Saturday, October 21, 2006

Talk about "extremophiles"

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: ET May Be A Microbe: Life Thrives Deep Beneath Sunlit Surface: "More than a mile and a half beneath the earth, deep in a sunless gold mine, water pools in a fracture heated, just barely, by the slow radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. That radiation is enough to split some water into its constituent hydrogen, and by combining the lightest element with geologically produced sulfate, a newly discovered microbe species thrives far from the light of the sun that sustains virtually all life. In fact, this newly discovered ecosystem has thrived for at least 20 million years, according to new testing reported in the October 20 Science."


This may be a "religious" opinion, but here's my prediction: everywhere in the universe, if there's liquid water, there's life.

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