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Life Found In Deepest Layer of Earth's Crust
michaelmarshall writes "For the first time, life has been found in the gabbroic layer of the crust. The new biosphere is all bacteria, as you might expect, but they are different from the bacteria in the layers above; they mostly feed on hydrocarbons that are produced by abiotic reactions deep in the crust. It could mean that similar microbes are living even deeper, perhaps even in the mantle."
You feel like financing this project? And setting up contingincies for things like "there is a leak and the pacific is starting to seep in"? And dealing with the phenomenal pressures that will be exerted?
Even if the source is from bacteria instead of peat moss (not dinosaurs), that still doesn't address the rate problem. So far as we know, oil is basically stable at the levels we drill for it, it doesn't decompose into something else over time. If that's true, that means that the deposits that we have access to took millions and millions of years to become as large as they are; in other words, oil still isn't a renewing resource, even ignoring the other long term problems involved in burning hydrocarbons for our energy production.
The ownership of the subsurface would belong to the surface owners all the way to the core.
Now some rights - water and mineral rights - don't always belong to the surface holder, an example in the US is on Indian Reservations, mineral rights remain under the control of the US Department of Interior.
50 km under Kansas would still be Kansas.
We don't populate the subsurface because it's a nasty place, hot and wet.
Yeah but a subtle point is the bacteria probably didn't *originate* under those conditions. The bacteria more than likely evolved from bacteria living in more life friendly conditions.
Those are both continental crust, which a different animal. You would never actually hit either basalt or gabbro in continental crust, because continental crust is chemically different than oceanic crust. Also one of the goals of IODP expedition 304* and 305 was to drill through the oceanic Moho, the seismic reflection that defines where crust stops and where mantle begins. At the Atlantic Massif, this is pretty close to the surface due to its location adjacent to the Mid-Atlantic spreading center, and was thought to exist at depths less than 1 km. On continental crust the Moho is much deeper, normally 60-80 km deep. Drilling 1 km in the ocean is easier than drilling 60 on land. *Disclaimer, I sailed 304.
Opinions were like kittens, I was giving them away.
Just set up a cave-in atop your adamantine mines. A long row of doors should slow the clowns down enough to let your miner escape. When the fun starts, pull the lever and seal them back in.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
RTFA. (Or the summary, for that matter). The oil there is produced ABIOTICALLY. i.e. from chemical reactions that have nothing to do with dinosaurs, OR bacteria. That, and the bacteria found there don't produce, but eat the hydrocarbons.
> Yes - I knew that too - I just couldn't think of the word for conditioning air...
This may be a local colloquialism but around here the word for 'conditioning air' is 'AIR CONDITIONING'.
You're welcome.
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This started out with the little shit claiming someone was an idiot for saying life was ubiquitous. He was utterly failed to prove his initial point.
Which is because he's a troll.
Note the username, which has a string of numbers at the end, numbers which aren't part of the UID. Further note that he's posting with more than one account, same name, different numbers, in this thread.
Do a search on the name, without the numbers. You'll find it's sock puppets all the way down. Check the posting history for any of his accounts, nothing but -1 Trolls. You'll also see him repeating a few lines ad nauseam, arguing with himself and generally crying out for attention.
It's just some script kiddie with too much time on his hands getting around the moderation system for shits and giggles.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Well, thanks. Now I feel dumb.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You sir, failed geology 101, I'm guessing.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH