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Slo-mo Microbes Extend the Frontiers of Life

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

ananyo writes "A newly-discovered microbial community living tens of meters beneath the Pacific Ocean floor uses so little oxygen that researchers believe they may be living at the absolute minimum energy requirement needed to subsist. For years, scientists thought that the ascetic conditions of the deep sub-seabed — high pressure, minimal oxygen and a low supply of nutrients and energy — made such environments uninhabitable to any form of life. The discovery extends the lower bound for life (abstract). The surface of Mars, for instance, may be inhospitable, but there may be conditions below the surface that are reminiscent of the deep subsurface on Earth. As microbiologist Bo Jørgensen comments in the Nature piece, while the discovery does not mean there is life on Mars, 'it's now really challenging to show where there is no life.'"

9 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. So basically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... they work at the DMV.

  2. Life on Mars by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mars is a really challenging environment, between the radiation, near-vacuum atmosphere, where there is water its -150, where its warm there is no water, with a boiling point of something like -40. Is it more or less challenging than tens of meters below the Pacific sea floor? I would guess more, although this is not insurmountable. Maybe if we merged these organisms with ice worms or snow algae (which is red, interestingly), we could have a viable hybrid. Of course maybe nature beat us to it:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_geyser

    1. Re:Life on Mars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The thing is, every time we try to say "This is the boundary where life cannot exist" we end up being proven wrong... Something tells me that if life has even a slim chance of finding a purchase on a rock floating around a star, it'll exist. Maybe not thrive, maybe not evolve nuclear bombs or Pepsi, but it will exist.

    2. Re:Life on Mars by Lynchenstein · · Score: 2

      I hope developing nukes or soft drinks aren't examples of the high points of life.

      Maybe having the capability to develop nukes, but choosing not to is.

    3. Re:Life on Mars by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2

      I'm not really sure what finding life on Mars will do for us though. It will show us that life on another planet is possible (something I personally believe already), but other than that knowledge, what will we gain from it? It won't help solve our current environmental, economic of political problems, will it?

      Well, the human race can multitask, after all. If that really is a sign of complex life on Mars, and it looks uncannily biological, it will give us our first glimpse of a completely new permutation of life. If its similar to our own, we have immediately given huge weight to innumerable theories, and undermined many more. If its something completely alien, the same applies in reverse. What practical uses we might put the knowledge to are a complete unknown at this point. Maybe it will help cure cancer, maybe it will be nothing. We won't know until we go, though.

    4. Re:Life on Mars by kurzweilfreak · · Score: 2

      For all we know, we may find life on Mars that has evolved to subsist in such a hostile environment using some completely novel feature or novel energy conversion process we can take advantage of or that excretes some waste product that we might find very useful that no life on Earth excretes. The point is we won't ever know until we know. Knowledge is great for its own sake, yes, but knowledge certainly isn't useful until you possess it.

      --

      kurzweil_freak

      5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student

      Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.

  3. Slackers! by coinreturn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Get a job and quit using just the absolute minimum energy to subsist. Damn teenagers.

  4. Its not dead ... by rssrss · · Score: 3, Funny

    It is merely pining for the fjords.

    --
    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
  5. Re:Really now? by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Informative

    'it's now really challenging to show where there is no life.

    In the atmosphere. You're welcome.

    You fail it

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.