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Keyword: extremophiles

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  • Earth Is An Oil-Producing Machine — We're Not Running Out: Fossil Fuels is a misnomer. Research from the last decade found that hydrocarbons are synthesized abiotically.

    12/10/2022 9:48:38 PM PST · by SeekAndFind · 69 replies
    Investors Business Daily ^ | 11/04/2015 | Kerry Jackson
    Ever since M. King Hubbert in the 1950s convinced a lot of people with his "peak oil" theory that production would collapse and we'd eventually exhaust our crude supplies, the clock has been running. And running. And it will continue to run for some time, as technology and new discoveries show that there's still an ocean of oil under our feet.Engineering and Technology Magazine reported this week that BP — the company that once wanted to be known as "Beyond Petroleum" rather than "British Petroleum" — is saying "the world is no longer at risk of running out of resources.""Thanks...
  • Scientists revive 100 million-year-old microbes from the sea

    07/28/2020 7:25:55 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 36 replies
    The tiny organisms had survived in the South Pacific seabed - in sediment that is poor in nutrients, but has enough oxygen to allow them to live. Microbes are among the earth's simplest organisms, and some can live in extreme environments where more developed life forms cannot survive. After incubation by the scientists, the microbes began to eat and multiply. Professor and study co-author Steven D'Hondt, from the University of Rhode Island, said the microbes came from the oldest samples taken from the seabed. "In the oldest sediment we've drilled, with the least amount of food, there are still living...
  • Scientists Revive 100-Million-Year-Old Microbes Found Deep Below the Bottom of the Ocean

    07/28/2020 1:05:03 PM PDT · by Red Badger · 69 replies
    scitechdaily.com ^ | By University of Rhode Island - - - - July 28, 2020
    Magnified image showing microbes revived from 101.5 million-year-old sediment. Credit: JAMSTEC ======================================================================= For decades, scientists have gathered ancient sediment samples from below the seafloor to better understand past climates, plate tectonics, and the deep marine ecosystem. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers reveal that given the right food in the right laboratory conditions, microbes collected from sediment as old as 100 million years can revive and multiply, even after laying dormant since large dinosaurs prowled the planet. The research team behind the new study, from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the URI Graduate...
  • Some Scientists Think SARS May Have Come from Outer Space

    05/22/2003 5:47:54 PM PDT · by TaxRelief · 207 replies · 880+ views
    LONDON (Reuters) ^ | May 22, 2003 | Patricia Reaney
    LONDON (Reuters) - Could SARS have come from outer space? Some scientists think so. Instead of jumping from an unknown animal host in southern China, a few researchers in Britain believe the virus that has baffled medical experts descended from the stratosphere. "I think it is a possibility that SARS came from space. It is a very strong possibility," Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe told Reuters. The director of the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology in Wales and a proponent of the theory that life on Earth originated from space, admits the theory defies conventional wisdom. But in a letter published in The...
  • Deep-ocean vents are a source of oil and gas (evidence of abiogenic hydrocarbons)

    01/31/2008 9:42:53 PM PST · by neverdem · 40 replies · 1,338+ views
    Nature News ^ | 31 January 2008 | Rachel Courtland
    Hydrocarbons bubble up from the mid-Atlantic's Lost City. Deep-sea vents could offer a non-biological source of oil and gas.D. KELLEY & M. ELEND, UNIV. WASHINGTON INST. FOR EXPLORATION/URI-IAO/NOAA/THE LOST CITY SCIENCE TEAM Undersea thermal vents can yield unexpected bounty: natural gas and the building blocks of oil products. In a new analysis of Lost City, a hydrothermal field in the mid-Atlantic, researchers have found that these organic molecules are being created through inorganic processes, rather than the more typical decomposition of once-living material. Most of the planet's oil and natural gas deposits were created when decomposing biological matter is 'cooked'...
  • Colonizing Mars may require humanity to tweak its DNA

    05/20/2020 8:49:42 AM PDT · by BenLurkin · 40 replies
    space.com ^ | 19 May 2020 | Mike Wall
    Genetic enhancement may not be restricted to the pages of sci-fi novels for much longer. For example, scientists have already inserted genes from tardigrades — tiny, adorable and famously tough animals that can survive the vacuum of space — into human cells in the laboratory. The engineered cells exhibited a greater resistance to radiation than their normal counterparts... Tardigrades and "extremophile" microbes, such as the radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, "are a great, basically natural reservoir of amazing traits and talents in biology," added Mason... "Maybe we use some of them." Harnessing these traits might also someday allow astronauts to journey...
  • Are There Aliens Already on Earth?

