Microbe Mat the Size of Greece Discovered In the Sea

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A mat of microbes the size of Greece has been discovered on the sea floor off the Pacific coast of South America. 'These tiny creatures can join together to create some of the largest masses of life on the planet... A single liter of seawater, once thought to contain about 100,000 microbes, can actually hold more than one billion microorganisms...'"

Re:Plenty of (little) fish in the sea

[Magic5Ball]

More importantly there are plenty of unexplored function libraries in the 1 billion marine microbial species waiting to activate.

Hurry!

[arcite]

Yang is building a planetbuster, we much achieve transcendence with planet before its too late! Move a foil ship to that microbe hex stat!

first psot

[Anonymous Coward]

At the bottom of the ocean is a good metaphor for Greece's economy right now!

Re:

[derrida]

Reminds me of the swarm [wikipedia.org]. Disclaimer: I am Greek.

Microbe mat

[AnotherAnonymousUser]

It's not a bug, it's a fixture!

Re:

[sznupi]

Was there any doubt that microbes own our planet and merely tolerate us? (heck, more bacterial DNA in your body than human one...)

Re:Ray of Science

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

What's this? A science story from NewYorkCountyLawyer?.....

Actually there is a bit of evidence, not publicly available, which would support your theory that I may have been a little bit out of my element with this story:

This was the first of my 232 stories that was actually improved by the Slashdot editor.

Subconscious influence

[zogger]

You probably picked this article to submit because of your daily dealings with other types of slime molds.

Re:

[Locke2005]

So, what insights into RIAA behavior can we gain by studying these microbes? I'd say they are lower than whale shit, but they appear to be at exactly the same depth as whale shit... (and those microbes are pretty low too!)

Don't worry...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The structure that looks surprisingly like a gigantic neural network is not, repeat not, the repository of a vast and vengeful consciousness of the murky deeps.

Please carry on with your regularly scheduled consumption.

Re:

[blankinthefill]

No, but it would be prefect cover for the REAL vast and vengeful consciousness of the murky deeps! I fear, my brethren, that we have found the storied Leviathan. The end is nigh, for soon is will shed its covering layer, and destroy us all! Lament and weep, for the end of days has come! (Well, not ME, actually, since it's aquatic, and I live in Colorado... but all the rest of you sea side slobs are doooooomed!)

Re:

[AnonymousClown]

Don't be so secure there mountain man!

What makes you think it can't travel in fresh water and follow the rivers and streams to you?! Or even just pick up and slime it's way up the Rockies devouring every living creature in its path?

No one will be safe!

Re:

[mswhippingboy]

I'm not worried. If this is truly a "vast and vengeful consciousness" we can easily take it down. Quick, someone call Exxon.

Re:

[dow]

I think we should nuke it just to see what happens. This wouldn't be with the intention of killing it, but rather helping it to evolve faster... and just in case it is intelligent, let it know who's boss.

Re:

[tsm_sf]

It's not a bomb, it's a giant fast forward button!

Re:

[Nutria]

This wouldn't be with the intention of killing it, but rather helping it to evolve faster

But water kills it.

(Ok, what book am I referring to?)

Re:

[aquila.solo]

But water kills it.
(Ok, what book am I referring to?)

The Wizard of Oz?

Re:

[Nutria]

A big mass of rapidly-evolving alien "cells" was not in TWoO.

Re:

[aquila.solo]

Yeah, I didn't figure that's what you were referencing; The Wizard of Oz isn't exactly on the /. bestseller list. I was just trying to make a weak attempt at humor/cross-reference with the "water kills it" line. Care to educate me, or is Google going to be my friend?

Re:

[Nutria]

Google is always your friend. I'll give you a hint, though: Michael Chricton.

Also, I made a mistake: it's a movie.

Re:

[Nf1nk]

Can't remember the name, but that movie was abysmal... It either made no sense at all, or was a waste of half a day

Re:

[Nutria]

Hah. Andromeda Strain was a great movie. 20x better than the action movie crap they peddle nowadays.

Occasional nuggets like Lord of War remind me that there's a smidgen of competence remaining in Hollywood.

How can we trust you?

