Scientists identify vast underground ecosystem containing billions of micro-organisms

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Scientists identify vast underground ecosystem containing billions of micro-organisms

Global team of scientists find ecosystem below earth that is twice the size of world’s oceans

Jonathan Watts
Mon 10 Dec 2018 15.00 GMT

The Earth is far more alive than previously thought, according to “deep life” studies that reveal a rich ecosystem beneath our feet that is almost twice the size of that found in all the world’s oceans.

Despite extreme heat, no light, minuscule nutrition and intense pressure, scientists estimate this subterranean biosphere is teeming with between 15bn and 23bn tonnes of micro-organisms, hundreds of times the combined weight of every human on the planet.

Researchers at the Deep Carbon Observatory say the diversity of underworld species bears comparison to the Amazon or the Galápagos Islands, but unlike those places the environment is still largely pristine because people have yet to probe most of the subsurface.

-snip-

The results suggest 70% of Earth’s bacteria and archaea exist in the subsurface, including barbed Altiarchaeales that live in sulphuric springs and Geogemma barossii, a single-celled organism found at 121C hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the sea.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/10/tread-softly-because-you-tread-on-23bn-tonnes-of-micro-organisms

[FiveGoodMen]

1. As I said in another thread, that headline must be misstated

Humans have an average of 37 or so trillion cells. Each of us.

Billions of micro-organisms wouldn't amount to much at all.

Billions of kinds would be a whole lot, but I don't think they've had time to make THAT estimate, so that can't be right either.

[kiri]

2. There are only 6 trillion mammalian cells in a human

6 trillion mammalian cells with an individual's DNA in an adult homo sapiens. 6x10^12. These cells have cell membranes.

Out numbered by us are about 5 times more bacteria, for example the famous E.Coli, its friends and relatives. These guys have cell walls and amount to about 30 trillion cells. Their army does all kinds of things in our upper and lower intestines. They also appear on our skin, in our mouths, orifices, and in general, they are loving, essential, and benign. [Yogurt, cheese molds, bread moulds--later.]

Let's have decent respect for the unheralded cell-wall (cf. plant phylum) guys/gals/ambiguous/interchanging sex{gasp}.

http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-cell-wall-and-cell-membrane/
https://www.majordifferences.com/2013/10/difference-cell-wall-vs-and-cell.html

[kiri]

3. Nobody knows how this happens

It is awesome. A fetus has none of these bacteria in its gut. Within 4 hours (!) after born, it has a brazillian, gadzilon of them for the rest of its life.

Nobody knows how this happens. {Cf: I don't know how this happens.} Speculations are via skin contact, mouth, breathing.

The "royal we" is entirely accurate.

[Eugene]

6. Deep Beneath Your Feet, They Live in the Octillions

Source: New York Times

Deep Beneath Your Feet, They Live in the Octillions

By JoAnna Klein
Dec. 19, 2018

At the surface, boiling water kills off most life. But Geogemma barossii is a living thing from another world, deep within our very own. Boiling water — 212 degrees Fahrenheit — would be practically freezing for this creature, which thrives at temperatures around 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

-snip-

These Altiarchaeales belong to a domain of nucleus-lacking single-celled microbes called Archaea. Archaea and bacteria make up the majority of life in the deep subsurface, and it’s estimated that there are more of these kinds of microbes below ground than above.

Some 200 to 600 octillion microbes live beneath our continents, suggests an analysis of data from sites all over the world, and even more live beneath the seafloor. Together they weigh the equivalent of up to 200 million blue whales — and far more than all 7.5 billion humans. Subterranean diversity rivals that of the surface, with most underground organisms yet to be discovered or characterized.

That means most microbes on the planet may not resemble our mental picture of a microbe at all, said Cara Magnabosco, a computational biologist the Flatiron Institute in New York.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/science/subsurface-microbes.html

[rickyhall]

4. So after we f--k it all up, life will return.

[itsrobert]

5. which raises the odds of life outside of our planet

from 100 percent to 100 percent.