    02/20/2006 5:28:16 PM PST · by KevinDavis · 141 replies · 3,257+ views
    Conspiracy theorists will readily tell you that the U.S. military is hiding alien corpses in a secret facility in the Nevada desert. But paleontologist and University of Washington geology professor Peter Ward thinks that scientists should be looking for a different type of alien life on earth: alien microbes. Ward is the author of several popular books about astrobiology, including the controversial Rare Earth, co-authored with Donald Brownlee. In his latest book, Life as We Do Not Know It, Ward addresses an issue often avoided by astrobiologists. Although all known life on Earth has a similar DNA-based chemistry, life found...
  • Robots take scientists into sea depths

    08/02/2005 12:42:11 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 7 replies · 624+ views
    Seattle Post-Intelligencer ^ | 7/29/05 | Tom Paulson
    Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet's most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control. "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer. In 2000, Kelley led an expedition using a manned submersible to explore the deep Atlantic Ocean. Her team stumbled upon something never seen before. The researchers discovered a startlingly massive collection of limestone towers located miles away from the tectonic "spreading" cracks in the seafloor that typically produce such structures. Some of these hydrothermal...
  • Bizarre life-forms found thriving in ancient rocks beneath the seafloor

    04/04/2020 1:19:18 PM PDT · by RomanSoldier19 · 18 replies
    nationalgeographic ^ | APRIL 2, 2020 | BY ROBIN GEORGE ANDREWS
    IN 2013, SCIENTISTS were stunned to find microbes thriving deep inside volcanic rocks beneath the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest, buried under more than 870 feet of sediment. The rocks were on the flank of the volcanic rift where they were born, and they were still young and hot enough to drive intense chemical reactions with the seawater, from which the microbes derived their energy. Now, however, another team of researchers have discovered living cells inside exceedingly old, cold oceanic crust in the middle of the South Pacific. It isn’t yet clear how these new microbes are managing to survive—and...
  • Chlamydia-related bacteria discovered deep below the Arctic Ocean

    03/06/2020 11:03:38 AM PST · by BenLurkin · 34 replies
    phys.org ^ | March 6, 2020 | Wageningen University
    An international group of researchers report the discovery of numerous new species of Chlamydiae growing in deep Arctic Ocean sediments, in absence of any obvious host organisms. The researchers had been exploring microbes that live over 3 km below the ocean surface and several meters into the ocean seafloor sediment during an expedition to Loki's Castle, a deep-sea hydrothermal vent field located in the Arctic Ocean in-between Iceland, Norway, and Svalbard. This environment is devoid of oxygen and macroscopic life forms. Unexpectedly, the research team came across highly abundant and diverse relatives of Chlamydia. "Finding Chlamydiae in this environment was...
  • Hardy Earth Bacteria Can Grow In Lunar Soil

    03/14/2008 2:49:39 PM PDT · by blam · 8 replies · 381+ views
    New Scientist ^ | 3-14-2008 | David Shiga
    Hardy Earth bacteria can grow in lunar soil 00:53 14 March 2008 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga, Houston A hardy life form called cyanobacteria can grow in otherwise inhospitable lunar soil, new experiments suggest. Future colonists on the Moon might be able to use the cyanobacteria to extract resources from the soil that could be used to make rocket fuel and fertiliser for crops. NASA plans to send astronauts back to the Moon starting in 2020, with the ultimate aim of setting up a permanent lunar base. Sustaining such a base will be a major challenge, because it is so...
  • Scientists create living concrete from bacteria and sand

    01/16/2020 9:20:20 AM PST · by BenLurkin · 35 replies
    Advanced Scoence News ^ | 01/16/2020 | Victoria Corless
    The team used a 3D sand–hydrogel scaffold that they inoculated with Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 (Synechococcus) — a photosynthetic cyanobacterium that converts CO2 to sugars during photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria are well known to survive extreme environmental conditions, including high and low temperature, salinity, and humidity, making them ideal candidates for living materials. These new materials are also capable of being regenerated from one parent “brick” using temperature and humidity switches. This corresponds to cycles of incubation at 37 °C, followed by low-temperature storage, where the gelatin matrix solidifies and encapsulates the bacteria. Splitting one brick in half and extending its shape...
  • First Detection of Sugars in Meteorites Gives Clues to Origin of Life

    11/21/2019 8:04:15 AM PST · by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget · 54 replies
    NASA ^ | Nov. 18, 2019 | Bill Steigerwald / Nancy Jones
    An international team has found sugars essential to life in meteorites. The new discovery adds to the growing list of biologically important compounds that have been found in meteorites, supporting the hypothesis that chemical reactions in asteroids – the parent bodies of many meteorites – can make some of life’s ingredients. If correct, meteorite bombardment on ancient Earth may have assisted the origin of life with a supply of life’s building blocks. Image of asteroid Bennu This is a mosaic image of asteroid Bennu, from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The discovery of sugars in meteorites supports the hypothesis that chemical reactions...
  • NASA's Undersea Robot Crawls Beneath Antarctic Ice in Test for Icy Moons

