We Don’t Need Your Puny Sun
Preparing for the day when humanity finally blacks the sky out Matrix-fashion, bacteria which can survive entirely without the sun have been found in a South African gold mine.
(The article says this is the first life form to have been discovered which can survive entirely without photosynthesis, but is that correct? Aren’t there crazy deep-sea thingies that live off chemical synthesis and thermal vents and the like?)
The bacteria exist without the benefit of photosynthesis by harvesting the energy of natural radioactivity to create food for themselves. Similar life forms may exist on other planets, experts speculate.
The bacteria live in ancient water trapped in a crack in basalt rock, 3 to 4 kilometres down. Scientists from Princeton University in New Jersey, US, and colleagues analysed water from the fissure after it was penetrated by a narrow exploratory shaft in the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa. The shaft was then closed.
There were many species of bacteria present, but RNA sequencing showed most were a previously-unknown type of bacteria dubbed Desulfotomaculum.
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:56 pm
There’s an episode of one of the recent BBC epic nature series (name escapes me) where they covered life in all these crazy cave systems. There was one where bacteria lived in the total dark in this highly acid water. Their metabolism was based on some weird chemical process (I think it was the bacteria that made the water acid or something).
Yes, my memory does suck.