Life Found Thriving in Porous Rock Deep Beneath the Seafloor

[kennyc]

Life Found Thriving in Porous Rock Deep Beneath the Seafloor

ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2010) — Researchers have found compelling evidence for an extensive biological community living in porous rock deep beneath the seafloor. The microbes in this hidden world appear to be an important source of dissolved organic matter in deep ocean water, a finding that could dramatically change ideas about the ocean carbon cycle.

Matthew McCarthy, associate professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, led a team of researchers from several institutions who analyzed the dissolved organic matter in fluids from natural vents on the seafloor and from a borehole that penetrated the basement rock deep beneath the seafloor sediments. Their results, to be published in the January issue of Nature Geoscience and currently available online, indicate that the dissolved material in those fluids was synthesized by microbes living in the porous basalt rock of the upper oceanic crust. These microbes are "chemoautotrophic," meaning they derive energy from chemical reactions and are completely independent of the sunlight-driven life on the surface of our planet.

Chemoautotrophic microbes (bacteria and archaea) have been found in deep-ocean sediments and at hydrothermal vents, where hot water flows out through newly formed volcanic rock at mid-ocean ridges. The idea that a much larger biological community might exist in habitats within the cooler upper-crustal rock that lies under large areas of the seafloor has been an exciting, but controversial, hypothesis, McCarthy said.

rest here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1207131735.htm

[LCF]

Sounds interesting! Thanks for posting!

[kennyc]

It is quite amazing all the places that life has found and exists. I'm certainly thinking it quite possible that it could have been delivered here by asteroids or comets.