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Life Confirmed At Extreme Depths
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."
No, no, no. That would be life in the dark. (Like more readers are)
Thomas Gold is my Step Grandfather...How cool for him to be mentioned here. He is one smart guy.
Great Breakdown of Chemosynthesis [noaa.gov].
Quick image summary of chemosynthesis for the bored [bigelow.org].
Further topics for the bored.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
now maybe they'll find life on uranus...
Yes, and hot deep life no less.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Whoa there. Yes it was groundbreaking in the 70's. This has been a standard in Oceanographic texts since before I started. Sure its deeper than expected, but the overall picture is an extension of existing theory, not something new. And as far as farming... Hydrogen sulfide is poisonous and the vent temperatures are hot enough to melt the first thermometers used to measure them, so its not as easy as potatoes. And I would have to look at the bacterial production rates again, but I would guess that the entire global vent systems would not support much of a human population, let alone its appetite.
From http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/Life.html
All of biology is just a device for degrading energy available from chemical sources, and on the surface from the great temperature differential between the hot surface of the Sun and the cold of space. Perhaps biology is just a branch of thermodynamics, and there is no sudden beginning of life, but a gradual systematic development towards more and more efficient ways of degrading energy.
Of course, this implies that humans and our activities are a part of nature--which flys in the face of most modern day "environmentalists"
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That's wonderful if you're military, but how about everybody else? Remember, money doesn't come out of thin air. If Bush gives you money that means that less is available for somebody else.
IMHO it'd be much better if Bush stopped wasting so much money on war and gave all that to education. It seems America seriously lacks people who can see farther than their nose.
Bush just gave Military another pay raise. The man putting more money in my pocket certainly doesn't constitute an "evil fuck".
I'm sure hitler gave the military lots of pay rases. But he was still an evil fuck.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Life, don't talk to me about life!
Does the chip in your head hurt when you talk?