2002
Goldmine yields clues for life on Mars
Radioactive bacteria live deep in the Earth - and maybe elsewhere.
9 December 2002
TOM CLARKE
Mine dwelling bacteria may be similar to the first life on Earth
© GettyImages
There are tiny creatures living off radiation in ancient pockets of water several kilometres beneath the Earth's surface, say researchers.
The microbes seem to have been isolated for hundreds of millions of years. Similar conditions might exist beneath the surface of Mars.
"Anywhere you have a crust with uranium and water in it, you have the potential for life," microbiologist Tullis Onstott, of Princeton University, New Jersey, told this week's American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
As you go deeper, the chemicals essential for normal life - organic matter and oxygen - disappear. And you get crushed and cooked, as temperature and pressure rise.
Microbes have been found a kilometre or so beneath the Earth's surface before. But cost and contamination with shallower bugs have hindered scientists looking deeper for life.
Working with miners in the world's deepest holes - 3.5 kilometre-deep South African goldmines - Onstott and his colleagues found hot water rich in bacteria.
The water is loaded with dissolved hydrogen gas, at a concentration up to a hundred million times higher than normal. Radioactive isotopes in the water show that the gas could only have formed by radioactive energy from surrounding uranium deposits splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen, argues Onstott.
Researchers had speculated that bacteria might make hydrogen in this way, but it has never been seen before. "It's a completely novel system for supporting life," says John Baross, who studies deep-sea bacteria at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The mine-dwelling bacteria are hard to grow in the lab. Genetic evidence suggests that some of the microbes are related to a species called Pyrococcus abyssi, which lives in hot, deep-sea vents.
These bacteria are thought to be similar to the first life on Earth. They use hydrogen and sulphur to survive without oxygen.
Other genetic sequences of microbes in the mine water are unlike those of any other species. Onstott says that he would not be surprised if the mine contained new species with new types of metabolism.
Radioactive dating by Onstott's colleagues suggests that some pockets of mine water have been isolated for several hundred million years. "The dinosaurs came and went while this water has been down there," he says.
If the microbes can be grown and their workings probed, they should provide new insights into primitive life, Baross adds.
Missions to Mars could look for life by sniffing for hydrogen seeping up from deep in the planet's crust, says Onstott. Mars has some water and uranium, although less than Earth.
© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002
A little paranoia... (Score:3, Funny)
The food supply is so sparse that the bugs reproduce maybe only once in a thousand, or perhaps even a million years. That means organisms the scientists are seeing today have had little opportunity to change since the earliest history of life on earth.
Allow me to be the first to put a paranoid spin on the whole issue... where a microbe has lain nearly dormant for 65 million years, living on the odd hydrogen atom, patiently waiting for its chance to do for humankind what it did for the dinosaurs. Nobody is safe this time!
Ok, now that I've exercised my paranoia... I'll calm myself with the knowledge that any bug that has evolved to metabolize the odd hydrogen atom would probably burn up (metabolically speaking) in a highly corrosive atmosphere, such as one containing a whopping 20% oxygen.
Re:A little paranoia... (Score:2)
>
> Allow me to be the first to put a paranoid spin on the whole issue... where a microbe has lain nearly dormant for 65 million years, living on the odd hydrogen atom, patiently waiting for its chance to do for humankind what it did for the dinosaurs. Nobody is safe this time!
Awright, so it's more like the Deep Hot Slow Biosphere :-)
I find the idea of an cell that divides on such a long timeframe fascinating - how the hell does it store its chemical/energy supply and keep it stable for so damn long before finally having "enough" to do cell division? (or budding?)
Any bio geeks now how these things actually reproduce? (I'm imagining a rock-ful of these would show them in various stages of division. Or does the reproduction actually proceed quickly, relying on a 1000-year accumulated store of energy?)
Non-Linear Cause and Effect! (Score:5, Funny)
> It is also at Nature.Com, but that server is already rejecting connects.
Effect preceeding Cause -- a server going down just *before* being Slashdotted. What's next, "first posts" before the topic is up? Stories repeated before they're posted in the first place? Dogs and cats living together?!
Re:Non-Linear Cause and Effect! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Non-Linear Cause and Effect! (Score:2)
This is the first post of 2003!
Oceans are still vastly unknown (Score:2, Troll)
The articles featured by this Slashdot story focus on recent research that proves life exists many miles beneath the surface of the ocean.
