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Microbe Mat the Size of Greece Discovered In the Sea
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A mat of microbes the size of Greece has been discovered on the sea floor off the Pacific coast of South America. 'These tiny creatures can join together to create some of the largest masses of life on the planet... A single liter of seawater, once thought to contain about 100,000 microbes, can actually hold more than one billion microorganisms...'"
News at nine.
At the bottom of the ocean is a good metaphor for Greece's economy right now!
It's not a bug, it's a fixture!
The structure that looks surprisingly like a gigantic neural network is not, repeat not, the repository of a vast and vengeful consciousness of the murky deeps.
Please carry on with your regularly scheduled consumption.
Hmmm???
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
can I eat it?
Liar. Your user name implies you may be the avatar of this very consciousness!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
does this mean we will need to bail them out as well?
Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind
Have you drunk your fill?
It really would be amazing if such an organism gained sentience...
But does it run Linux?
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
has anyone seen a map of Greece with all it's crazy islands and jagged coasts? How can you compare the size of anything to that country
Next time, compare vs something with a somewhat reasonable shape.
like Saskatchewan damnit!
It's the lost city of Atlantis!
... and then they built the supercollider.
Ooooh sick burn dude! /I'm Greek :P
A single liter of seawater, once thought to contain about 100,000 microbes, can actually hold more than one billion microorganisms..
Well, considering a tablespoon of human semen contains million of sperm, one billion microorganisms in a liter of fluid doesn't seem to unreasonable.
I'm guessing a mat of microbes the size of Greece probably has a better economy than a piece of land the size of Greece.
In these parts, the standard Unit Of Hugeness is "N times the size of Wales"....
Was there any doubt that microbes own our planet and merely tolerate us? (heck, more bacterial DNA in your body than human one...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Considering that is related to (the size of) Greece and that it could grow more, maybe in the future could be called Gaia?
Just goes to show what can happen when you give something 4-5 billion years to debug.
Thank god you said average, because I thought you were talking about me and I was about to start a flamewar.
It may be 7 digits, but at least it's a semiprime
Now I know I didn't read TFA, but how does the RIAA/MPAA fit into this story? Are they suing the microbes for copyright infringement as well?? Heartless bastards.
... a fungus among us.
Have gnu, will travel.
(Responding to my own post)
NewYorkCountyLawyer / NewYorkCountryLawyer
Played nicely. I didn't even notice it and it was the whole point of my post!
I still stand by my final comment. :-)
...welcome our new plankton overlords!
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
Who thought it read Microsoft map the size of greece discovered under the sea on the first read.
I need to get out more!
What's this? A science story from NewYorkCountyLawyer?.....
Actually there is a bit of evidence, not publicly available, which would support your theory that I may have been a little bit out of my element with this story:
This was the first of my 232 stories that was actually improved by the Slashdot editor.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Interesting. Such giant microbial mats used to be the dominant biological communities in the Precambrian, often forming structures called stromatolites, but most of them were believed to have met their demise during the Cambrian, when lots of new large multicellular critters could literally munch or burrow their way through them. Stromatolites are still present today in a few places, generally in environments too harsh for multicellular organisms to live in, like Shark Bay in Western Australia. But this discovery would indicate that large microbial mat communities proved more evolutionarily durable than previously thought.
This is a bit of an odd submission from NewYorkCountryLawyer. Is the microbial mat a client? What sort of music is it accused of filesharing? That might give us some insight into its nature.
It would be really cool if it was the Leviathan. I'd like to see it go after the RIAA labels, towering over terrified Sony execs as they ran for their lives.
Loose lips lose spit.
I bet the result would not be very fun...
A long term gradient from this to the oxygen free microbes we've recently heard about and you've got a life cycle that creates oil. Now if that's the case we should capture some samples, diddle some DNA to accellerate the process and create an algae sequence that takes garbage and produces gasoline - or experiences runaway growth and turns the entire planet into green slime.
Hm... the plot's going to need some work but for a rough sketch that will do for a start.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You probably picked this article to submit because of your daily dealings with other types of slime molds.
I don't recall that he addressed how the inscrutable sentient ocean actually came to be.
In any case, Solaris gets my vote as one of the three greatest science fiction novels ever.
I don't make any claims to know about average Greek intelligence, but I'd imagine having Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Hippocrates, Socrates, Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes, etc., etc., in the sample would give them a pretty good head start.
Reminds me of the old joke: Q: What do you call 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start. Just kidding! ;)
I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
My god those are big microbes. (Pity the title seems to take an alternative view on the issue)
It is what it is.
...He might have been onto something!
Yang is building a planetbuster, we much achieve transcendence with planet before its too late! Move a foil ship to that microbe hex stat!
everybody run for cover
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
will it blend?
I wouldn't compare a country with a 'mat' of microbes, but, given the state of things in that particular country right now, that comparison may not be that "far out".
without pics.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
I believe you meant to say, "Yes, their is."
My pics.
I find it strange that original article in SA does not present any pictures (or any other methodological reference for that matter) of the glorified "mat".
That's it?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
So, what insights into RIAA behavior can we gain by studying these microbes? I'd say they are lower than whale shit, but they appear to be at exactly the same depth as whale shit... (and those microbes are pretty low too!)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Socrates wasn't so smart... in fact, I have it on good authority that his last words were, "I drank what?!?"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Quick, cover it with sediment, wait a few million years, and voila... more oil!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Hasn't that been the general biological consensus recently?
Archaeo-lifeforms, being far less specialized seem to be able to both spread widely and cope with marginal or rapidly-changing conditions. Witness jellyfish, etc. When a biome's conditions are very stable over a long period of time, specialist organisms develop that are more efficient (at everything, really) and quickly outcompete the generalist, simpler older forms. As long as the older forms aren't completely extinguished (which logically I'd have to say is relatively unlikely, given their ability to occupy LOTS of niches simultaneously), when the environment again starts changing more rapidly, the specialist forms start to fail and the older generalists come again to the fore.
My guess would be that the location of this mat is otherwise fairly UNfriendly for more-developed forms, leaving it to happily churn away these millions of years without something discovering that it's tasty and nutritious (at least, not enough predators to outpace its reproductive rate).
-Styopa
How do they breathe and receive food? even the cells of our bodies need circulated blood in vessels to receive oxygen and food. How would they do it if the weren't attached with vessels in between?
Wasn't this the star of a 1958 movie? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051418/
Looks like it's working on a remake http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1501672/
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Dear? Didn't you lose your microbe mat yesterday? I think I found it