Glass-Eating Microbes

JoeyPea writes "Researchers have found that volcanic glass (super-cooled lava) in the ocean's upper crust is eaten by microbes. The researchers found tiny tubular tunnels bored through the rock. The breakdown of volcanic rock was thought to be a chemical/physical process, but now it obviously has a biological component."

Comments

Uses in chip fab?

[RadioheadKid]

I wonder if these microbes could be used in the silcon chip fabrication process...probably not precise enough or small enough, but there's got to be a good application somewhere.

KidA

Re:Uses in chip fab?

[Arjuna Theban]

It would probably have no use, since they are way too slow to be used in real processing. There are many ways to etch glass or pyrex (Na doped glass) etc using HF, H3PO4 etc. I can see people trying it out in R&D but hell, I'm not gonna wait for a few years to finish a device.

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There's got to be a good application

[Anonymous Coward]

For those beer bottles with the twist off caps that don't twist off. Many injured hands could be avoided if the beer would just eat it's own way out.

Interesting...

[hhe_hee]

I wonder if that just applies to oceanic crusts, maybe they're all over the planets crust but no one have checked it.

This could mean that some number of theories will have to be reviewed. Also I wonder how this will influence for example the carbon cycle, maybe some long-term climate simulations must be remade.

It doesn't hurt me.

[L3WKW4RM]

I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me.

Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted

Wow..

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this actually mean that the shoddy science presented in "Virtuosity" could actually have some of its outrageous flaws explained away by bacteria?

Are these microbes silicon based?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a carbon based microbes process silicon? Or are they simply eating carbon material embedded in the glass?

It's not silicon

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh nevermind.

I just read the article, and it states that it is "glassy" lava, rather than specifically silicon. Thereafter, the article used the word glass, but it is really just glassy lava.

Lava isn't necessarily silicon. Lava is what generated the Hawaiian islands, and certainly breaks down into dirt.

Re:It's not silicon

[Anonymous Coward]

The mineral is silica. It has silicon as a component but is really a silicon oxide. The mineral is the basic component in most rock. Marine crust is mineralogically different from continental crust. It is richer in iron, magnesium, and number of other metals and characteristically heavier minerals. Marine volcanic glass tends to be basaltic in mineralogy. Obsidian is mineralogically closer to rhyoloite and granite. It is all volcanic glass to us lay folk.

Re:It's not silicon

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass
A homogeneous material with a random, liquidlike (non-crystalline) molecular structure. The manufacturing process requires that the raw materials be heated to a temperature sufficient to produce a completely fused melt, which, when cooled rapidly, becomes rigid without crystallizing.
- Corning Museum of Glass

It appears that "glassy lava" would qualify...

Potential for future chip failures?

[Telecommando]

If they can eat glass, then it's possible they could eat silicon chips as well. In fact, they may already be doing it and we just haven't discovered them yet. Someone wrote a SF story years ago about geneticly engineered bacteria attacking silicon but it's too early in the mormning for me to remember much about it.

Gives a whole new meaning to "computer bug" though, doesn't it?

Re:Potential for future chip failures?

[orasio]

Gives a whole new meaning to "computer bug" though, doesnt it?

Does not. Computer bugs were actually bugs that used to eat wires in early computers, that's why they are called "bugs".

Re:Potential for future chip failures?

[J.Random Hacker]

Actually, the archetypal bug was a moth that shorted out a pair of contacts in an early computer. It didn't eat anything. It was just attracted by the light of the tubes and landed in a bad location. Grace Murray Hopper was working on that machine at the time. IIRC, the unfortunate moth was duely taped into the log book.

Lava Bacteria

[Conare]

I remember several years ago someone discovered Some bacteria that were hanging around underwater vocanic vents in temperatures of 160-180 degrees F. It makes me wonder when the tunnels were created w.r.t. when the lava cooled. Perhaps the tunnels were created by microorganisms that were harvesting a heat source? Or maybe I just had one too many cups of coffee.

Mutant 59?

[Chris Wheeler]

I read a SF book about bacteria that ate plastic. Caused a lot of grief in the world. I think it was called Mutant 59.

What a Scientific method...

[huckda]

The 'researchers' CLAIM that microbes are eating the lava-glass because there are 'tubular gaps' in the glass...

I would think that with a mining operation as extensive as this that they would be able to FIND at LEAST 1 little tiny microbe instead of 'traces of'...we have TRACES of dinosaurs...but do they actually exist today? umm nope. Show me a microbe THEN tell me they actually exist instead of guessing that since there is 'biological matter' attached to the glass that there must be a microbe eating it.

Bahumbug