Also, I just read an article [cnn.com] over at CNN about how typhoons, while dangerous, are absolutely necessary to sustain marine life for undersea creatures.
The ocean truly is a beautiful work of science/art, even more so after each new discovery is uncovered.
Kudos to the marine biologists that every 7th grade student wants to be!
Well duh! (Score:5, Funny)
Geez... some news flash... it's only 131 years late!
Re:Well duh! (Score:2)
Well, this is slashdot...
useful? (Score:2, Interesting)
-- George W. Bush: 1000x better than Clinton the Ass Clown.
Re:Your Sig (Score:2, Offtopic)
What? (Score:2)
you may wish to learn to spell simple english words before you post
I really don't wish to. One thing you might wish to do is learn how to make a coherent logical argument, and avoid ad-hominm attacks. Calling someone a moron because they disagree with you is not an effective way to change peoples minds, and in general makes other people take your words in lower regard.
Mirror of SF article (Score:3, Informative)
Microbes thrive in the harshest environments Research findings give scientists hope of discovering life on planets
Scientists pondering the possibility of life on distant planets have discovered colonies of earthly microbes thriving in more extreme environments than any they have found before.
-- Bacteria are busily reproducing in the total darkness of water- bearing rocks 2 1/2 miles deep inside a South African gold mine, where the rocks themselves have apparently been isolated from the outside atmosphere for about 400 million years.
-- Other bacteria, frozen into chunks of ice in a Washington laboratory, have thrived inside a high-pressure container and went right on reproducing after they were exposed to pressures equivalent to life at the bottom of an ocean 100 miles deep.
The search for these hardy microbes on Earth -- known to science as "extremophiles" -- has been a high-priority project for NASA space planners, whose unmanned planetary probes have already been seeking evidence of life on Mars as well as Europa and other ice-covered moons of Jupiter.
DEEP PROBE
And the NASA spacecraft called Cassini, now on its way to explore the ringed planet Saturn, will be sending a probe deep beneath the thick atmosphere of Titan, one of Saturn's major satellites, to learn whether some form of life -- or at least life's essential chemicals -- might lie on that mystery moon's surface.
Scientists have long been wondering just what kind of life they might expect and what kind of unearthly conditions such living organisms might be able to withstand.
Until now, researchers in NASA's Astrobiology Institute, whose headquarters are at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, and also at the nearby independent SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute have speculated, theorized and experimented with various concepts for life in extreme environments.
Other scientists have already found microbes thriving in deep mines, in the boiling waters of Yellowstone's geysers, in the sub-zero dry valleys of Antarctica, in the saltiest of brines and the driest of deserts far from any water at all.
At the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco this week, where nearly 10,000 scientists have gathered to report research in every discipline from space physics to seismology to oceanography, some of the scientists were reporting on the possible conditions for life in outer space.
BACTERIA IN DEEPEST MINES
Tullis C. Onstott , a Princeton University geologist reported on the international team that found the bacteria living in the bottom of the deepest gold mines in South Africa.
The mines' rock formations, Onstott said, are about 2.7 million years old, and vast quantities of salt water circulate through them at temperatures of about 135 degrees Fahrenheit.
The scientists drilled boreholes into the blackness of fracture zones in the rocks at the bottom of those mines to obtain more than 100 samples of water and gas, and they found bacteria there thriving on enormous concentrations of hydrogen that provided them with energy for growth, Onstott said.
In another report from the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, Anurag Sharma described the "interesting effects on cellular physiology" that he and his colleagues at the institute observed during their experiments with two species of bacteria under high pressure.
INHABITANT OF HUMAN GUT
One species was the common Escherichia coli , well known as an inhabitant of the human gut, and the other was Shewanella oneidensis, which the Department of Energy hopes to use in its efforts to clean up uranium from contaminated wastes at the old World War II Hanford reactor sites in Washington state.
Both species, Sharma said, were exposed to extremely high pressures inside the water cores of ice blocks and continued healthily reproducing after the ice was thawed and the pressure was reduced to normal.
Life yes, but intelligent? (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Life yes, but intelligent? (Score:2)
Now, finding the quality among the junk, that's what the search for intelligence is about. Just remember, the difference between "junk" and "antiques" lies in the quality of the paint job.
