Underwater Chemical Garden Powers a Light Bulb

Zothecula writes: Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have grown underwater chimney-like structures capable of generating enough electricity to power a light bulb. The team linked several of these chimneys to get the required electricity. Their findings indicate that the seafloor equivalents of these chemical gardens might just have contributed the electricity needed for the Earth's first organisms to develop.

Comments

Light Bulb?

[Lumpy]

It powers a single LED very dimly.

I really suggest the summary needs to be corrected as it's WAY WAY off an horribly misleading.

Re: Light Bulb?

[XxtraLarGe]

I personally don't believe life originated here, I think it's more likely that more primitive microbes started elsewhere, and when that elsewhere planet was subjected to meteor bombardment, its ejecta seeded life on other planets in its star cluster, including ours.

Panspermia is one of the hardest ideas for me to wrap my mind around. Life emerges on another planet. Planet is hit by a meteor and ejects the life forms into the vacuum space, where they are subject to massive amounts of radiation. They travel millions (if not billions) of kilometers for millions (if not billions) of years. The ejected chunks also need to not be pulled into any stars they might be passing by or pulverized by other collisions with objects in space. Then they need to land on a planet capable of supporting that particular kind of life while passing through its atmosphere and impacting at high speed with massive force. It takes an improbable event like abiogenesis and increases it by another exponent of improbability, which equates to impossible in my mind.

Re:Light Bulb?

[coryhamma]

Can we please replace ubiquitous terms like "can power a light bulb" with the precise voltage + wattage or amperage that they were able to obtain from their energy source, in addition to the time it was able to sustain this energy output? Maybe also mention the mass and density of the substance providing the energy? If we could get this going in the description/abstract, that would be really great.

Re: Light Bulb?

[ArmoredDragon]

I think you're missing something critical here. At the time we believe life began, Earth wasn't even fully formed. Not only that, but the nearest star to us was within the millions range of miles, meaning that its planets and our planets likely had periods where they were considerably closer to one another than their parent stars.

Sure, it seems improbable today because of the vast distance other stars are from us, however that wasn't the case several billion years ago.

Not only that, but we already know that microbes can actually thrive in space.

Re: Light Bulb?

[sumdumass]

Probably in a similar way they theorize on this planet but with the missing ingredient that we cannot seem to find to create life on this planet- even to this day. Of course we can bend and mold existing life forms into uniquely different forms, but we are starting with life already.

Re: Light Bulb?

[ArmoredDragon]

What a hostile response. Sounds like I'm speaking to the pope. I'm sorry I upset your religious worldview. Put down your bible for a minute, and I'll go through your points:

1) Life is theorized to have arisen multiple times on early Earth, in between giant catastrophic impacts. Once the solar system was quieter, it "stuck" and here we are.

Maybe, but there's also very compelling evidence that says otherwise:

http://science.slashdot.org/st...

2) The Sun is nearly 100 million miles from the Earth, and has been as long as they have both been in existence. Any other star coming in between would have utterly destroyed the solar system. It has been theorized that the solar system's Oort cloud was shaped by close encounters with other stars at a distance of around a light year but that's pointless to even measure in miles.

Except when Earth was a protoplanet. Earth has only fully cleared its orbital position of meteors somewhat recently. Now, I'm not saying that the edge of another star system came within a hundred million miles, rather likely somewhere under a billion.

It's entirely likely that all of our planets received ejecta containing this material, but remember that Earth is the only planet to truly be within the Goldilocks zone.

3) Microbes "thriving" in space have never been detected, so we clearly don't "know" that. In any case, it's much more likely for life to evolve on a planet than for life to evolve on a planet, then magically survive transportation through space and arrive on another planet where it can also magically survive.

I'm sorry that wasn't mentioned in your bible, but it is mentioned here:

http://gizmodo.com/why-do-bact...

And here:

http://content.time.com/time/h...

And a lot of other places, if you just looked up from your bible. I know, I know, it's hard to get past a self inflicted dogmatic view, but all I ask is that you try.

Re: Light Bulb?

[ArmoredDragon]

That would be hard to determine without actually seeing said planet.

Re: Light Bulb?

[ArmoredDragon]

Oh, and also:

http://science1.nasa.gov/scien...

