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Life Found In Deepest Layer of Earth's Crust

Posted by Soulskill on from the gabbroic-added-to-spellchecker dept.

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."

9 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Living under surface by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This got me thinking an interesting idea.

    Why don't humans populate more of the inner earth? Sure, most people don't like the environment just like that, but you can build it. Make fake environments. In the end, they will look and feel natural too. You can also easily get rid of gasses and other pollution problem by dumping them upwards.

    And if you go deep enough, who owns the land? Can you start a new country like lets say, 50 kilometers below surface?

    1. Re:Living under surface by natehoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Depends on your scale and/or materials choice. You could build a series of medium-sized boats loosely linked together so they could ride waves as a flexible "mat", yet the width of the "mat" would prevent any of the boats from capsizing. If you got caught in a severe storm, it might be a rough ride, but you'd be better off than your landlocked brethren as long as you built it pretty solidly.

      Or you could build one massively huge rigid ship that would be big enough to simply ignore any waves under 100 feet high, if you have the materials. Built it massively wide and long, or even make it a circular shape with something along the edges to break up moderate-sized waves (a series of partial breakwaters, for example, akin to a barrier reef), and it'll be pretty immune to capsizing.

      And, of course, it's not an island, it's a ship. A ship floating on water, not fixed to a given location like an island (unless you want it that way, in which case the tropics would be a poor choice). Give it some maneuverability and it can just, you know, maneuver. Leave the tropical zone during storm season, or move out of a storm's way (or at least try to avoid the worst of it) if one is nearby. You don't have to control the weather, just head to where the weather is nicer.

      --
      "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
    2. Re:Living under surface by Jeng · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If we have no warning then yea you make a good point, but if we have warning then we can evacuate people to an alternate place to live.

      --
      Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
    3. Re:Living under surface by Gilmoure · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Oh, sure, spread us out around the solar system but you get just one rogue neutron star wandering through and WHAMMO! Next thing you know you're having to go out scrabbling for a pail of air.

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
    4. Re:Living under surface by wed128 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Overpopulation is therefore a self-correcting issue.

  2. Re:Ergo oil by DigiShaman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Exactly. Someone once said before that drilling for oil is a lot like sticking a straw into a wet sponge, not a Capri Sun. It's a good analogy, I like it.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  3. A Separate Origin of Life? by krsmav · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Since archaea (the oldest life forms) were absent in the layer where these life forms were found, it suggests that there was a "second creation" of life. If so, they should have a separate form of DNA (or the equivalent). . . .

  4. 9km in sedimentary rock by peter303 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Bacteria have been found in the deepest holes drilled fro petroleum prospecting. The temperature has to be below 120C however. This is sedimentary rock where the bacteria was probably buried at the same time the sediments were deposited.
    The rock in this article was igneous rock. Its more difficult to figure out how bacteria got so deep in that kind of rock.

  5. Re:Life elsewhere... by WrongMonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's funny, because I was thinking about the opposite conclusion. The fact that life is astoundingly ubiquitous on Earth makes a stark contrast with its complete absence from any other other worlds we've studied. It says something about the profound uniqueness of Earth that we haven't found any traces of life elsewhere.