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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."
they found life even there?? what's next, finding living organisms on C-SPAN?
weinersmith
More like a poisonous, foul smelling sea of organisms with some asphalt sprinkled on top.
This has a life density comparable to seawater.
"since some microorganisms can make their own water by chewing on various hydrocarbons"
It's a chicken-and-egg issue. Why should something evolve that can create something that it needs to exist in the first place? It doesn't seem to be very likely that something organism evolves out an environment without water, that later needs water. But, it may evolve from a wet environment to a state where it later no longer depends on pre-supplied water.
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.
Which is of course what the theory of evolution tries to explain, with considerable success.
While it is certainly remarkable how flexible life on Earth is, we also have to keep in mind that it has evolved from a common, water-based origin, and the fact that archaea can adapt to living in tar with access to very little water does not mean that life could have started in such an environment.
The thing about water is that it is an altogether remarkable substance; it has a number of properties that are not found together in many other substances - I am certainly not aware of any - and there are reasons to believe that life (at least chemical life as we know it: with DNA/RNA, proteins etc) needs this constellation of properties to arise. We simply don't know if life can arise in other environments; our understanding of what life is at the deepest level is still very patchy.
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/
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
You don't need a high temperature to drive the chemistry of life - you need a temperature gradient so that work can be done by transferring heat energy from one location to another. Titan has this due to internal heating from tidal forces, as has Europa. Life may operate at a slower pace in a cold environment, but the right catalysts could improve this.
cokane.com
It is actually a tourist attraction.
Countries such as Germany mandate that their roads, the famous Autobahn, must constitute a certain percentage of pitch from Trinidad. The Asphalt from the pitch lake is internationally acclaimed for its high percentage of asphalt resins and world renowned for its quality.It is also the world's largest and most consistent deposit of natural asphalt.
It is used in New York's Kennedy and La Guardia airports,to line the George Washington Bridge,and as previously stated in the German Autobahn system to name a few.
In the face of all this the cavalier and in some sense derogatory terminology used by the poster is both unfortunate and inaccurate. One suspects the author has never actually visited the Pitch Lake in Trinidad. It doesn't smell, it is not filled with noxious fumes. The area is quite pleasant and forested.
The pitch lake represents a little understood and fascinating eco-system, and it's great that it is finally being researched. It is incredible when one imagines how much of our past can be found in its depths,claimed from the earth tens of thousands of years ago, resting somewhere within it.
-Gel214th
"Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago" There are two islands. Trinidad. and Tobago. And the country is Trinidad and Tobago. But its not just one island.