Scientists discover miracle in the depths
Published: October 26, 2006
A team of scientists has found bacteria living nearly two miles below ground, dining on sulfur in a world of steaming water and radioactive rock.
The organisms have been there for millions of years.
The microbes, found in water spilling out of a fissure in a South African gold mine in 2003, are similar to ones found in other extreme environments and are among the most primitive life forms ever described, the researchers report in Friday’s issue of Science.
What is unusual is that their underground home contains no nutrients traceable to photosynthesis, the sunlight-harnessing process that fuels all life on the Earth’s surface. Such a community is an oddity on this planet — and is of interest to people looking for life on other ones.
“This is a very nice potential model of the habitability of Mars,” said Steven D’Hondt, an astrobiologist at the University of Rhode Island who was not involved in the project. ” … The sorts of ecosystems you could get there could certainly be something like this.”
The research team was led by Tullis Onstott, a geoscientist at Princeton, and included scientists from the U.S., Taiwan, Germany and South Africa.
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