Deep Under the Sea, Boiling Founts of Life Itself

The New York Times ^ | September 9, 2003 | WILLIAM J. BROAD

[presidio9]

NY Times memberships are free, but here is the rest of the story:

(Page 2 of 2)



Much of the exploration focuses on the West Coast — offshore from California to Canada — because a long volcanic gash fairly close to shore makes scientific visits there relatively easy. The National Science Foundation has financed much of the work, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Five years ago, in a first, scientists off Vancouver Island raised from the depths parts of four rocky vent chimneys, two dead and two live ones spewing hot smoke rich in chemicals and microbes. Dark and rough, they were up to seven feet tall and weighed up to two tons, the hot ones teeming with worms, sea spiders and limpets.

In the June issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the scientists, including Dr. Baross as well as Matthew O. Schrenk, Dr. Deborah S. Kelley and Dr. John R. Delaney, all of the University of Washington, reported the dissection of a chimney that had been venting fluids of 575 degrees. Despite the temperature, it was riddled with signs of life.

"Direct microscopic observation indicated that micro-organisms were attached to mineral surfaces throughout the structure," they wrote, adding that the discovery suggested that further research would expand "the known upper temperature limits of life."

A different census focused on a volcanic gash off Oregon that erupted in 1998, 1999 and 2000, the outbursts monitored by undersea microphones. Each time, the scientists took samples more than a mile down. Such eruptions are windfalls for biologists since not only molten rock but large volumes of hot, microbe-rich water spew forth. The huge clouds of life — thought to originate deep within the cracks, fissures and pores of the rocky seabed — allow experts to glimpse a normally invisible world.

Julie A. Huber, Dr. David A. Butterfield and Dr. Baross, all of the University of Washington, reported their census of microbes up to third of a mile down in the April issue of Microbiology Ecology, published by the Federation of European Microbiological Societies.

They said that even at the greatest depths, under crushing pressures, the rocky seabed was composed of about 30 percent open pores, giving it plenty of living space for diminutive organisms.

The scientists zeroed in on the raw genetic material of the collected microbes, thus finding more than methods of culturing them with special foods could ever discern. (The science of what hyperthermophiles like to eat and breathe is still young.)

To the scientists' surprise, they found a huge diversity of organisms whose composition swung wildly over time. The 1998 eruption produced 35 species of bacteria, compared with 37 and 57 from 1999 and 2000.

But the numbers of archaea — ancient organisms often found in hot places like those thought to exist on the ancient earth — went in the opposite direction, declining from 63 to 60 to 52, according to paper by the same authors in the April 2002 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

The reason behind the swings is still murky. "We're straining to understand better how these systems work," Dr. Baross said in an interview. "It's a very complicated puzzle. Until a couple of years ago, we had no pieces. Now, to some extent, we're starting to put the puzzle together."

Three years ago, scientists told of finding fossil microbes that lived near vents formed 3.2 billion years ago, confirming that hyperthermophiles were among earth's earliest inhabitants. That discovery has quickened the search for descendants of primordial vent life.

Biologists say the recent discovery of the extremely high-temperature, iron-breathing organism by the University of Massachusetts scientists, who included Dr. Kazem Kashefi, suggests that the dark biosphere runs deeper and hotter than previously documented. And sulfur, they add, may turn out to play a smaller role than previously believed. The iron finding is reported in the Aug. 15 issue of Science.

Dr. Lovley and Dr. Kashefi are betting that the common metal (the earth's most abundant element) will prove important. Its transformations, they wrote, "may have been the first form of microbial respiration as life evolved on a hot, early earth."

[xm177e2]

The findings of various microbes that can thrive in extreme environments that had heretofore been thought inimicable to life fuel speculation that Mars may not be dead after all.

And even if it is dead now, there are probably microorganisms that could survive if introduced (and they could play a role in terraforming it)

[ASA Vet]

The Barsoom self defense forces might object to your proposed biological warfare.

[UCANSEE2]

bookmark

[Gunslingr3]

those of us who know God's Word.

"A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with the minds of others. Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the crossroads of the choice between 'I know' and 'They say,' he chose the authority of others, he chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think. Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others. His surrender took the form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of understanding, that others possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever they want it to be, through some means forever denied to him."

"What is mysticism? Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one's senses and one's reason. Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'"

[Dimensio]

Well, at least all these secular cosmologists are very imaginative with their theories-du-jour, and can furnish nonstop entertainment for those of us who know God's Word.

Those silly scientists with their "observations" and "experiments" and "tests" and "facts". We know by faith that all life on Earth is an extension of Brahman!

[stanz]

try this

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/09/science/09VENT.html?pagewanted=print&position=

[stanz]

Or....through the use of peyote.

[AndrewC]

So is this environment oxidizing or reducing?

Free iron rusts in oxygen, guess what we call that.

[lepton]

And much animal life as we know it still depends on varying oxidations states of iron, one atom in every molecule of haemoglobin.

Isn't it four?

[RonF]

Well, there are 4 different globin chains in each hemoglobin molecule, each of which has a heme group, a porphryn ring with an atom of iron in the middle chelated by the ring. The question is whether or not the hemoglobin molecule is actually one molecule with 4 chains (where the chains are chemically joined) or whether it's four separate chains joined by Van der Walls' forces but no chemical bonds that among them have no activity unless associated into a tetramer.

[PatrickHenry]

She was a great writer.

[AndrewC]

She's dead Jim.

[Victoria Delsoul]

"We find bugs pretty much everywhere we look," said Dr. John A. Baross, a biologist at the University of Washington who studies hyperthermophiles and used a deep-sea robot to retrieve the water sample containing superhot organism.

You don't have to go the bottom of the ocean to find bugs, just look around here. LOL, kidding.

[norraad]

So is the false idea of "dino blood" the finite resource.

Will be interesting to see this develop.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

When brought to the surface, the creatures smelled of rotten eggs, a sign of sulfur. It turned out that the ecosystem's main energy source was sulfur compounds emitted by the hot vents, in particular hydrogen sulfide.

Aliens from Io.

[Cinnamon Girl]

"The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, and the rain from the heaven was restrained." Genesis 8:2, (the account of Noah's Ark.) From the Talmud Sanhedrin 108b the sages add that the waters were scalding hot-- all the wells and fountains of the earth opened up and poured forth boiling hot water.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[Junior]

Chemosynthesis placemarker.