Microbial Life Found In Trinidadian Hydrocarbon Lake

KentuckyFC writes "Pitch Lake is a poisonous, foul-smelling hell hole on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. It is filled with hot asphalt and bubbling with noxious hydrocarbon gases and carbon dioxide. Various scientists have suggested that it is the closest thing on Earth to the kind of hydrocarbon lakes they can see on Saturn's moon Titan. Now a group of researchers has discovered that the lake is teeming with microbial life which is thriving in the oxygen-free environment with very little water, eating hydrocarbons and respiring with metals. Gene sequence analysis indicates that these bugs are single-celled organisms such as archea and bacteria. The researchers say the discovery has exciting implications for the possibility of life on Titan. There is a growing sense that Titan has all the ingredients for life: thermodynamic disequilibrium, abundant carbon-containing molecules, and a fluid environment. There is also evidence that liquid water may not be as important for life as everybody has assumed, since some microorganisms can make their own water by chewing on various hydrocarbons. That may make Titan an even better place to look for life than previously thought."

Comments

Has populations between 10^6 to 10^7 cells/gram

[assemblerex]

More like a poisonous, foul smelling sea of organisms with some asphalt sprinkled on top.
This has a life density comparable to seawater.

Family resemblance?

[haus]

To the best of my knowledge all life on earth (at least all life that has been investigated at the DNA/RNA level) seems to have considerable similarities, which implies a relationship, perhaps a common origin point.

I wonder. Will this life, which on the surface seems to be fairly different from most of what we know/understand as life will also have such similarities with life as we know it?

If it does, it seems to show a remarkable level of flexibility, beyond what many may have imagined. If not, that may even be more exciting as it may provide support for the idea that the creation of life may not be an exceedingly rare event.

The lake *is* alive and it's not happy.

[w0mprat]

This is a quote from a tourist some time before the article:

"Unlike a sterile and lifeless parking lot, you soon get a sense here that this lake is somehow alive. Roy said that a forty foot by forty foot hole completely fills itself in within 3 days."

"The lake is constantly pulling things into itself, almost like a slow motion black hole. It's supposed to have "feelers" stretching outward for several miles, additional veins of pitch which stretch out from the main lake."

"this photo of him peeling back the hardened skin of the lake."

"The lake seemed to me more than anything to be like a large creature with no face, only arms and guts in which it slowly swallowed everything around it."

"If it swallows some things, then it also spits others out"

"Here is some leaf litter from part of the forest floor which the lake swallowed, chewed around for a few years and then spat out as indigestible. These leaves were in perfect condition, but as dry as it's possible to imagine."

So it seems to be a living entity, demonstrably fussy, finding it a hard time getting a decent meal and likely depressed.

http://www.richard-seaman.com/Travel/TrinidadAndTobago/Trinidad/PitchLake/