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'Worms From Hell' Unearth Possibilities For Extraterrestrial Life
An anonymously submitted article says, "For the first time, scientists have found complex,
multi-celled creatures living a mile and more below the planet’s surface, raising new possibilities about the spread of life on Earth and potential subsurface life on other planets and moons (abstract). ... The research is likely to trigger scientific challenges and cause some controversy because it places far more complex life in an environment where researchers have generally held it should not, or even cannot, exist."
the link doesn't work
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As a Wikipedia frequenter, I take the broken link as proof that there is no evidence.
It's not such a big deal. It's only a mile's commute to the nearest Starbucks.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
http://www.ongo.com/v/1061484/-1/069C3A2682E62B52/discovery-of-worms-from-hell-deep-beneath-earths-surface-raises-new-questions
Here it is
Multicellular life deep in the earth is interesting but I'd like to find sentient slashdot editors.
Well when an anchor "a" tag has no href, links generally don't work...
Here is at least some information for it at Nature. Wherever there is some usable energy, some kind of life seems to attach to it. Fascinating.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Try this.
I thought they stopped saying that after finding life in the Challenger Deep section of The Mariana Trench.
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
Bless the maker and his water, bless the coming and going of him, may his passing cleanse the world.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
The spice must flow...
or at least a concrete donkey.
How many times now have we found life in extreme conditions where we were convinced life couldn't exist?
And given that we believe life adapted to the environment on Earth (early organisms didn't even breathe oxygen) then why we are so convinced that theoretical life in the universe must conform to the rules on Earth?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Really that exciting?
"H. mephisto was found in water flowing from a borehole about one mile below the surface in the Beatrix gold mine."
So, how sure are we the buggers weren't just swept down there by an underground stream or tracked in by the gold miners?
Finding them down there doesn't mean they actually 'live' there.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/discovery-of-worms-from-hell-deep-beneath-earths-surface-raises-new-questions/2011/05/31/AGnzJTGH_story.html
Pity that the only picture available is some unclear SEM picture of the worm's head. Why not a picture of the whole animal? Now we still don't know what it looks like and how long it is.
-- Cheers!
I hope these are not Graboids?
I for one, welcome our new hell-worm overlord.
Actually it worked in the submission (I saw it after I'd submitted an unintentional dupe.) From memory it was Cosmos.
My own links were via NewScientist: This story.
A story about the discovery of radiation eating bacteria by the same team.
And a long article from '96 about what this all means for the search for life on (or in) Mars.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
lithotrophic bacteria that live from certain anorganic chemicals found down there
According to the team that found these nematodes (and the bacteria five years earlier), the bacteria lives off of radiation in the rocks, not chemistry. (Come back in a few years to see what eats the worms?)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
lithotrophic bacteria that live from certain anorganic chemicals found down there
According to the team that found these nematodes (and the bacteria five years earlier), the bacteria lives off of radiation in the rocks, not chemistry. (Come back in a few years to see what eats the worms?)
Trapped miners?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
My question is this: just because you find life in extreme conditions, does not mean it can develop in those conditions. It seems more likely to me that life develops in more ideal conditions, then migrates to areas where conditions are more harsh. Am I being too skeptical or pessimistic?
Proverbs 21:19
The research is likely to trigger scientific challenges and cause some controversy because it places far more complex life in an environment where researchers have generally held it should not, or even cannot, exist.
If the critters have conclusively been found to live there, then people will just have to accept it, recalibrate their views on what's possible, and continue from there. Why the controversy?
Very interesting. So far, I was only aware of the archaia that seem to be responsible for oil production and other mineral deposits.
you call yourself an "expert" and thus come to a "logical conclusion" doesn't mean your statement is the end-all, be-all of human ingenuity and knowledge.
It actually makes you look like a damn idiot, to be truthful.
Many biological reactions at surface pressures and temperatures require catalysts called enzymes to proceed. Protein synthesis and the citric cycle are two basic examples. These do not require catalysts at high temperature and pressures according to work Robert Hazen of Carnegie Institute.
After life began it evolved enzymes to expand into other ecological niches. For example, the ocean surface is an energy rich area with solar radiation.
When is the Spice gonna flow?
Anything about locusts?
Democracy: Crowdsourcing a country near you
Great it's going to be the Chilean miners all over again. Anderson Cooper will interview them about being trapped a mile underground and Oprah will give them a trip to Australia.
Allow me to be the first to say it...
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
multi-celled creatures living a mile and more below the planet’s surface,
There goes that certainty of apocalypse. We just don't do knowing very well.
tremors....
What's next? "Pigeons from Hell"?
Worms make the dirt
And the dirt makes the earth
And all of the roots have a place to sleep now
All the chanuks have squash to eat now
Worms make the dirt
And the dirt makes the earth
And people hold hands and feel terrific
Food comes from dirt
It's scientific
Foot placed squarely in mouth since 1983.
Does this mean that Tremors was a documentory?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
So the SNL parody about the movie titled "The Core" wasn't too far off.
i've always wondered what creepy creatures will evolve and emerge from landfills millions of years from now.
what makes conditions 'extreme'? the fact that humans can't live in them? we are not the center of the universe.
lithotrophic bacteria that live from certain anorganic chemicals found down there
According to the team that found these nematodes (and the bacteria five years earlier), the bacteria lives off of radiation in the rocks, not chemistry. (Come back in a few years to see what eats the worms?)
Trapped miners?
Ouch. I for one don't want to wait for what comes to eat the trapped miners.
Hard to say for sure, but it's a safe bet they'll be our new overlords.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If the Rossi/Focardi eCat (a claimed nickel-hydrogen LENR cold fusion device) really works, maybe cold fusion also happens at the boundary of the Earth's nickel-iron crust? And maybe the core even ejects neustrons, as suggested about the sun? And the end result might be abiotic oil and other "food" that could support an underground biosphere? Could life have even started down there (if bacteria did not come from beyond the solar system)? What other scientific dogma remains to be overturned? Related comment by me:
http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-sun-rossi%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Denergy-catalyzer%E2%80%9D-and-the-%E2%80%9Cneutron-barometer%E2%80%9D/#comment-5891
And:
http://www.thesunisiron.com/
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
this will eat them then us : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100814/
A primary hurdle the team had to overcome was proving that the nematodes had not come into the mines on the shoes or clothing of miners or through mine ventilation water. The contamination issue was resolved through extensive testing of the soil and mining water, which contains two disinfectant bleaches that would kill nematodes.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
"Extraterestrial" may be quite meaningless. Perhaps all life, even beyond our planet, is related?
Who knows? Perhaps we share the same creator? Or, Perhaps, we share the the same "accident", by which we came to existence?
I just thought I would mention Thomas Gold's book The Deep Hot Biosphere. Gold's thesis is that "fossil fuels" aren't, and have an abiological origin, much like the hydrocarbons we can see in interstellar nebulae. An essential part of the theory is that "extremophiles" aren't all that rare, and permeate the earth down to unsuspected depths... that explains why the oil coming up out of the ground looks biological in origin (handedness): it's been messed with by the deep bacteria.
So myself, what I learned from this abstract is that the "deep hot biosphere" has apparently become an accepted fact. (Needless to say, the "abiological origin of oil" is not (yet?) on the "mainstream science" list.)