Re:Life yes, but intelligent? (Score:2)
Re:Life yes, but intelligent? (Score:2)
Pressure? So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
You have it right! Mostly (Score:3, Informative)
Bacteriocidal effects of High Pressure (Score:3, Interesting)
I would have been more surprised if they had been destroyed.
Here's a surprise then, gas exchange is not the only process affected. One effect is that the equilibrium states of chemical reactions which alter pressure are affected (A consequence of Le Chatelier's principle). Another is that the solvent properties of water are subtly affected, causing some proteins to denature.
In fact, the effect is pronounced enough that it can be used commercially to perform pasturization (both with and without heat). Here's a link to a company called Avure [fresherunderpressure.com] which offers High Pressure Pasturization equipment.
They're out to kill us! (Score:5, Funny)
With an infinite supply of oil, we'll soon burn out way into a cataclysmic Greenhouse Effect that will turn the Earth into a moist version of Venus, allowing them to colonize the surface.
You've been warned!
Stefan
Re:They're out to kill us! (Score:2)
Life as we know it. (Score:3, Funny)
"Houston, we are landing on big rock number one, as planned... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... contact."
(Days later)
"Ok, Houston, we are ready to depart. Our tests show no signs of life. We are coming back."
(One hundred years later)
"Ouch! Mom, I think something just scratched my back."
(Two hundres years later)
"Hmm, I don't see anything. You've probably just imagined it. Come on dear, it's time for your nap. I'll wake you up in 360 millenia, when dinner is ready."
The Great Slow Kings (Score:2)
In related news... (Score:2, Funny)
Key Distinction (Score:3, Informative)
I was really excited about this (Score:2)
Implications for life's origin (Score:4, Informative)
This theory is being contested, as described in this article [bbc.co.uk], which claims that life may have first arisen in the depths of the ocean, sheltered in a pre-cellular state inside of iron sulphide pockets. Since life can survive beneath the surface, and if it can arise without the need for an atmosphere, then it might indeed exist almost anywhere that liquid water is present.
Slash Pr0n (Score:3, Funny)
"...hot, deep bacteria..."
This sounds suspiciously like some of the bizarre porn spam I get...
Re:Slash Pr0n (Score:2)
Even as I write this, teams of geeks and nerds on five continents are trying to find a way to make them breed on the surface - or at least in an Athlon.
Slashdot Effect (Score:2)
"It is also at Nature.Com, but that server is already rejecting connects."
The Slashdot Effect is several years old now. It's about !@#$ing time they started to learn how to dive for cover!
life from the bowels of the earth (Score:3, Funny)
I'll bet you 2:1 that it's probably already maxed out it's karma on
(Probably has more accepted posts than me, too.)
I always do wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:I always do wonder (Score:2)
Interesting Fiction on the Subject (Score:2)
I'm now reading the sequel _Maelstrom_. I recommend both these books (tho I'm not quite through with the 2d yet).
In any event, the science in these books is very interesting and accurate AFAIK. A bit cyberpunk, a bit Jules Verne, all in all worth the read, IMHO.
old, old story (Score:2)
Re:Oilfields auto-replenishing (Score:2)
Besides, dead bacteria don't hold nearly enough energy potential. Dead plants, with all of that trapped sunlight, do.
Similar situation: Aquifers in Texas (Score:2)
T. Boone Pickens (yes, the famous oilman, corporate raider, and greenmailer [famoustexans.com] from the '80s) is taking a cue from his fossil fuel days, and is now entering the fossil water business. His plan is to tap the water under the Panhandle for use by big, thirsty Texas cities like Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. Nobody's buying his water yet... [kcitfox14.com] but that's what they probably said 150 years ago when some guys in Pennsylvania figured out how to get that black, gooey stuff out of the ground.
(obligatory on-topic note: there probably used to be some really interesting microbes in the Edwards Aquifer before we started pushing rusty pipes into it...)
Re:Um, the Mariana Trench? 24 miles deep? (Score:5, Informative)
The complete write up is here. [extremescience.com] The Mariana Trench is a fairly large subduction feature; the Challenger Deep being the deepest point.
BTW, 35,813 / 5,280 = 6.7827 miles (which would be somewhat shy of 24).
Re:IN SOIVET RUSIA (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:2010 (Score:2, Funny)
Except Sulphuropa
Attempt no minings there
Wash hands together
And cook on high heat