Posted on 12/24/2006 7:14:29 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
December 23, 2006
From Scum, Perhaps the Tiniest Form of Life
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
The smallest form of life known to science just got smaller.
Four million of a newly discovered microbe — assuming the discovery, reported yesterday in the journal Science, is confirmed — could fit into the period at the end of this sentence.
Scientists found the microbes living in a remarkably inhospitable environment, drainage water as caustic as battery acid from a mine in Northern California. The microbes, members of an ancient family of organisms known as archaea, formed a pink scum on green pools of hot mine water laden with toxic metals, including arsenic.
“It was amazing,” said Jillian F. Banfield of the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the discovery team. “These were totally new.” In their paper, the scientists call the microbes “smaller than any other known cellular life form.”
Scientists say the discovery could bear on estimates of the pervasiveness of exotic microbial life, which some experts suspect forms a hidden biosphere extending down miles whose total mass may exceed that of all surface life.
It may also influence the search for microscopic life forms elsewhere in the solar system, a discovery that would prove that life in the universe is not unique to Earth but an inherent property of matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ping!
There is no true life at the NYTimes. They are still scum.
LOL- It's a 'scum = NY Times' smorgasboard!
You mean Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi?
how long before the scum gets listed on the 'endangered species list'?
Please not another AlGore John Fing Kerry thread...
The Biography of Al Gore.
I don't believe it... The NYT did NOT JUST discover the DemocraticUnderground. Another lie by the Times.
It's amazing. God creates man and calls him to the highest form of life - equality with Him - and man plays around in the mud instead and says "These germs are my ancestors!".
No, a long lost dumb cousin.:-)
With all due respect, even Genesis says that Adam was formed from mud. Now for the spiritual parts -- the souls of man -- those are mos def not from the mud.
"Scientists found the microbes living in a remarkably inhospitable environment, drainage water as caustic as battery acid from a mine in Northern California. "
I hope the EPA is on the case, and makes sure that no one disturbs the battery-acid drainage water enviromment upon which this creature is so dependent. That could be an environmental catastrophe.
Okay. So there is life in this toxic environment. It is only right fot the EPA to now declare that a sacred "special candidate wetland". Who are we to decide which live forms are allowed to thrive and which should be denied existence?
We CANNOT clean up the toxic materials. They are an ecosystem.
exaclty. you beat me to it.
What! they found lawyers?
They are getting closer to the realization that Oil is manufactured by microbes. It's a renewable resource of vast abundance within the hidden biosphere
No, they found Jimmah, the littlest Tnediserp.
Is this an article from the NYT religious section?..
NYT administrators are Scum...
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