Barely living “zombie” bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth’s subsurface—245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans on the surface, according to scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to reveal Earth’s innermost secrets.
On the eve of the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting, scientists with the Deep Carbon Observatory today reported several transformational discoveries, including how much and what kinds of life exist in the deep subsurface under the greatest extremes of pressure, temperature, and low energy and nutrient availability.
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“Today too, we know that subsurface life is common. Ten years ago, we had sampled only a few sites—the kinds of places we’d expect to find life. Now, thanks to ultra-deep sampling, we know we can find them pretty much everywhere, albeit the sampling has obviously reached only an infinitesimally tiny part of the deep biosphere.”
“Our studies of deep biosphere microbes have produced much new knowledge, but also a realization and far greater appreciation of how much we have yet to learn about subsurface life,” says Rick Colwell, Oregon State University, USA. “For example, scientists do not yet know all the ways in which deep subsurface life affects surface life and vice versa. And, for now, we can only marvel at the nature of the metabolisms that allow life to survive under the extremely impoverished and forbidding conditions for life in deep Earth.”
I’m thinking what you’re thinking.
Will this bacteria be subject to the carbon tax?
I am wondering if humans, given their best technology, will free more than a percent or two of the carbon that used to be in the atmosphere and was sequestered in the earth by mother nature. Atmospheric CO2 used to be 100 times as much and the climate was lush. Yet pseudo-scientists predict a tiny increase in CO2 will destroy the world.
An observation I have made many times now is that it is foolish for carbon based organisms living on a carbon based planet to be attempting to reduce carbon.
The “crushed dinosaurs” theory of oil deposit formation has been questioned for some time. This adds further doubt to the traditional theory of oil formation and has raised the possibility that oil is effectively a renewable energy source.
Digging of any hole will soon be forbidden as it may stir up carbon.
Continental drift. Cause of ulcers. When the first Asians crossed the land mass. Every one now proven after the experts who raised the issue were ridiculed and mocked for going against the “consensus”.
Next up? Abiogenic petroleum origin…HIV not causing AIDS…CAWG…etc.
Paging Thomas Gold in the ether…
I think ulcers are caused by “experts”.
The abstract of Thomas Gold’s 1992 PNAS paper The Deep Hot Biosphere:
There are strong indications that microbial life is widespread at depth in the crust of the Earth, just as such life has been identified in numerous ocean vents. This life is not dependent on solar energy and photosynthesis for its primary energy supply, and it is essentially independent of the surface circumstances. Its energy supply comes from chemical sources, due to fluids that migrate upward from deeper levels in the Earth. In mass and volume it may be comparable with all surface life. Such microbial life may account for the presence of biological molecules in all carbonaceous materials in the outer crust, and the inference that these materials must have derived from biological deposits accumulated at the surface is therefore not necessarily valid. Subsurface life may be widespread among the planetary bodies of our solar system, since many of them have equally suitable conditions below, while having totally inhospitable surfaces. One may even speculate that such life may be widely disseminated in the universe, since planetary type bodies with similar subsurface conditions may be common as solitary objects in space, as well as in other solar-type systems.
Can’t say about other planets, but it looks like Gold’s ideas about Earth were sound.
I always knew that Gore & Suzuki where common garden SLUGS that have never contributed anything to Humanity… They have lived off society by fear-mongering…..Shit House Rats,, The invaders are coming from inside earth, gobbling up all things worthy of human desire….Feed them Lead turds
‘Peak’ deep biosphere microbes and bacteria reproduction articles in the Toronto Star and New York Times to come shortly, just as soon as the Fruit Fly guy reads this.