Basically, Apolo astronauts found a camera from a probe mission whose previous handlers sneezed on it. It was on the moon for a total of three years, and the bacteria were still growing.

A similar outcome found here, this time deliberately:

http://helix.northwestern.edu/...

Re: Light Bulb?

[Dutch Gun]

I don't understand something about this particular theory. Life had to start somewhere, right? Why does it make more sense for it to have been formed somewhere else and transported here rather than being home grown? What makes some other planet a more amenable nursery for life?

Essentially, it seems like if it can start in one place, it can start in many places, including Earth. Moreover, if it starts here, it seems a heck of a lot more likely to *thrive* here. And a not-yet-fully-formed Earth doesn't seem like all that difficult an obstacle, given the many extremophiles we've seen.

Re: Light Bulb?

[ArmoredDragon]

I don't understand something about this particular theory. Life had to start somewhere, right? Why does it make more sense for it to have been formed somewhere else and transported here rather than being home grown?

Somebody did a mathematical model for the rate at which they believe life forms evolve new nucleotide sequences (or rather, they created a few possible ones) and found that it's likely that life began a billion or two years before the time period that we believe that our planet likely began.

Uh-Oh

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

If you connect this article with this one it means the Earth itself could be a giant brain and we're actually parasites.

Re:Uh-Oh

[The-Ixian]

Well... we are parasites.... no question about it...

Re:Uh-Oh

[BradleyUffner]

Well... we are parasites.... no question about it...

Not true, it's more of a symbiotic relationship. We are part of the food web, just like every other creature on the planet. Our body waste (and eventually our own dead bodies) will go on to nourish many bacteria species. We actively plant trees and grow food. It's the same relationship our own gut bacteria have with us.

Re:The Republicans will hate this!

[Anonymous Coward]

All intelligent people know that Earth was seeded with life by aliens long ago, and they'll be back to harvest humans to create their youth serum in Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

Hot potato?

[r_jensen11]

So is this Jacques Cousteau's equivalent of a potato?

Re:The Republicans will hate this!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually if you read the article that describes the experiment, it's pretty clear that this "re-creation" was very much engineered and took "Months of painstaking lab work". Screams "Intelligent design" and not proof that life just happened out of nothing to me.

No, it screams that it takes a lot of human effort to create a situation that can naturally occur in the real world, and be sure that the model is real.

It's no different than making a wind tunnel to model air flow.

Seems you are the ignorant one too. Most people who believe in God do NOT consider him angry, quite the opposite, He is seen as forgiving and a loving father who cares for His children deeply, even the ones who choose to reject Him. Plus most of us believe that He has actually appeared in human form in the past and promises to visibly return so he's not invisible. So your idea that God is angry and invisible is not correct and shows that you are ignorant of the facts here.

Most people want God to forgive them, while punishing their enemies harshly, even for the most trivial of offenses, in my experience. What do you think?

However, I get that you have to talk down such beliefs and choose to remain ignorant of what you so confidently speak. Actually investigating the facts and choosing to represent them fairly might lead to some uncomfortable questions for you to answer about personal responsibility and judgment, because IF God actually exists, you are in serious trouble when eternity rolls around.... Here's hoping you find the truth....

Oh wait, there you go, not wanting God to be forgiving or understanding at all.

Huh.

Re:The Republicans will hate this!

[PopeRatzo]

Most people who believe in God do NOT consider him angry, quite the opposite, He is seen as forgiving and a loving father who cares for His children deeply

It depends on whose god you're talking about:

http://vignette4.wikia.nocooki...

Re:The Republicans will hate this!

[PopeRatzo]

Complexity implies engineering.

No, it does not.

Re:The Republicans will hate this!

[PopeRatzo]

Obviously I'm talking about the God I believe in...

No, you were talking about the God that "most people" believe in. Here's what you wrote:

Most people who believe in God do NOT consider him angry

How would you know what "most people who believe in God" believe? It's a pretty big number, I'll bet.

You might also say that "most people who believe in God" believe that if they pray hard enough, God will make their football team win on Sunday or will cure their cancer or help them buy the winning lottery ticket. People believe all kinds of things about God because He is a cipher onto which they project their needs and worldview. Angry people believe God is angry and there are a whole lot of angry people.