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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."
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?
yet again, life is ubiquitous.
if not, it should be Bacillus Balrogus
"The humans dug too greedily and deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of the Chilean copper mine... shadow and flame... and Bacillus Balrogus!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
on the plus side ...
it is likely humans can't make it extinct
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.
That doesn't do anything about global warming, though.
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It amazes me that people don't believe there's no life elsewhere in the universe when we're still discovering it in new forms here at home, with new ways of doing things, in new seemingly impossible places. I for one welcome our new microbial hydrocarbon munching leaders.
Wait a minute, these bacteria are feeding on hydrocarbons... they're not producing oil, they're eating it. Oil that rightfully belongs to us (and by us, I mean oil companies of course). Those bastards! I say we nuke them all. (The oil companies I mean, not the bacteria.)
Oh, boy, now you have gone and done it, the oil supposed shortage is now a hoax, and everyone will definitely not be ready to jump to electricity thinking there is plenty of oil left in the world. I think it would be nice to live in a world of options, but if we do not get more people really into electric cars, and electric charging stations, we may never get off the oil industry, and remain slaves to those powerful few (2%) that control all the masses.
I agree with you, i never thought there was a shortage, but it is amazing how much propaganda is created by the oil cos themselves to generate even more revenue due to the supposed shortage. sick really if you ask me.
How is it these guys can be drilling again?
"...Tom Wilson and the entire Shell organization bent over backward to release seismic, well, drilling, and geotechnical data. Shell employees generously shared their time to help design a safe and effective drilling program. The scientists, engineers, and lawyers of Shell, Amerada Hess, and British Petroleum worked together to achieve scientific drilling within industry lease blocks."
http://publications.iodp.org/proceedings/308/acknow.htm
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I believe the argument is not that oil was made from old dinosaurs, but that it was made from old plants. Plants which have been growing continually since those that turned into oil.
The problem isn't that its not a replenishing supply. It is, as long as their is plant life.
The problem is that it takes millions of years to fill your gas tank.
A single pump can pull out more oil in a day than has been created during the entire span of human history.
Of course, thats assuming oil comes from plant matter and all that crap.
Either way, the amount of oil currently in the planet that we are aware of tells us that it is far too little of an amount for the rate at which its produced to be high enough to be sustainable on any scale we currently think of.
If the rate of replenishment was fast enough to keep up with our level of usage, the planet would have turned into one big ball of oil a billion years ago.
Doesn't matter HOW its created, its not sustainable at our current rate of consumption.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Yes, the rate is the issue. I expect some fields would re-fill with oil, given the number of fissures and cracks that are probably around the field itself. The oil would drain into the well from these places, wouldn't it?
Except that the bacteria mentioned are genetically closely related to "known hydrocarbon degraders" and "... results suggest that the gabbroic layer hosts a microbial community that can degrade hydrocarbons and fix carbon and nitrogen." Not exactly producing hydrocarbons, more like living off them.
Although, I do wonder what "It has been hypothesized that these hydrocarbons might originate abiotically from serpentinization reactions that are occurring deep in the Earth's crust" is all about...
serpentinization: a hydration and metamorphic transformation of ultramafic rock from the Earth's mantle
Hmm... So sounds like they are saying the hydrocarbons are likely produced by some hot water/pressure/mineral interaction. That's even more interesting than the bacterial production that I've heard bounced around (and generally dismissed).
"The new biosphere is all bacteria, as you might expect"
Actually that is very unexpected! Archaea dominate in oceans and sediments, not bacteria. This find is very surprising!
Yeah, amazing ; ).
But, perhaps more importantly, is there life elsewhere NOW?
Space is but one dimension in the space-time continuum.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Menzoberranzan?
Of course not, because if they had, they'd never come back.
What is the point of the bacteria there and what would happen if it was not there?
...can we grill it?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"If the rate of replenishment was fast enough to keep up with our level of usage, the planet would have turned into one big ball of oil a billion years ago."
And if we didn't fish the oceans would be over flowing with fish and piling up on the shores. If there is a specific equilibrium that can be maintained sometimes getting it to that is fast enough. Over course even with fishing things can be overfished but it has been found that populations can rebuild very quickly in those examples as well.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Actually, it does. If you're replenishing the oil using food sources from above ground, there'd be a minimal impact on global warming. The carbon would come from the atmosphere and go back.
