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Strange Bacteria Sustains Itself Without Sunlight

Hahnsoo writes "A colony of bacteria found 2.8 kilometers below the Earth's surface in a South African gold mine is able to sustain itself without energy from the Sun. While sub-surface colonies of microorganisms utilizing sulfur (mostly near deep sea hydrothermal vents) is not new, this particular colony is unusual. The colony does it by relying on radioactive uranium to split water into hydrogen gas. Thus, instead of solar energy and photosynthesis, this species relies on radioactive materials and sulfur/hydrogen to facilitate its energy needs. There is some speculation about life on other planets in the article as well."

35 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is this sunlight you speak of?

    We manage to sustain ourselves using colonies of microorganisms utilising twinkie bars and coke (mostly near mom's fridge).
    We rely on radiation from our CRT monitors and heat from mom's washing machine to act as a catalyst converting the food bars into into methane gas. Thus instead of having a nice basement, its a desolate wasteland where noone would dare to tread.

    There is some speculation about how life evolved inside such places (or should that be devolved).

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
    1. Re:Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      There is also some speculation about how these organisms manage to reproduce when they do not engage in any type of mating or sexual reproduction.

    2. Re:Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by rucs_hack · · Score: 5, Funny

      I beleive sexual reproduction is acheived through bumping into each other at star trek conventions.

    3. Re:Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's easy. They actually reproduce by "seeding" themselves through intar-web tubes, into what is known as a "bit-torrent."

    4. Re:Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by araemo · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I beleive sexual reproduction is acheived through bumping into each other at star trek conventions."

      Sadly, more true than many would realize...

    5. Re:Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      So that's why they say bumping uglies...

    6. Re:Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by CarpetShark · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think you mean by dragging outsiders to conventions, whereupon their bodies are possessed by the hive mind, thus increasing our numbers ;)

    7. Re:Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by Hoi+Polloi · · Score: 4, Funny

      It reproduces via mitosis. Eventually the parent organism becomes so large that it must split into two organisms or else risk splitting it's pants.

      --
      It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
    8. Re:Strange slashdotter sustained without sunlight by The_Honkey · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nice, some real world advice on how to talk to girls from Slashdot.

      --
      I am what I am and thats what I am -Popeye
  2. So now we have by cofaboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    So now we have completely different lifeforms available does that mean we have to go and kill them?

    --
    In the end, It's all bovine dung you know
    1. Re:So now we have by gbobeck · · Score: 5, Funny
      So now we have completely different lifeforms available does that mean we have to go and kill them?

      If Steve Irwin were still alive, he would capture it, thoroughly describe it to the viewers at home, shove his thumb up it's butt, and then say "Crikey, its a naughty boy!"
      --
      Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
    2. Re:So now we have by TheDreadSlashdotterD · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah, but crikey, that was great television.

      --
      I have nothing to say.
    3. Re:So now we have by bobscealy · · Score: 3, Funny

      More importantly - how are we supposed to threaten them with nukes? I mean would they be weapons or foreign aid?

  3. Inappripriate response #342 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Do they run linux?

  4. prior art by macadamia_harold · · Score: 5, Funny

    A colony of bacteria found 2.8 kilometers below the Earth's surface in a South African gold mine is able to sustain itself without energy from the Sun.

    Why is this news? Clearly you've never been to a Linux User's Group meeting.

    1. Re:prior art by Sique · · Score: 2, Funny

      You mean, LUGs might lose the patent on living in basements? Because the article states that those bacteria live there since at least 3 million years :)

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
  5. Well by bhebing · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's life Jim, but not as we know it!

    1. Re:Well by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2, Funny

      And...

      There's Klingons off the starboard bow!

      We come in peace, shoot to kill!

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  6. Re:Fuel source? by nickovs · · Score: 3, Funny

    It may not be totally green...

    OK, before someone else says it, it's not green at all because living without sunlight it has no chlorophyll!

    --
    If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
  7. Re:Fuel source? by Schraegstrichpunkt · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe it's Cobalt green with radioactive Cobalt-60. :-P

  8. This is strange? by Colin+Smith · · Score: 3, Funny

    I go away for a couple of weeks and my fridge grows green slime without any aid from sunlight at all.

    --
    Deleted
    1. Re:This is strange? by z0idberg · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thats because theres a light in there.

      And don't try to tell me it goes off when you close the door, cause I open it real fast sometimes and it is definately always on.

    2. Re:This is strange? by ajs318 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Even easier, just wire an ammeter in series with the refrigerator. If the current consumption drops when the door is closed, then you can suppose the light is going off.

      One time, I borrowed a brand new and very expensive digital amp/volt/ohm meter from university and took it home to my shared student flat with the intent to perform this very experiment. I set the fridge thermostat to defrost (so the motor would be off), unplugged the fridge from the wall and removed the screw and fuse from the mains plug. Then I pushed the booby-trapped plug into an (unplugged) extension lead, and plugged the extension lead into the wall (switched off at the socket). With no fixing screw, the only way to get the plug back out of the socket would be to force something like a knife in behind it, and it was the old style of plug with brass pins all the way (no plastic insulation around the centimetre nearest the plug, as you see today for the exclusive benefit of people trying to force plugs out of sockets with knives); so I really wanted that extension lead in circuit, just to make things easier when my experiment was concluded.

