from Hacker News

A 'subterranean Galapagos' inside the Earth (2018)

by FeaturelessBug on 3/24/23, 8:35 PM with 28 comments

• by rolenthedeep on 3/24/23, 9:59 PM

  I find the extent of life on this planet just fascinating. Life is absolutely everywhere you care to look. As long as there's raw resources, energy, and not too hot to destroy organic molecules, you'll find life.

  Even those basic requirements are not as clear-cut as you'd expect. Ancient microbes can wake up after being exhumed from glaciers. Closed cave ecosystems that have been self-sustaining with minimal input for thousands of years. Goddamn tardigrades in the vacuum and radiation of space.

  Even the very air is absolutely inundated with life. Mostly with fungal spores, but we all choose to not think about that.

  Probably the only places we won't find life is where it's too hot for organic molecules to exist. Even then, I wouldn't be that surprised if we find some type of non-carbon self-replicating molecules in magma or something.

  I guess that's the beauty of evolution. If an opportunity exists, there will (eventually) be a creature evolved specifically to take advantage of it.

  My secret dream for extraterrestrial life is something living in the gas giants. Ben Bova's stories about vast Jovian whales really struck a chord with me.

• by hughw on 3/24/23, 11:35 PM

  "A decade ago, we had no idea that the rocks beneath our feet could be so vastly inhabited."

  Over 30 years ago Thomas Gold published "The Deep Hot Biosphere". A review in PNAS is here [1].

  [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1701266114

• by Scubabear68 on 3/25/23, 12:10 AM

  It was my privilege to know Dr. Tullis Onstott, who discovered the deepest known Nematodes miles below the surface over a decade ago. Absolutely fascinating how life finds a way to persist and survive in extreme environments.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott

• by kuprel on 3/25/23, 12:35 AM

  Wonder if there’s a pocket of advanced life (e.g. mammals) we haven’t discovered yet

• by _a_a_a_ on 3/25/23, 1:56 PM

  This is about subterranean bacteria, and mentions also a nematode. Fascinating it is but describing it as a Galapagos is utterly disingenuous.

• by Gys on 3/25/23, 1:22 PM

  For the Dutch speaking here, there is a documentary on this subject currently in the movies: https://onder-het-maaiveld.nl/nieuws/108-onder-het-maaiveld-...

• by Pokepokalypse on 3/25/23, 12:08 AM

  Pretty amazing to think that since this life evolved here, a lot of it thrives on methane. Therefore: I think there's a high likelihood of similar life on Titan. (which has a mostly-methane atmosphere)

• by animal531 on 3/25/23, 9:43 AM

  This is probably where we need to look for life that existed (or might still do) on Mars and Venus.

• by baerrie on 3/25/23, 5:22 AM

  Frank Herbert spittin prophecy yet again.

• by justinclift on 3/25/23, 1:19 PM

  (2018)