Radiation could be an issue, depending on what's in the local rock.
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The last half is non-sense. If some carbon energy source is renewable, there is no long-term carbon dioxide effect because carbon is in the renewing cycle.
U R right of course,
"Space is but three of the dimensions et al".
My point was more along the lines of "We'll likely find ancient remains or organisms such as described in the article, not life as we know it".
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
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.
Did it have horns and a tail?
The sheer amount of chutzpah passing in place of intelligence in this post is just... astounding. It's like stupid has become legitimized!
Ergo the oil argument that much of our oil supply is made from bacteria and not old dinosaurs.
Which has what to do with sustainability, again? You imply sustainability by mentioning it in the next sentence.
If the bacteria is supplied from the crust inside the earth, the oil fields can replenish and oil becomes much more sustainable than before.
I mean... wow! It's just like farming!
We know almost *nothing* about this process, except that the metabolic rate of these bacteria are mind numbingly slow. We're talking at rates where a single reproduction is a thousand years in length. Just how long are you willing to wait for your next tank of gas?
Any way you look at this the findings become politically charged as the impact this has on our future energy supply could be enormous
Unless, of course, you look at this with something other than stupid. Get that out of the way, and you see that this changes about as much the grass growth on your lawn over the next 3.5 minutes.
With a little bit of googling you can readily find oil fields from old that have mysteriously started refilling with oil.
This happens in all wells, either with Oil or Water. It's not like there's a bladder down under ground and we're going to empty it. Oil and water are present in the fissures and pores of the surrounding rocks and soil. When you pump out the water/oil, you create a low pressure point, and fluid seeps from the surrounding soil. It's only in the case of extreme ignorance that this effect seems remarkable.
Your post is an extremely good example of why relying on the "wisdom of the crowds" can instead be relying on the "stupid foibles and commonly mistunderstood ideas" of the crowds.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The carbon would come from the atmosphere and go back.
How exactly does atmospheric carbon penetrate the kilometers of sediment and rock needed to reach most oceanic gabbros?
Opinions were like kittens, I was giving them away.
You seem to miss the part where TFA notes that bacteria found deep in the crust degrade the hydrocarbons, which are produced by abiotic processes. That's pretty much the opposite of having an oil supply made from bacteria.
Setting up underground cities a la Asimov is a little pricey. These things would effectively be buried space stations whose only advantages are built-in gravity and no worries about radiation or meteor strikes. You'd have to provide air conditioning, fresh air, food, clean water, not to mention the cost of just getting the things built.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
There is one slight problem with that though. The carbon sources that were originally subsumed beneath the surface by geological activity millions of years ago were already what would today be considered potential energy sources; mostly peat bogs and highly stacked layers of humus that had not decomposed as fully as it would today due to a different bacterial ecology predicated by an alternate atmospheric makeup. Oil is simply a liquid mixture that has come about by slow decomposition of this material underground. It would make much more sense in terms of energy efficiency to just use any such energy sources here on the surface, rather than bury them under miles of rock for a million years or so, and then pumping any oil that resulted back to the surface. You could probably pump in vast quantities of CO2 into the crust, and hope that chemical reactions with the surrounding environment could, fueled by geothermal energy, produce something worth extracting, but the timescales involved would make any such endeavour pointless.
I used to really like the word "ergo". Now it just makes me think of the Architect from those fake Matrix sequels.
/...
Ergo the oil argument that much of our oil supply is made from bacteria and not old dinosaurs. If the bacteria is supplied from the crust inside the earth, the oil fields can replenish and oil becomes much more sustainable than before.
Any way you look at this the findings become politically charged as the impact this has on our future energy supply could be enormous. With a little bit of googling you can readily find oil fields from old that have mysteriously started refilling with oil.
So by your argument, we don't have to worry about running out of oil because we can just sit back for another few billion years for the oil fields to get replenished back to their original levels? Hrm...seems like there's a problem in that logic that I can't quite put my finger on.
In fact, thinking about it a little more, we really don't want to send carbon dioxide into the earth. We need the oxygen. Any largescale carbon sequestration effort should probably try to emulate how nature has done it in the past, in the form of calcium carbonates.
That doesn't do anything about global warming, though.
