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'Worms From Hell' Unearth Possibilities For Extraterrestrial Life

Posted by Roblimo on from the it's-life-Jim-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.

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."

8 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. is it just me? by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Informative

    the link doesn't work

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    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:is it just me? by CFBMoo1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Tried it on both Windows and Linux. Link isn't functional.

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      ~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
    2. Re:is it just me? by Roblimo · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's a bug of some sort. I'm putting the link in right, but something is wrong. The link is to this WaPo story.

  2. Here it is: by rizole · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here it is
    Multicellular life deep in the earth is interesting but I'd like to find sentient slashdot editors.

  3. For those who want to RTFA by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  4. Linky! by TrisexualPuppy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try this.

  5. Re:live there, or just displaced to there? by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 3, Informative

    They were found at depths ranging from 900m down to 3.6km (3000ft-2mi). Carbon dating their environment showed they'd been there for at least 3000 years. (The team that found this also found radiation eating bacteria at similar depths five years ago, they been through the standard objections before.)

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    Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
  6. Re:I'm wary of this theory. by PitaBred · · Score: 3, Informative

    Neither. You've just proposed a hypothesis. That's what all of science is about.

    Really, it's ok to say "we don't know". We can't say for sure if it developed down there or migrated. I doubt the scientists said anything to that effect, either. Or even if they did, most of them wouldn't. Science articles are typically rife with horribly inaccurate "paraphrasing" because the journalist doesn't know what they're talking about and try to translate scientific jargon to "layman" speak.

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