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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
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.
Visit the
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.
That sounds like a challange to me.
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.)
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?
Unless we're using it's hydrocarbon fuel supply to drive to Atlantic City every weekend to binge on hookers and blow.
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.
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.
I used to really like the word "ergo". Now it just makes me think of the Architect from those fake Matrix sequels.
/...
Oh, I dunno, rats, cockroaches, mosquitos, mycobacterium tuberculosis?
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 by "these guys" you mean BP, I wouldn't really be any more worried by that than any other drilling company, in fact I might actually feel a bit better about it. One thing that became clear during the whole recent fuckup in the gulf, was that despite the involvement of numerous companies in the monumental screw up, many of them equally culpable, the only ones with the balls to stand up and say "we could have done better" was vilified as an evil foreign company, while government officials were quite happy to let the indiginous companies who pay them fat wads of cash in brown paper bags weasel their way out of any responsibility, and let the press denounce dem greedy furriners and villify them in the eyes of the public. A company that at least took the heat and didn't try to wriggle their way out of it has some redeeming qualities, despite what I may think of them in general.
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.
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.