Sure it does. It means that even if life on the surface gets extinguished in flames, life will continue just fine deep inside the earth. So we have nothing to worry about!
at least
welcome our new subterranean underlords.
Sorry for replying so much to myself. I just checked, calcium carbonate is CaCO3. Scratch that idea.
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.
If oil could be produced with bacteria, then many more companies could set up "oil farms" and give big oil some competition >:) and if oil can be produced from materials on the surface it would be carbon-neutral...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That doesn't do anything about global warming, though.
Easy, pal. This thread will turn into a divisive political shouting match well enough on its own. No need for that kind of talk.
Oh btw the effect of carbon emissions on global temperatures is overstated YOU LOSE nyah nyah.
Sources:
google.com
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tubgirl.com
In fact, thinking about it a little more, we really don't want to send carbon dioxide into the earth. We need the oxygen.
The amount of oxygen bonded to carbon in the atmosphere is insignificant, roughly on the order of a thousand times smaller than the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.
I was expecting CRAB PEOPLE!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Not necessarily. It seems likely to me that once the reservoirs were full, the oil seeped elsewhere, where it was either oxidized on the surface, or pulled back below.
Trying to reason that the fill is slow from the fact that the reservoirs exist is like trying to determine the rate of water flowing out of a faucet by examining the size of a water glass.
That doesn't do anything about global warming, though.
baby out with the bath water?
Any way you look at this the findings become politically charged
No, there is exactly one way looking at this that is politically charged, and that is apparently how you've decided to look at it. Which is that oil definitely comes from this bacteria, and it's replenishing our oil supplies just as soon as we can empty them.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Just pump it back down on one side of the oil field and keep it under pressure. Extract oil out the other after it filters through. It might not be atmospheric carbon that we're pumping down and it might have to be turned into some other form we have to pump down. However, it's not like we're likely to actually going to end up doing that. If it does turn out that oil comes from bacteria. If it's economically sound to do so, we'll just end up brewing oil in vats in a controlled environment on the surface.
How exactly does atmospheric carbon penetrate the kilometers of sediment and rock needed to reach most oceanic gabbros?
The "new bacteria generated oil" isn't magic, you have to get the carbon feed stock from somewhere. That somewhere will likely be plant material, which extracts carbon from the air, then feeds bacteria here on the surface in "oil farms". Not a perfect circle, but at least more circular than what we do today.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Also doesn't appease the God of Sacrifice. Even if we solved the problem called global warming, we'd still have to find a way to make big sacrifices while we had renewable oil. That we could live comfortably is a terrible thought.
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). . . .
Any way you look at this the findings become politically charged as the impact this has on our future energy supply could be enormous. With a little bit of googling you can readily find oil fields from old that have mysteriously started refilling with oil.
Abiogenic oil, the great oil conspiracy theory. Which of these is the more likely:
If oil fields refill, then why isn't the U.S. still producing large amounts of oil? Why did the U.S. hit peak oil and become reliant on Middle Eastern oil? Do people really believe that this is just a big conspiracy, and that the various U.S. governments since 1970 when the U.S. hit peak oil have all been in on the conspiracy? Why would they do this? What would they gain from this? Hmm.
well if the bacteria live in the deep crust of the earth, they'll love global warming and be able to produce even that much faster!
Does it think we are tasty? And are our immune systems up to fending it off?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
In fact any carbon based source can be used to make oil. The technology has in one form or another has existed at least since WWII when the nazi's used it to make fuel after losing a big chunk of their oil supplies. The South African's got pretty good at making their own during apartheid when they faced boycott's and couldn't buy what they need. The modern process is called thermal depolymerization with one proof of concept plant using turkey waste to make oil.
It's an opportunity!
Before we can properly investigate the ecosystem of this bacteria, let's genetically engineer bacteria that DOES produce oil-like hyrdocarbons from inner-earth energy and substances, and seed the inner earth to provide us with sustainable oil "indefinitely", and to eventually kill us because we destroyed something vital that we didn't yet understand (and that kept us filling the atmosphere with CO2).
This is what market forces are all about!
Speak for yourselves. I'm waiting for them to find a Balrog.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
...asked of political pundits: "How low can they go?"
It isn't static. It seeps out naturally. The La Brea Tar Pits are probably the best-known to Americans. The oil fields under the Gulf of Mexico are estimated to seep out about 1 million barrels of oil per year (the Exxon Valdez spill was 250,000 barrels). And there are also methane seeps which provide enough energy to sustain their own ecosystem without sunlight.
