South African Space-Like Microbes Found Deep Underground
It has recently been found by researchers, who are studying life in the deepest subsurface of Earth, a unique bacterium that lives one mile below its surface. The bacteria lives in a community of subsurface of microbes which live in a South African platinum mine, inhabiting a South African platinum mine. Accessible only through large mining projects or drilling projects, scientists from the University of Western Ontario and Princeton University are connecting with previously undiscovered microbial communities beneath the surface of Earth through mining and drilling.
According to author Aaron L. Gronstal in his Space.com article, “Unique Habitat Found Inside Earth“, finding it extremely difficult to get “uncontaminated samples” from the microbial communities existing underground, digging into the deep underground areas has caused a massive disruption because of workers and researchers bringing a massive amount of non-native microbes into it. This is the number one reason that researchers have overlooked this type of biofilm (samples taken from the slimes of the underground walls) work, as they thought it would be too overly contaminated—which occurs when people enter mines and caves not properly prepared.
Testing of the theory is important because of the science teams involved, desiring to determine whether or not the biofilms were formed by contaminant organisms under the surface or maybe by unique subsurface organisms. The test to prove contamination was collected from South America’s Northam mine’s biofilm, which demonstrated that “an explosion of life occurs where subsurface water leaks out of the mine walls and meets with oxygen, leading to films of microscopic organisms.”
Published in the recent journal GEOBIOLOGY by researchers Greg Wanger, Tullis Onstott, and Gordon Southam, the study showed that the biofilms actually contained a number of unique organisms associated with deep subsurface, with one tiny microscopic star microbe being found. The publication stated, ” According to the research team, ‘the diversity of all bacterial shapes is more difficult to explain.’ Other shapes often seen in microbes include rods and spirals, but these take a bit of extra work on the part of the microbe. To make more complicated shapes, microbes have to use extra energy to fight against the natural forces that favor the sphere. According to the research team, the biofilms from Northam mine ‘contained a morphologically diverse assortment of bacteria.’ “
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2008 at 8:37 am and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