    11/20/2019 11:14:38 AM PST · by BenLurkin · 11 replies
    space.com ^ | 11/20/2019 | By Meghan Bartels
    NASA engineers are already working on an underwater rover they hope could one day tackle the challenges posed by ocean worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. A team has been working on such a robot, called Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration or BRUIE, for a few years now. NASA is taking a prototype of that rover to Antarctica for testing in the most similar environment to those moons found on Earth. The tests will take place at Australia's Casey research station along the coast of Antarctica far south of Australia, where BRUIE will spend a month exploring...
  • Microbes harvest electrons: Novel process discovered

    11/08/2019 2:33:15 PM PST · by Openurmind · 39 replies
    Science Daily ^ | Nov 5, 2019 | Washington University
    Ever since scientists discovered that certain microbes can get their energy from electrical charges, researchers have wondered how they do it. Bacteria don't have mouths, so they need another way to bring their fuel into their bodies. New research from Washington University in St. Louis reveals how one such bacteria pulls in electrons straight from an electrode source. The work from the laboratory of Arpita Bose, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was published Nov. 5 in the scientific journal mBio. "The molecular underpinning of this process has been difficult to unravel until our work," Bose said. "This...
  • Tardigrades Use Intrinsically Disordered Proteins to Survive Desiccation

    03/17/2017 1:50:15 PM PDT · by JoeProBono · 43 replies
    cell ^ | 16 March 2017 | Thomas C. Boothby
    Tardigrades are microscopic animals that survive a remarkable array of stresses, including desiccation [extreme drying]. How tardigrades survive desiccation has remained a mystery for more than 250 years. Trehalose, a disaccharide essential for several organisms to survive drying, is detected at low levels or not at all in some tardigrade species, indicating that tardigrades possess potentially novel mechanisms for surviving desiccation. Here we show that tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins (TDPs) are essential for desiccation tolerance. TDP genes are constitutively expressed at high levels or induced during desiccation in multiple tardigrade species. TDPs are required for tardigrade desiccation tolerance, and these...
  • ...Antarctic fungi survives Martian conditions...strapped outside the space station for 18 months

    01/28/2016 6:28:56 PM PST · by BenLurkin · 9 replies
    daily mail uk ^ | 01/25/2016 | cheyenne macdonald
    After a year-and-a-half long voyage aboard the International Space Station, a group of fungi collected from Antarctica has proven its ability to withstand harsh, Mars-like conditions. More than half of the cells remained intact over the course of the 18-month study, providing new insight for the possibility of life on Mars. These fungal samples, along with lichens from Spain and Austria, have allowed European researchers to assess the survivability and stability of microscopic lifeforms on the red planet. The tiny fungi taken from Antarctica are typically found in the cracks of rocks in this dry, hostile region. Scientists took samples...
  • Researchers find evidence of cavity-dwelling microbial life from 3 billion years ago

    01/01/2016 5:14:05 AM PST · by WhiskeyX · 42 replies
    Phys.org ^ | December 28, 2015 | Bob Yirka
    (Phys.org)—A team of researchers from Germany and Switzerland has found examples of microbial life from over 3 billion years ago, that appeared to have evaded UV radiation by hiding in subsurface cavities. In their paper published in the journal Geology, the team describes where the fossilized cells were found, their testing techniques and why their finding is important. Scientists believe that life first came to exist on planet Earth approximately three and a half to four billion years ago, a time called the Archaean aeon, when there was not yet an ozone layer to filer out UV radiation, or oxygen...
  • Ocean bubbles up to surface of Jupiter's moon Europa

    03/06/2013 10:01:01 PM PST · by BenLurkin · 12 replies
    Space.com ^ | By Mike Wall
    The huge ocean sloshing beneath the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa likely makes its way to the surface in some places, suggesting astronomers may not need to drill down deep to investigate it, a new study reports. Scientists have detected chemicals on Europa's frozen surface that could only come from the global liquid-water ocean beneath, implying the two are in contact and potentially opening a window into an environment that may be capable of supporting life as we know it. "We now have evidence that Europa's ocean is not isolated — that the ocean and the surface talk to...
  • Russia finds 'new bacteria' in Antarctic lake

    03/07/2013 9:51:30 AM PST · by Red Badger · 41 replies
    Phys.Org ^ | 03-07-2013 | Staff
    Russian scientists believe they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica, the RIA Novosti news agency reported on Thursday. The samples obtained from the underground lake in May 2012 contained a bacteria which bore no resemblance to existing types, said Sergei Bulat of the genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics. "After putting aside all possible elements of contamination, DNA was found that did not coincide with any of the well-known types in the global database," he said. "We are calling this life form unclassified and unidentified," he...