Half of Earth's life may lie below land, sea

[n2doc]

By Robert S. Boyd | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — While astronomers scour the skies for signs of life in outer space, biologists are exploring an enormous living world buried below the surface of the Earth.

Scientists estimate that nearly half the living material on our planet is hidden in or beneath the ocean or in rocks, soil, tree roots, mines, oil wells, lakes and aquifers on the continents.

They call it the "subsurface biosphere," a dark world where the sun and stars don't shine. Some call it Earth's basement.

"Earth's habitable zone extends to depths of hundreds or thousands of meters," Katrina Edwards, a microbiologist at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, told a December conference of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. "The organisms that live in this environment may collectively have a mass equivalent to that of all of Earth's surface dwellers and may provide keys to solving major environmental, agricultural and industrial problems."

For example, geologists are considering whether to store some of the world's excess carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, in a worldwide network of crevices below the seafloor.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/08/90020/buried-alive-half-of-earths-life.html

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Oooh - there's a story in that.

We pump millions of tons of CO2 into deep earth, and the creatures from the deep flee to the surface where they have to feed.....

[mike_c]

2. nah, most of them are anaerobic...

...and would be poisoned by oxygen in the atmosphere. Back to the drawing board....

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. I'll bet you could still sell it to Hollywood -

real science ranks very low on their priorities for SF movies.

[Fumesucker]

4. Reality ranks very low on Hollywood's priorities for movies . n/t