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A 'subterranean Galapagos' inside the Earth (2018)
- rolenthedeep 3y agoI find the extent of life on this planet just fascinating. Life is absolutely everywhere you care to look. As long as there's raw resources, energy, and not too hot to destroy organic molecules, you'll find life. Even those basic requirements are not as clear-cut as you'd expect. Ancient microbes can wake up after being exhumed from glaciers. Closed cave ecosystems that have been self-sustaining with minimal input for thousands of years. Goddamn tardigrades in the vacuum and radiation of space. Even the very air is absolutely inundated with life. Mostly with fungal spores, but we all choose to not think about that. Probably the only places we won't find life is where it's too hot for organic molecules to exist. Even then, I wouldn't be that surprised if we find some type of non-carbon self-replicating molecules in magma or something. I guess that's the beauty of evolution. If an opportunity exists, there will (eventually) be a creature evolved specifically to take advantage of it. My secret dream for extraterrestrial life is something living in the gas giants. Ben Bova's stories about vast Jovian whales really struck a chord with me.
- SubiculumCode 3y agoi sometimes wonder if life first wvolved in the earth rather than in the sea or a puddle.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y agoWhat’s the difference?
- johnchristopher 3y agoRadiation.
- marcellus23 3y agoYou might enjoy The Algebriast. The book centers around exploring a gas giant inhabited by a race of floating creatures. It's one of Banks' best.
- culi 3y ago> Even the very air is absolutely inundated with life. Mostly with fungal spores, but we all choose to not think about that. Anybody who's tried making sourdough in two very far away homes is probably acutely aware of this haha
- joshuahedlund 3y ago> Life is absolutely everywhere you care to look. The prevalence of life everywhere on Earth, and the complete lack of life everywhere not-on-Earth in every place we've looked (so far) - the moon, Mars, asteroids, etc, etc - are equally fascinating.
- hughw 3y ago"A decade ago, we had no idea that the rocks beneath our feet could be so vastly inhabited." Over 30 years ago Thomas Gold published "The Deep Hot Biosphere". A review in PNAS is here [1]. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1701266114 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1701266114
- narrator 3y agoThat book somewhat supports the idea that oil didn't come from dinosaurs exclusively and may be a product of microorganisms living within the earth's crust. To dispute the "oil only comes from dinosaurs" idea seems to make one unpopular in the scientific community.
- orwin 3y agoTo anyone reading the parent comment : this isn't true, for multiple reasons. First, to nitpick: we know that most oil is from plants (marine phytoplankton especially), not dinosaurs. Now the real point: in the 50s soviet scientists had the idea that abiogenic oil could exist, then found some. The fact that all oil does not come from biological life is accepted by the scientific community since at least then. It's a small fraction of proven oil reserves anyway, and take around the same geological time to get formed anyway, so this is more of a curiosity than useful knowledge.
- labster 3y agoSo there could be oil on Mars, then? SpaceX’s tea?
- nine_k 3y agoMars seems to lack tectonic activity, the hot core that would drive the synthesis. But maybe it had time to generate some oil (or whatever kind of longer-chain hydrocarbons) when it was still active. Oil won't be very useful on Mars as an ubiquitous fuel (there's little oxygen, mostly needed for artificial biomes and the occasional rocket), but certainly would be useful to produce plastics.
- Pokepokalypse 3y agoPretty amazing to think that since this life evolved here, a lot of it thrives on methane. Therefore: I think there's a high likelihood of similar life on Titan. (which has a mostly-methane atmosphere)
- Scubabear68 3y agoIt was my privilege to know Dr. Tullis Onstott, who discovered the deepest known Nematodes miles below the surface over a decade ago. Absolutely fascinating how life finds a way to persist and survive in extreme environments. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott
- kuprel 3y agoWonder if there’s a pocket of advanced life (e.g. mammals) we haven’t discovered yet
- andyp-kw 3y agoIt's difficult to imagine a lifeform bigger than a worm surviving more than a few meters beneath the surface. Mammals just require too much energy to function.
- nine_k 3y agoBeneath the surface of land, yes. Beneath the surface of water there can be more surprises, especially around large sources of (volcanic) heat and substances on the sea floor.
- pvaldes 3y agoMost probably. Yup. Bright orange bats were discovered in West African mining tunnels in 2021. Even very big animals can be still discovered near home. A 12m long, new species of whale hiding a plain sight in the Gulf Of Mexico, and so critically endangered as the Vaquita, was also discovered in 2021 But I wouldn't expect a lot of entirely new types of subterranean mammals in any case. Most of the people would not bat an eye about another species of brown mouse. You need a theriologist for spotting the difference and they are getting more and more scarce.
- baerrie 3y agoFrank Herbert spittin prophecy yet again.
- animal531 3y agoThis is probably where we need to look for life that existed (or might still do) on Mars and Venus.
- justinclift 3y ago(2018)
- Gys 3y agoFor the Dutch speaking here, there is a documentary on this subject currently in the movies: https://onder-het-maaiveld.nl/nieuws/108-onder-het-maaiveld-toont-de-ongeziene-wereld-onder-onze-voeten https://onder-het-maaiveld.nl/nieuws/108-onder-het-maaiveld-...
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- _a_a_a_ 3y agoThis is about subterranean bacteria, and mentions also a nematode. Fascinating it is but describing it as a Galapagos is utterly disingenuous.