[mister_playboy]

Liar. Your user name implies you may be the avatar of this very consciousness!

Re:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

No, not that one. It'd be beneath my proud eukaryotic dignity to be housed in a gooey mass of prokaryotic pond scum, however large.

You, er... might want to stay away from eastern Oregon [wikipedia.org], though.

Re:

[sznupi]

So...why did you seem trying to protect its existence?...

Re:

[sznupi]

I think I would actually prefer that to, say, hairy man posing as highschool girls on the internet.

Re:

[gront]

Don't call Cthulhu a microbial mat... just upsets his dreams. They do have the "size of Greece" thing right.

Re:

[AussieNeil]

Someone has been reading "Wang's Carpets" by Greg Egan

Re:

[Locke2005]

Somebody has seen Avatar too many times... although coming from your nick, this statement is almost as disturbing as the Goth t-shirts that read "Don't be silly, there is no such thing as vampires!"

Re:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I did see Avatar once; but the "gigantic neural net that doesn't like you much" thing is pure Alpha Centauri... damn xenofungus.

Re:

[hawkfish]

The structure that looks surprisingly like a gigantic neural network is not, repeat not, the repository of a vast and vengeful consciousness of the murky deeps.

Nor is it Leviathan [wikipedia.org].

"May great Cthulhu rise and eat them!"
  - Howard the Dolphin

Is there economy better than Greece's?

[davidwr]

Hmmm???

Re:Is there economy better than Greece's?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, there is.

I believe you meant to say....

[tpgp]

I believe you meant to say, "Yes, their is."

Re:

[crimperman]

whoosh!

Re:

[SleazyRidr]

Am I missing something, or is there an element here at /. that thinks that apostrophes are always wrong?

The real question is

[Anonymous Coward]

can I eat it?

No,the real question is

[M8e]

will it blend?

Re:

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Can it produce a viable gasoline substitute?

the size of Greece?

[jothar hillpeople]

does this mean we will need to bail them out as well?

Re:the size of Greece?

[besalope]

does this mean we will need to bail them out as well?

That might be rough, I hear they have a lot of sunken assets.

Re:

[aquila.solo]

Seeing as it's off the west coast of Chile, wouldn't Pacifis be a better name?

Re:

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

It's probably the remains of all the people Pinochet dropped into the sea in the 70's.

Begin secret project: Voice of Planet

[Arancaytar]

Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind
Have you drunk your fill?

It really would be amazing if such an organism gained sentience...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Alpha Centauri was such a nice game ...

Re:

[d1r3lnd]

Was? It still is! I Transcended earlier this morning, as a matter of fact.

Re:

[hitmark]

i would agree, the quotes alone are golden. And it didnt have the "RTS" like special resources that showed up in the later civ games.

i wonder tho, how many actually use the vehicle design system?

Re:

[simcop2387]

While the requiring of specific resources to build certain things is new, they (to some extent) have been there since at least civ 2 in the form of bonuses for production.

Re:

[hitmark]

there is quite a difference between a general bonus to production, and having to hunt out specific kinds of resources to get anywhere. Still, i guess its more accurate, in that it forces trade and military activity rather then just find a corner of the map and wall up.

Re:

[laron]

i would agree, the quotes alone are golden.
No doubt about that :)

Makes me think of Lem's Solaris

[xmark]

I don't recall that he addressed how the inscrutable sentient ocean actually came to be.

In any case, Solaris gets my vote as one of the three greatest science fiction novels ever.

Re:

[Stevecrox]

I recently entered Solaris in a worst film off, it was against Webs and Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasses. The film conversion (both)are terrible.

Re:

[RandomFactor]

There's a Flinx story about it. It was called the VOM.

It wasn't a good neighbor.

Comparison to Greece?

[masmullin]

has anyone seen a map of Greece with all it's crazy islands and jagged coasts? How can you compare the size of anything to that country

Next time, compare vs something with a somewhat reasonable shape.

like Saskatchewan damnit!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Q:How many Rhode Islands Units are to 1 Greece Unit?

A: 131990/4002 km^2 = 32.981 Rhode Islands

Q:How many Football Fields are to 1 Greece Unit?

