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We don’t wanna freak you out, but West Virginian scientists may have found a life form more than 800 million years old. In a new paper published in the journal Geology, West Virginia University geologists say that some of the microorganisms found inside the Browne Formation, an 830 million-year-old rock found in the Australian desert, may still be alive — and if they are, it could help us find life on Mars, to boot. Taking a piece of the Browne Formation, which includes halite salt crystals, the WVU researchers found organic liquids and solids using non-invasive optical techniques. Within those...

PARIS (AFP) - Scientists on Wednesday said they had discovered deep-sea viruses to be an unexpectedly potent driver of the so-called carbon cycle that sustains oceanic life and helps dampen global warming. Under the carbon cycle, microscopic algae at the sea surface suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Many of these microscopic creatures, called prokaryotes, become infected by naturally-occurring marine viruses. When they die, their carbon-rich remains gently sink to lower depths, where they are then cannibalistically gobbled up by other bacteria. These prokaryotes in turn become a meal for a larger life form and so on, up the...

The lost civilization of Atlantis may just be legend, but way down below the ocean (to quote the folksinger Donovan) there are some things that are very real — namely, bacteria and archaea. By some estimates, sub-seafloor prokaryotes may account for two-thirds of the biomass of these types of organisms on Earth. The latest evidence for such a huge undersea biosphere, and a depth record of sorts, is reported in Science by R. John Parkes of Cardiff University and colleagues. They have found living prokaryotes 5,335 feet below the ocean floor off Newfoundland, about twice as deep as the previous...

Failed expectations are not necessarily a problem for a theory. [1] But what if fundamental predictions are consistently falsified? As we shall see this is the case with Darwin’s theory of evolution...

It's the basement apartment like no other. Life has been found 1.6 kilometres beneath the sea floor, at temperatures reaching 100 °C. The discovery marks the deepest living cells ever to be found beneath the sea floor. Bacteria have been found deeper underneath the continents, but there they are rare. In comparison, the rocks beneath the sea appear to be teeming with life. John Parkes, a geobiologist at the University of Cardiff, UK, hopes his team's discovery might one day help find life on other planets. He says it might even redefine what we understand as life, and, bizarrely, what...

Am I the only person with a scientific background that finds it perplexing that secular scientists have absolutely no difficulty suggesting the possibility of bizarre micro-organism life-forms (prokaryotes) existing on a small frozen moon in outer space, but are totally unable to denote or acknowledge a human zygote or embryo in the womb as a living organism solely for the murderous purpose of killing an unborn child? Imagine the universal condemnation and rebuke you would suffer if you suggested terminating some extra-terrestrial bacterium's life-force. But an unborn child? No problem! Hypocritical and disgusting!