Research Finds Life 1000 Feet Beneath Ocean Floor

spaceref.com ^ | 3 Jan 03 | staff

[RightWhale]

Actually the sun is necessary.

Necessary for what? Apparently not for the formation nor the continuence of life. A large central mass should aid formation of a dense dustcloud and the formation of planets, but it needn't be a sun. Imagine that earth cut loose from the sun right now and set out for interstellar space, total dark, total cold. Would life cease to exist on earth? Correct. Life would not cease to exist on earth. Those microbes inside the rock of the crust would happily continue to churn out ammonium and eat sulfates forever or at least a few billion more years.

The sun, great to have if you have one. Not necessary.

[RightWhale]

Everything heavier than helium came from inside stars. Doesn't mean those stars still exist. The one that made the material of earth was probably a supernova, and that star is long gone, blown up. The present sun could have formed at the same time as the planets in the system. The radioisotopes inside earth didn't come from the sun, but were created from the parent star. The sun we have now is immaterial to presence or absence of life.

[SERE_DOC]

"This species of life could occur on many planets. A sun is not necessary."

Hence proof of your theory I respectfully submit...

Washington DC

[RightWhale]

That's evidence alright. It's not my theory, though. Even though Ward and Brownlee's book "Rare Earth" explains how the rise of intelligent life such as . . . ahem . . . us is exceedingly uncommon in the universe, the possibility that there is microbial life everywhere is not zero. In fact, the more we learn about extremophiles, the more niches there appear to be for such life, and many of those niches don't require much more than a warmish rock. Any planet the size of earth would do for a home even if it were far enough from a star as to safely ignore the star in any model.

[pankot]

Six toes! Are you kidding? Those are aliens among us...gotta go get my tin foil hat.

[RightWhale]

Helium also comes from the inside of stars

Indeed it does even this late in the life of the Milky Way. There is still a lot of unburned hydrogen out there, which means we are still youthful in terms of the life of the universe. We have a long way to go from here, our place of birth, and we could, if we wanted, do it the rest of the way without the sun.

[RightWhale]

a red giant (betelgeuse) who is expected to "die" very soon

Sure. Our very own sun is expected to take this route as well, become a red giant and expand to such size as to eat the earth as the sun runs short of hydrogen. It won't supernova, though since it lacks the mass to do so. We ought to be thinking about moving to a better neighborhood. Otherwise, the sun is not particularly relevant anymore.

[js1138]

Maybe we can use nuclear power for that... :)

Radioactive decay is already the energy source keeping the earth's interior hot. I'm not sure what more heat would contribute.

[RightWhale]

We will probably have been killed off by an impact long before that.

We live in optimistic times.

[RightWhale]

We have several hundred million years before the suns power runs out.

We don't actually have that much time. Burnout isn't our destiny. The sun will continue to warm, and earth will continue to warm. It's going to get hot down here and a planet of Algores can't stop it.

[Never2baCrat]

Now we know where Demoncrats come from!!!!!!

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 2003. A link back here from DC turned up during a search for something else.

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic ·

[fish hawk]

Feet are pairs. Foot is one.

[fso301]

Interesting but it could also be surface microbes that found their way into fractures and pores.

[RightWhale]

This has been one of my favorite threads for several years.

[xJones]

Feet are pairs. Foot is one.

Shoes salesman.