We just discovered slice “2″ is alive. |1 – Continental crust | 2 -Oceanic crust | 3 – Upper Mantle | 4 – Lower Mantle | 5 – Outer Core | 6 – Inner Core | Image Credit: Dake
Posted on 03/20/2013 8:38:08 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
File this under: What don’t we know?
We just discovered slice “2″ is alive. |1 – Continental crust | 2 -Oceanic crust | 3 – Upper Mantle | 4 – Lower Mantle | 5 – Outer Core | 6 – Inner Core | Image Credit: Dake
You might have thought that photosynthetic life forms had the Earth covered, but according to some researchers the largest ecosystem on Earth was just discovered and announced last Thursday, and it’s powered by hydrogen, not photosynthesis.
The Oceanic Crust is the rocky hard part under the mud that lies under the ocean. It covers 60% of the planet and it’s 10km thick. (The oceans themselves are a paltry 4km deep on average.) We’ve known for years that the isolated hot springs in trenches held life. But who thought that all the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of basalt rock in between had its own life cycle? Last week a group from the Center for Geomicrobiology at Aarhus University, Denmark announced that they had drilled through crust that was 2.5km underwater and 55 km away from anything that mattered. They found life in the basalt.
“We’re providing the first direct evidence of life in the deeply buried oceanic crust. Our findings suggest that this spatially vast ecosystem is largely supported by chemosynthesis,” says Dr Lever, at the time a PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, and now a scientist at the Center for Geomicrobiology at Aarhus University, Denmark.
The microorganisms we found are native to basalt,” explains Dr Lever.
Energy from reduced iron
We have learned that sunlight is a prerequisite for life on Earth. Photosynthetic organisms use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into organic material that makes up the foundation of Earth’s food chains. Life in the porous rock material in the oceanic crust is fundamentally different. Energy — and therefore life’s driving force — derives from geochemical processes.
“There are small veins in the basaltic oceanic crust and water runs through them. The water probably reacts with reduced iron compounds, such as olivine, in the basalt and releases hydrogen. Microorganisms use the hydrogen as a source of energy to convert carbon dioxide into organic material,” explains Dr Lever. “So far, evidence for life deep within oceanic crust was based on chemical and textural signatures in rocks, but direct proof was lacking,” adds Dr Olivier Rouxel of the French IFREMER institute.
It’s not just hydrogen-powered, there’s sulphate, methane, and carbon fermentation too
Even though this enormous ecosystem is probably mainly based on hydrogen, several different forms of life are found here. The hydrogen-oxidising microorganisms create organic material that forms the basis for other microorganisms in the basalt. Some organisms get their energy by producing methane or by reducing sulphate, while others get energy by breaking down organic carbon by means of fermentation.
These bugs are not the same ones in the sea water. There is no oxygen, and while they are in old rocks, they are not fossils
Dr Lever’s basalt is 3.5 million years old, but laboratory cultures show that the DNA belonging to these organisms is not fossil. “It all began when I extracted DNA from the rock samples we had brought up. To my great surprise, I identified genes that are found in methane-producing microorganisms. We subsequently analysed the chemical signatures in the rock material, and our work with carbon isotopes provided clear evidence that the organic material did not derive from dead plankton introduced by seawater, but was formed within the oceanic crust. In addition, sulphur isotopes showed us that microbial cycling of sulphur had taken place in the same rocks. These could all have been fossil signatures of life, but we cultured microorganisms from basalt rocks in the laboratory and were able to measure microbial methane production,” explains Dr Lever. Dr Jeff Alt of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor adds that “Our work proves that microbes play an important role in basalt chemistry, and thereby influence ocean chemistry.”
I’m sure the U.N. will be getting a team over there next week… I don’t think they’ve got these rocks in their models.
This is amazing.
Oil is a renewable resource. It’s not ancient. It’s made every day.
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The late Lance Endersbee believed that water was created in the mantel, some believe oil is similarly created, we know nothing about our planet and how it works. It’s still one of the greatest mysteries on earth.
Lets see how the peer reviews if ever come forth.
From the comments to the article:
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Photosynthesis and Chemosynthesis both are endothermic storage of heat as energy. So does more CO2 cause cooling? Also does getting oil out of the way help this life to cool the planet? Does this mean that in the right conditions oil could be quickly renewable without being abiotically produced?
So many questions for the “settled science”.
Until we know for sure, I suggest we continue to use level one.
It sure beats the pixie dust at level.
See #7.
Blah, blah, blah... more government grants.
Any idiot who paid attention in high school biology knows that life can and probably does occur anywhere there is a large and stable gradient in the oxidation reduction potential.
They’ll probably give these bozos a Nobel Prize or something.
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Siliggy, if more CO2 means more cooling does that mean that we’ll see a change of story from our warmists? You know, CAGC (catastrophic anthropogenic global cooling) and see policies to reduce CO2 to avoid freezing?
>> “storage of heat as energy” <<
.
Word games?
Or did he mean chemical potential energy?
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I’m going to nit-pick and point out that 3.5 billion years is extraordinarily old for oceanic crust. Wikipedia says typically 200 million years … OK, I know it’s not always a reliable source but I’ve read the same number in various books. Oceanic crust is continuously “recycled” by subduction in the course of tectonic plate activity so it’s on average way younger than continental crust. If this bit of oceanic basalt was so old, it’s not typical of most oceanic basalt. Does the study extrapolate from this to most or all the ocean crust and if, so how do they justify it?
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, no I’m not a warmist troll. Just taking a sceptical look at the information given.
I didn’t understand that either.
So the Russians were correct afterall.
The earth is a hydrocarbon still. Always has been.
You’re not nit picking at all. The only way I could figure to find oceanic basalt that old is if it became part of a very old crust and thus never went back into the mantel. Help me out if there is another way.
The two most abundant elements in the universe is Hydrogen and Stupidity.
And Obama is trying to cut back on the Hydrogen.
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