It's still small potatoes compared to the rate we're burning oil (20 million barrels per day for the U.S. alone). But it's not static, so (if it does come from bacteria) it would indeed be a renewing resource, and the equilibrium state is not "burn no oil."
I've heard it described more like sticking a straw across the room and into YOUR milkshake.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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.
Does anyone remember that little ball of hot stuff at the core of the planet and how it's producing various elements and compounds? Does anyone remember that carbon is one of the elements produced in abundance? Does anyone remember that compounds from the core move out to the surface, combining with other elements (such as oxygen) along the way?
With that nuclear furnace fusioning/fissioning away at the core (and which happens to be the source of carbon, oxygen, etc. for this planet) why would there be a need for atmospheric carbon to somehow go below the ground? Why wait for plant material to get buried underground?
It's not politically correct to mention this and it is Green heresy but a fact is a fact, even when it goes against whatever "correct" thinking is currently fashionable.
me. --a by-product of public education
They are eating all of our hydrocarbons!
or
It's not man's fault for Global Warming, it's the damned oil-eating bacteria.
Our planet isn't big enough to have a fusion core.
The sun, yes; Jupiter, maybe; Earth, hell no.
ah, just noticed your username... troll away.
thanks for that, I wish I had some points for modding you up, or defending my honor.... ; )
seems like there's a problem in that logic that I can't quite put my finger on.
That's cuz you're just rushing around. Slow down a bit. In fact, slow down a hell of a lot...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Even if the source is from bacteria instead of peat moss (not dinosaurs)
Not peat moss, microscopic marine life, e.g. plankton. Coal generally forms from peat bogs.
Also, the original comment is confused. The bacteria (apparently) feeds on hydrocarbons that formed abiotically. The bacteria is not producing hydrocarbons, as he claims.
...if you use that space to hoard more weapons and ammunition than the people who do have the water and food. Plus you'll need somewhere to put all the corpses.
According to TFS, the bacteria they found eat Hydrocarbons that are Abiogenic.
I believe, that in our lifetime, evidence of life is going to be found on one of the planets of our solar system, and that we will have confirmation that 'life' is prevalent throughout the universe.
Growth of bacteria deep within the earth's crust is well known, as is growth of bacteria near the boiling point of water>br> HOwever, as you go deep into the earth, temperature rises, so one might ask, is there an upper temperature limit to life ?
In (I think) the '90s, Nature magazine (for profit; does a lot of sensational science) published a paper on bacteria that thrived at some very high temp; I think it was 200oC, but in any event, well over 100oC (boiling point of water at room pressure)
As you may know, all know life forms require proteins as fundamental components; if you look at proteins from the view point of organic chemistry, you find that they have a lot of things called "amide bonds", and that cleavage of said bonds often leads to inactive protein (tech note - altho not always, split proteins like lac alpha etc etc...)
Anyway, after the 1st nature paper, a few months later someone publishes a paper on the stability of the amide bond vs temp; bonds have a half life of a few minutes around 200oC
The upshot is, life as we know it probably has an upper limit for growth around 120 - 150oC; growth at higher temps is going to require something really different
No, that is not happening,. the idea the oil comes from bacteria has long since moved from interesting, to stupid.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/2423
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
no. Oil is not produce Abiotically. These are HydroCarbons, but not all Hydrocarbons are oil. OIl and natural gas are many different hydrocarbons link together.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That doesn't do anything about global warming, though.
I only discuss the global warming issue with proponents who don't own stoves.
It amazes me that you can't concieve of the possibility that this is the first planet in the galaxy for life to have formed.
While it is technically possible, it seems astronomically unlikely considering the size and age of this galaxy. Our sun is not even a first generation star. First life in the galaxy should have occurred billions of years before our solar system even formed.
We haven't found any evidence of it anywhere else, and it's not from lack of looking.
It most certainly is from lack of looking. So far in all of human history, all we have done is a decent (not perfect) job of looking on the moon, and made a half-assed attempt at checking a few square feet of mars (if it was teeming with life we wouldn't have missed it, but we hardly checked exhaustively). 99.99999.... % of the galaxy is still left completely unexplored. We don't have enough data to even think about making conclusions about the prevalence of life in our own solar system, let alone the rest of the galaxy.
