LiveScience has a story on evidence of life 12 Miles below the Earth's Surface.
Telltale signs of life have been discovered in rocks that were once 12 miles (20 kilometers) below Earth's surface — some of the deepest chemical evidence for life ever found.
[...] Researchers found carbon isotopes in rocks on Washington state's South Lopez Island that suggest the minerals grew from fluids flush with microbial methane
Also covered at IFL Science.
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Evidence of Life Deep Below the Earth's Surface
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 29 2014, @03:17PM
As long as there are nutrients, then there will be something living off of it. This holds true in even more extreme environments.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mrchew1982 on Wednesday October 29 2014, @05:14PM
well what you say is generally true, I think you're missing the complexity of it. For the longest time scientists thought that life could only happen under a narrow set of conditions. We thought that oxygen was required to make the energy that cells use to live. It was thought that there were limits to the amount of heat and salinity that would allow life.
Then a new class of organisms was discovered; called extremophiles, they throw these conventions out on their ear. We have found halophiles that can survive under salty conditions that we didn't think was possible. There are thermophiles that can survive in temperatures that we didn't think was possible. There are barophiles that can survive under pressures we didn't think was possible. There have been organisms discovered living in Sulphur beds that use the sulfur instead of oxygen to drive their metabolic process and live. If you can think of it there is probably an organism that can survive it.
One really cool example is the diatoms found living in the kola borehole at 7 miles down that use hydrogen and oxygen to form their shells instead of calcium.
Another is Heliobacter pylori. Lives in your stomach at pH 1.5 and is the true cause of ulcers.
Life seems to thrive wherever we look. Its pretty amazing.
(Score: 1) by High Five on Wednesday October 29 2014, @08:03PM
Actually I thought AC wasn't missing the complexity, but introducing unneeded complexity. s/nutrients/energy/. I'm looking at you Sol.
Those scientists were wrong or afraid to buck social dogma.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @03:15AM
A lot of people are enamoured of the idea of life on earth having been seeded from space. Its nice to show that this isn't necessary, and life can erupt wherever the minimum requirements are met. And that those minimum requirements are even less than previously believed.
(Score: 1) by TestablePredictions on Wednesday October 29 2014, @08:01PM
Articles like these are why I come to soylent and slashdot before it. Thank you submitter and editor.