- 3831 - UNDERGROUND LIFE - or life on other planets? Water trapped below Earth's surface for billions of years could hold keys to unlocking the secrets of extraterrestrial life. Ancient water trapped deep within an Alpine mountain range harbors microbial life that might look quite like that on other planets.
--------- 3831 - UNDERGROUND LIFE - or life on other planets?
- In the depths of an Alpine mountain range
is the “Bedretto tunnel”, a disused access way to a railway tunnel underneath
the imposing Saint-Gotthard mountain range in the Swiss Alps. Deep within the
towering mass of granite, geobiologist collects sample of water that hasn't
seen the light of day for millions of years.
-
- In those samples, are searches for ancient microorganisms that
are quite different from those found on Earth's surface. Unlike most of today's life, these
microorganisms don't need oxygen to survive, which makes scientists believe
that they might look quite like those that first emerged on our planet over
3,500,000,000 years ago when Earth's atmosphere had little oxygen.
-
- These inhabitants of the wet mountain
darkness could teach us about life on other bodies in the solar system, like
Mars or the ice-covered moons of Saturn and Jupiter.
-
- Scientists know that living organisms
produce methane. But so do many geological processes. But the methane that is a
byproduct of life may look different than the purely geological gas. It may
contain different isotopes, forms of the same chemical element with a different
number of neutrons in their nucleus. Learning to distinguish between those
isotopic differences on Earth will help them develop tools and techniques to do
the same elsewhere in the solar system.
-
- It's
not just methane that can give out a planet's or a moon's secret. There is a
whole range of chemical elements that scientists are interested in, including
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.
-
- The water in which Magnabosco searches for
the microbes may at first glance appear just like the water running from the
tap or raining from the sky. But sensitive scientific instruments reveal that
the liquid is, in fact, very different.
-
- Trapped miles below the planet's surface by
geological faults and fractures, the ancient water is saltier and has less
oxygen dissolved in it than waters far above.
Scientists can detect more hydrogen and traces of methane in these
subterranean samples.
-
- The water that drips from the walls of the
Bedretto tunnel is no more than 300 million years old, but elsewhere in the
world such as in Canada and South Africa, deeper deposits have been found that
are up to a billion years old. Microbes trapped in such waters have evolved
without contact with the planet's surface for more than a quarter of the time
for which life has existed on Earth.
-
- In this old water, the amount of living
cells per milliliter can be tens of thousands times lower than what we see in
the ocean. Since conditions on other
bodies in the solar system are unlikely to make it easy for any lifeforms to
survive, geobiologists hope that learning how life operates on the edge of
survivability under Earth's crust will tell them where and how to look for its traces
elsewhere. This life have been isolated
from the surface for a long time and haven't had any input from photosynthesis
or oxygen.
-
- The researchers have found that those
creatures dwelling in the depths are not completely different from the everyday
daylight-savoring microbes, however. They are made of similar types of
proteins, and their DNA is so similar to their aboveground counterparts, in
fact, that scientists are quite certain the underground creatures must be
distant cousins of the surface microbes.
-
- Was the original ancestor something
underground that went to the surface or something on the surface that went
underground. The underground residents are much more similar to those distant
ancestors than the much busier life forms on the planet's surface. While the
world underground has barely changed for billions of years, allowing the
microbes to relax into a predictable existence, conditions on the surface have
shifted many times, forcing organisms to adapt and evolve.
-
- The conditions and the reactions that are
taking place there and driving the organisms living there are relatively
consistent over really long time scales, which is a lot different than the
surface of our planet where we have seen huge changes in concentrations of
oxygen over the billions of years but also changes in ocean chemistry and the
nutrient supply on the surface.
-
- Microbial life may indeed be waiting to be
discovered elsewhere in the solar system. In the meantime, it turns out we have
also had some very alien neighbors right under our noses this whole time.
-
January 10, 2022 UNDERGROUND LIFE
- or life on other planets? 3821
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ---
--- Some
reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email
feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
---
to: ------ jamesdetrick@comcast.net ------
“Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Friday, January 20, 2023 ---------------------------
-
No comments:
Post a Comment