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'Largest Biological Reservoir' Discovered Below Seafloor

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posted on Jun, 14 2010 @ 03:29 PM
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New Forms of Life
They keep finding more and more sub-surface extreme organisms in places people never believed we would, its amazing.

See so much of this I'm starting to believe that live originated in these environments.

Even though they are so inhospitable because they are locked deep within the Earth's crust they are also more stable, when you compare them to the Earth's surface, especially when the planet was young.

Scientists are baffled by how life seems to have just appeared out of no where how life could survive the conditions of early earth when they were so volatile, and also how chemistry transforms into biology in the first place.

Life starting far below the surface would help explain a lot of these problems.

1. Maybe the first surface organisms were just emerging from below the surface and that's why we can't find earlier examples.

2. Life could have emerged on the surface multiple times and during rough periods could've been wiped off the surface completely

3. Scientists have tried to "jump-start" life from chemistry before but it has never worked, maybe they don't have the chemistry right, maybe a change like this can only occur in the heat and pressure of the deep crust.

I don't know just a bunch of supposings about it, I'm sure I misstated a thing or two, anyone else have thoughts on it?

I just really think that eventually hydrated silicates or whatever its called down there will be found to be the incubator for life everywhere, meaning any planet with an active core could potentially have life.



[edit on 14-6-2010 by thedarklingthrush]

[edit on 14-6-2010 by thedarklingthrush]

[edit on 14-6-2010 by thedarklingthrush]



posted on Jun, 14 2010 @ 04:50 PM
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It will be interesting to see if some of these deep-earth life forms come up and meet us top-dwellers through the Gulf disaster.

Could be an Andromeda Strain from the Center of the Earth...
Wow, what a great movie title (although it's a horrible thought)...



posted on Jun, 14 2010 @ 05:04 PM
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Originally posted by TheComedian
It will be interesting to see if some of these deep-earth life forms come up and meet us top-dwellers through the Gulf disaster.

Could be an Andromeda Strain from the Center of the Earth...
Wow, what a great movie title (although it's a horrible thought)...


I actually think if anything came up from there it would help us because it might be some kind of organism that breathed the harmful gases and ate oil.



posted on Jun, 17 2010 @ 03:40 AM
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No one else thinks that life originated in places like this?

The deep crust was the first place on the planet to by hydrated, stable and the source of energy is ever present.



posted on Jun, 17 2010 @ 03:53 AM
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I agree that this is an amazing discovery ... but while reading the article, the following made me wonder:



Burrowing more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) underwater and drilling through 850 feet (260 meters) of rock ...


If this was a truly accidental yet fortuitous discovery and one that they weren't expecting ... then I have to ask the question just what exactly they were really looking for originally.
After all, thats a heck of a lot of trouble, time and expense to go to drilling through that much rock so deep under water.

Don't you just hate these sort of incomplete reports that completely gloss over what they were up to on the ocean floor and focus on the discovery itself as if thats all there was to the story.



posted on Jun, 17 2010 @ 04:01 AM
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It is a logical conclusion. So yes you may be on to something. We are already seeing life forms that seem to break all the rules, so anyone saying its not at least a possibility is a fool.

As you said, pressure + chemistry ........

But its far too complicated and my brain hurts at the endless possibilities this poses of life throughout the universe. Better off just believing we are special and God made us with magic.



posted on Jun, 17 2010 @ 04:04 AM
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reply to post by tauristercus
 


Read the next four words after what you quoted.

What else would they look for?



posted on Jun, 17 2010 @ 04:11 AM
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reply to post by thedarklingthrush
 

The next 4 words are ...


a group of microbiologists


Yes, I don't have a problem with a bunch of scientists doing research ... but what I'm trying to say (obviously unsuccessfully) is why and how did they decide to conduct their drilling at that very spot in the ocean ... out of all the untold number of other locations in the oceans of the world that they could have picked to drill ?
I would have assumed that such a "biological reservoir" would have been extremely rare and yet they seemed to have "fluked" a successful drilling right into the middle of it.
It would have been great if the article had provided such background info as well.



posted on Jun, 17 2010 @ 05:25 AM
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Originally posted by thedarklingthrush
No one else thinks that life originated in places like this?

The deep crust was the first place on the planet to by hydrated, stable and the source of energy is ever present.


I could say "I think so" and I could say "I think not". And at the end, both would mean the same "I don't know."


Here is hoping they will find Atlantis one day.



posted on Jun, 19 2010 @ 08:26 PM
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Originally posted by tauristercus
Yes, I don't have a problem with a bunch of scientists doing research ... but what I'm trying to say (obviously unsuccessfully) is why and how did they decide to conduct their drilling at that very spot in the ocean ... out of all the untold number of other locations in the oceans of the world that they could have picked to drill ?
I would have assumed that such a "biological reservoir" would have been extremely rare and yet they seemed to have "fluked" a successful drilling right into the middle of it.
It would have been great if the article had provided such background info as well.


I couldn't find any other information about the experiment seaching on the subject or the scientists in the article. Beth Orcutt, who is quoted in the article has a facebook, I would try and ask her if I had one myself. Anyone wanna make a go? We wanna know why she picked this spot.

After reading the article carefully though I do think she speculates here:


"If you consider how much ocean crust there is on Earth, and how much of that is hydrologically active, then this environment could be one of the most massive habitats for microbial life on Earth. There may be new species of life and new types of metabolism that we haven't discovered yet," Orcutt said.

That you would find something similar if you drilled into any hydrologically active part of the Earth's ocean crust.







 
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