      I held the test probes of the AVO onto the fuseholder contacts (the live pin, and the brown wire to the fridge) in the dismantled plug; made sure my fingers were clear of anything that would become live; made sure again that my fingers were out of harm's way; and flicked the switch on the wall socket where the extension lead was plugged in.


      With hindsight, I probably should also have made sure that the AVO was set to measure AC current, not resistance, before commencing the experiment.

      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
  9. Re:Good news for life on earth by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 2, Funny

    We can blow this planet up, it can ice up to the equator or even shift on its axis and life will survive and take another shot in a few thousand millennia.

    So...we need to redesign our doomsday devices?

    --
    Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  10. Re:I'm not convinced by extraterrestrial argument by tgd · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thing is , I think life evolved in a fairly benevolent enviroment

    Yeah, and I think Shakira would have a great time spending a weekend naked with me, but I kind of suspect it might not be true....

  11. Not a simple question! by ScentCone · · Score: 1, Funny

    So now we have completely different lifeforms available does that mean we have to go and kill them?

    That depends on further testing. Does it go well on a pizza? Can you stuff it with crab meat (or crabpeople :P )? What wine goes with it? Can an entire industry, such as the bass boat industry, be built around it? Will killing one in some way enrage members of PETA? Does it want to kill us? Do spotted owls eat them? Are their implications for cosmetic products that reduce wrinkles? So many factors.

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  12. Re:Fuel source? by VinB · · Score: 1, Funny

    ->It may not be totally green but at least we can keep the genetically engineered, radioactive slime a couple of miles underground (that is, until it learns to crawl ...

    Now you stepped in it! Wait 'till the ACLU hears about this one.

  13. Re:Forgive my ignorance by cluckshot · · Score: 4, Funny

    First let me say that I am going to let anyone who want look up whatever they want. I will leave enough key words around to do the job.

    The concept of life doing nuclear reactions is not new. In 1799 Joseph Priestly doing a study on hens discovered that they emitted as egg shells and waste about 2 to 4 grams of Calcium not taken in by their diet. The process at the time was called "Transmutation of Elements." Subsequently it has been found that bean sprouts transmutate several elements including manganese into iron. (The top of the fusion energy set). This has been studied by the US Army and by the French Nuclear researchers. It is real. There are two Nobel prizes in the 1970's related to this.

    Nuclear reactors typically the type of the US Navy get problems with bacterial growth in their main cooling loops that cause blockage and cause the requirement for repairs.

    For those who are doing a bit of thinking.... (I know its really hard sometimes.) The process is now pretty well known and mapped out. The mitochondria of cells can and do Fusion reactions as well as some Fission reactions. In the hens if the making of potassium into calcium was their only reaction, they would heat up like a really big nuclear reactor. Fortunately for us all, the hens also do ENDOTHERMIC (heat absorbing) atomic reactions as well. The upshot of this shows up in a lot of places. It explains the differences in content of geologic sediments from their parent rocks. It explains a lot of other things as well. Life is very much a factor in the atomic mixture we find on a planet. What is more it completely messes up our cosmology. Yes you can get fusion without the nuclear containments of a star. In fact that isn't even needed at all in the whole universe.

    Curiously there has not been found any major geologic structure on earth that doesn't contain life. It probably penetrates to the core. I would suspect from this that the assumptions about life are all wrong. It is probably true that the entire universe is alive at every location to some degree. In terms of the science called Chemistry it also says that what we view atomic fission and fusion reactions as merely a spectrum of the chemical reaction series with Chemistry at the low end, Fission higher and Fusion still higher. There is also no prospect that this is the top of reactions.

    The purpose of this posting is to stimulate people into looking into the realities of our world rather than having them accept what they are spoon fed in school. (Your teacher and your textbooks might just be WRONG!) At the present there are several advancing sciences with working technologies that are pushing back the walls in energy and gravity research. Real breakthroughs have occured and they violate the "Rules" that are accepted. If your search engine is working, you might find some curious with reproducable experimental apparatus on the Anti-Gravity front out of Brazil using thermionic currents and mu metal. (Achieved -1.25 G! and the apparatus and methods are published!) There are published at least 4 technologies that generate energy without fuel and they all can be reproduced. --- Wake up! Science is a baby not a grown up art.

    --
    Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
  14. Re:Please... by owlstead · · Score: 3, Funny

    "The big bang created hydrogen and a little helium; we have stars to thank for everything else."

    As long as they don't expect us to thank each and every one of them personally...

  15. Only one factor by beamin · · Score: 3, Funny

    Do they have oil?

  16. Re:Please... by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Funny

    As Carl Sagan said, "We are all made of starstuff.".

    As the worm said, "We are all made of Saganstuff."

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  17. Imagine a ..... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Funny

    .... grendel cluster of them.

    Finally, we have something to pit against Beowolf.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  18. Re:Forgive my ignorance by DeadCatX2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, I was going to post AC, but my karma's good enough that I'm willing to take a possible hit.

    Besides, Bush-bashing is about as obligatory as, say, "I, for one, welcome our new sunlight-free bacterial overlords" or something silly like that.

    --
    :(){ :|:& };:
  19. I for one... by Seoulstriker · · Score: 2, Funny

    I for one welcome our new water-splitting bacterial overlords.

    --
    I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
  20. Re:I'm not convinced by extraterrestrial argument by multipartmixed · · Score: 4, Funny

    He is posting from a VIC-20 in a monospace font, and occasionally presses "Enter" at the end of the line, as he was conditioned to do when he learned to type on an Underwood.

    --

    Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?