A: 131990000000/5351.2 m^2 = 24665495.590 Footbal Fields (American Football)

Q:How many Barns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit) [wikipedia.org] to 1 Greece Unit?

A: 131990000000/(1x10^-28) = 1.3199x10^39 Barns

Re:

[Hurricane78]

Perhaps they meant the size of an average Greek hair mat: http://www.geheimshop.de/images/product_images/thumbnail_images/1290_0.jpg [geheimshop.de] (example picture) :D

Re:

[BikeHelmet]

like Saskatchewan damnit!

Your province [comeexplorecanada.com] resembles a skirt. [wordpress.com]

But you may be right. It should be easier to measure size on a 2D landscape.

Re:

[Arancaytar]

And how much surface area is that in unfolded libraries of congress, anyway?

Re:

[Logaan]

like Saskatchewan damnit!

Then the article would have to be titled:

"Microbe Mat ~1/5th the Size of Saskatchewan Discovered In the Sea"

Doesn't quite have that same ring to it.

Re:

[DarthVain]

However comparing anything to Saskatchewan you run the risk of people assuming it is boring as hell and stop listening to you...

"Hey come to Saskatchewan, we're, er, rectangle, and flat and stuff..."

Re:

[wowbagger]

has anyone seen a map of Greece with all it's crazy islands and jagged coasts? How can you compare the size of anything to that country

Next time, compare vs something with a somewhat reasonable shape.

like Saskatchewan damnit!

Or Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana! Square states 4evar!

Re:Comparison to Greece?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

A mat of microbes the size of Greece

I don't care what country you use for comparison. I'm scared by microbes the size of any country!

Don't be scared. Microbes are your friend.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying you, for one, welcome our country-sized microbe overlords?

Re:Comparison to Greece?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Are you saying you, for one, welcome our country-sized microbe overlords?

No. Of course not. What do you take me for?

I'm saying these are the good microbes, who are our friends, and will help to protect us from the bad microbes who wish to be colonize, and ultimately devour, us.

Your imagination is running riot. I wish you would calm down, and rely upon science, as I do.

That's no microbe mat...

[dangitman]

It's the lost city of Atlantis!

Re:

[Alexandra Erenhart]

Now we know the REAL source of this "mat"... ok, who was it?

Name?

[gmuslera]

Considering that is related to (the size of) Greece and that it could grow more, maybe in the future could be called Gaia?

Re:

[Jeremi]

Considering that is related to (the size of) Greece and that it could grow more, maybe in the future could be called Gaia?

I think 'Cthulu' might be more appropriate.

Test of time

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Just goes to show what can happen when you give something 4-5 billion years to debug.

Re:

[thms]

Greg Egan had a nice extrapolation (spoilers) in his Wang's Carpets short (later expanded in the novel Diaspora) that on top of such a large biomass, or rather inside it, a completely virtual world is computed. I.e. the computation substrate is not silicon but biomass following certain rules. This computed universe did not interact with the outside world (and that world lacking predators, it didn't have to) but just created a virtual self contained world.

did I miss something?

[eallanjr]

Now I know I didn't read TFA, but how does the RIAA/MPAA fit into this story? Are they suing the microbes for copyright infringement as well?? Heartless bastards.

Re:

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Now I know I didn't read TFA, but how does the RIAA/MPAA fit into this story? Are they suing the microbes for copyright infringement as well?? Heartless bastards.

:)

Perhaps as previously unidentified microorganisms that live without oxygen, in the muck?

Re:

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Now I know I didn't read TFA, but how does the RIAA/MPAA fit into this story?

Don't pigeonhole me man. After all I did go to Bronx High School of Science.

There's ...

[PPH]

... a fungus among us.

Re:

[thijsh]

Oh oh... please allow me to 'Speak Free'... we'll have 'Trouble in 421' when this fungus 'Version' of the strain 'Psychopsilocybin' raises to the 'Medium's surface.
We might have to proclaim 'Take Me to Your Leader' or we're 'Shaft'-ed.
But 'The Answer' according to our doctor 'Azwethinkweiz' is to let it 'Sink Beneath the Line' of 'Hilikus'.

Oh yeah, and 'You Will Be A Hot Dancer'!

