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

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.

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?