New Extremeophiles: living at extreme heat (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 06, 2020, 00:15 (1449 days ago) @ David Turell

In the ocean floor:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201203144239.htm

"An international research team that included three scientists from the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography has discovered single-celled microorganisms in a location where they didn't expect to find them.

"'Water boils on the (Earth's) surface at 100 degrees Celsius, and we found organisms living in sediments at 120 degrees Celsius," said URI Professor of Oceanography Arthur Spivack, who led the geochemistry efforts of the 2016 expedition organized by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and Germany's MARUM-Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen. The study was carried out as part of the work of Expedition 370 of the International Ocean Discovery Program.

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"The research published in Science today focused on the Nankai Trough off the coast of Japan, where the deep-sea scientific vessel, Chinkyu, drilled a hole 1,180 meters deep to reach sediment at 120 degrees Celsius.

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"According to the study, sediments that lie deep below the ocean floor are harsh habitats. Temperature and pressure steadily increase with depth, while the energy supply becomes increasingly scarce. It has only been known for about 30 years that, in spite of these conditions, microorganisms do inhabit the seabed at depths of several kilometers. The deep biosphere is still not well understood, and this brings up fundamental questions: Where are the limits of life, and what factors determine them? To study how high temperatures affect life in the low-energy deep biosphere over the long-term, extensive deep-sea drilling is necessary.

"'Only a few scientific drilling sites have yet reached depths where temperatures in the sediments are greater than 30 degrees Celsius," explains study leader Hinrichs of MARUM. "The goal of the T-Limit Expedition, therefore, was to drill a thousand-meter deep hole into sediments with a temperature of up to 120 degrees Celsius -- and we succeeded.'"

Comment: We boil water to purify it. Glad these guys aren't around to bother us. It goes to show God made sure life was tough enough to survive here and evolve us under His direction.