Titan and Europa are good candidates. If we don't find any there, we may not find any anywhere.
Yes, they are good candidates for carbon-based "life like us". Given the spectroscopy results of Titan's atmosphere, I would actually be surprised if we didn't find at least simple bacteria-like life there.
However, I am certain there is more than one basic path to "life" in this universe (even in this galaxy). We arrogantly assume that other life must function in a similar manner to us, so we only bother to even consider looking in environments vaguely similar to ours for life vaguely similar to us. There may well be life on Venus, or even Mercury, or the surface of the sun, or hanging out in the Oort cloud (just not anything remotely similar to Earth life). Even our science fiction does a piss-poor job of exploring this concept.
Knowledge != Intelligence
Actually, it does. If you're replenishing the oil using food sources from above ground, there'd be a minimal impact on global warming. The carbon would come from the atmosphere and go back.
Except that we're currently doing our dead level best to burn hundreds of million years of accumulated oil in a few scant centuries.
Keep in mind that our current worrisome CO2 problems are with CO2 going about 400 ppm. The Earth's atmosphere has only sunk to those low levels of CO2 needed to sustain the climate we survive on in the Neogene period when it was at 280 ppm in pre-industrial times. Kick back 500 million years to the Cambrian period, and you're looking at 4500 ppm and sea levels 200 m over modern day levels. If we only hit a mere 500 ppm, we're looking at CO2 levels not seen since the Paleogene over 20 million years ago.
Unless we can find a way to sequester carbon millions of times faster than it naturally turns into oil, we're not going to make it up by wasting cropland on throwing food down a hole.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
As a liberal, I have to say mcrbids was being a bit of an arrogant ass, and I don't see why that's not reason enough to be pissed at him. Let's stick to reality and not play the pundit game.
As for oil from bacteria, this is not the first time this theory has been proposed, so instead of calling someone an idiot why not go into the research. As for sustainability, the point is not that one should wait for the old wells to refill, but that there might be a lot more oil deeper in the earth. Of course, even if there is a lot more oil that doesn't mean it's a good idea to burn it.
Chris Mesterharm
Chris, you make valid points regarding the OP.
... an unrelated phenomenon.
However, for mcrbids to pontificate (no, to BS) on petroleum reservoirs as if he understood what he was talking about was the height of arrogance too.
No reservoir engineer would ever say "fluid seeps from the surrounding soil" in regard to a conventional subsurface oil or gas accumulation (as opposed to a surficial heavy oil deposits such as the Athabaska tar sands in Canada or the Orinoco tar sands in Venezuela) because the reservoir rock in which hydrocarbon accumulations are trapped is either (a) completely surrounded by an impermeable shale layer (in the case of a stratigraphic trap) or (b) capped by such a layer and bounded beneath by an aquifer (in the case of a structural trap). There simply is no such thing as "surrounding soil" for fluid (i.e. hydrocarbons) to seep from. Reservoir rock is just that: rock.
Furthermore, OP made a statement -- whether verifiable or not -- regarding the refilling or restocking of depleted reservoirs and mcrbids waved this away as mere intra-reservoir pressure equilibration
So mcrbids shouldn't pretend to be a reservoir engineer because he isn't one. I am.
licet differant, aequabitur
Someone else pointed it out, but the earth's core doesn't have a "nuclear furnace" per se. Yea, some decay keeps the planet's innerds nice and toasty, but it certainly isn't dense enough to crank out prodigious amounts of carbon and other elements. That is what stars are for. The source of all the carbon and oxygen on the planet was from outside the planet. We ordered out. Comets, asteroids and other left over dead star guts delivered. The entire planet is nothing but dead star guts, for that matter.
Thank you for the 'wtf?' moment.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
according to wikipedia, us is the third largest oil producer in the world. The problem is that it's also a number one consumer along with A large portion of oil reserves not being available for exploitation due to various political reasons.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Old thread is old. But I have some advice for you:
It is far preferable to stay silent and have people wonder about your intelligence than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
It's sad that you'd rather object to my post for pointing out the idiocy than object to the idiot for wasting your time. A classic case of shooting the messenger rather than listening to the message, this is a policy sure to preserve lots of idiocy that you'll get to live with!
I hope you enjoy your choice.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.