I, for one...

[magsol]

...welcome our new plankton [wikipedia.org] overlords!

Huh, seems they survived the Cambrian after all...

[Colin Douglas Howell]

Interesting. Such giant microbial mats used to be the dominant biological communities in the Precambrian, often forming structures called stromatolites, but most of them were believed to have met their demise during the Cambrian, when lots of new large multicellular critters could literally munch or burrow their way through them. Stromatolites are still present today in a few places, generally in environments too harsh for multicellular organisms to live in, like Shark Bay in Western Australia. But this discovery would indicate that large microbial mat communities proved more evolutionarily durable than previously thought.

Maybe this is how fossil fuels are actually made

[symbolset]

A long term gradient from this to the oxygen free microbes [slashdot.org] we've recently heard about and you've got a life cycle that creates oil. Now if that's the case we should capture some samples, diddle some DNA to accellerate the process and create an algae sequence that takes garbage and produces gasoline - or experiences runaway growth and turns the entire planet into green slime.

Hm... the plot's going to need some work but for a rough sketch that will do for a start.

Re:

[mapkinase]

I find it strange that original article in SA does not present any pictures (or any other methodological reference for that matter) of the glorified "mat".

These tiny creatures can join together to create some of the largest masses of life on the planet, and researchers working on the decade-long Census of Marine Life project found one such seafloor mat off the Pacific coast of South America that is roughly the size of Greece.

That's it?

Re:Huh, seems they survived the Cambrian after all

[argStyopa]

Hasn't that been the general biological consensus recently?

Archaeo-lifeforms, being far less specialized seem to be able to both spread widely and cope with marginal or rapidly-changing conditions. Witness jellyfish, etc. When a biome's conditions are very stable over a long period of time, specialist organisms develop that are more efficient (at everything, really) and quickly outcompete the generalist, simpler older forms. As long as the older forms aren't completely extinguished (which logically I'd have to say is relatively unlikely, given their ability to occupy LOTS of niches simultaneously), when the environment again starts changing more rapidly, the specialist forms start to fail and the older generalists come again to the fore.

My guess would be that the location of this mat is otherwise fairly UNfriendly for more-developed forms, leaving it to happily churn away these millions of years without something discovering that it's tasty and nutritious (at least, not enough predators to outpace its reproductive rate).

RIAA connection?

[fyoder]

This is a bit of an odd submission from NewYorkCountryLawyer. Is the microbial mat a client? What sort of music is it accused of filesharing? That might give us some insight into its nature.

It would be really cool if it was the Leviathan. I'd like to see it go after the RIAA labels, towering over terrified Sony execs as they ran for their lives.

Imagine if you drank that 1 liter of water

[mysidia]

I bet the result would not be very fun...

Microbes the size of Greece

[oji-sama]

My god those are big microbes. (Pity the title seems to take an alternative view on the issue)

Woah they found the Blob

[youn]

everybody run for cover

Useless

[hellop2]

without pics.

Re:

[hellop2]

Well escuuuuuse me for wanting to see a picture of a giant slime blob/future overlord.

Our energy worries are over!

[Locke2005]

Quick, cover it with sediment, wait a few million years, and voila... more oil!

How do they breathe and receive food?

[howzit]

How do they breathe and receive food? even the cells of our bodies need circulated blood in vessels to receive oxygen and food. How would they do it if the weren't attached with vessels in between?

The Blob!

[thewiz]

Wasn't this the star of a 1958 movie? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051418/ [imdb.com]

Looks like it's working on a remake http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1501672/ [imdb.com]

Re:

[Zapotek]

Ooooh sick burn dude! /I'm Greek :P

Re:

[Stratoukos]

Thank god you said average, because I thought you were talking about me and I was about to start a flamewar.

Re:

[aquila.solo]

I don't make any claims to know about average Greek intelligence, but I'd imagine having Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Hippocrates, Socrates, Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes, etc., etc., in the sample would give them a pretty good head start.

Re:

[Locke2005]

Socrates wasn't so smart... in fact, I have it on good authority that his last words were, "I drank what?!?"

Re:

[Nutria]

Who thought it read Microsoft map the size of greece

Only you...