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An entire ecosystem living without light or oxygen flourishes beneath the ocean floor, a new study confirms.
Scientists call it the dark biosphere, and it's potentially one of the biggest ecosystems on the planet. Buried oceanic crust covers 60 percent of Earth's surface. For the first time, researchers have pulled up pieces of the crust and examined the life within. In its rocks, microbial communities thrive, eating altered minerals for food, the study found.
"They're gaining energy from chemical reactions from water with rock," said Mark Lever, a microbiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark and lead author of the study, published in the March 15 issue of the journal Science.
"Our evidence suggests that this is an ecosystem that is based on chemosynthesis and not on photosynthesis, which would make it the first major ecosystem on Earth that is based on chemosynthesis," Lever told OurAmazingPlanet.
While bacteria and other microbes have been noted in deep boreholes drilled into the seafloor, the discovery confirms the extent of the life within the oceanic crust, as well as the possibility of life on other planets, the study scientists said.
"I think it's quite likely there is similar life on other planets," Lever said. "On Mars, even though we don't have oxygen, we have rocks there that are iron-rich. It's feasible that similar reactions could be occurring on other planets and perhaps in the deep subsurface of these planets."
This week, NASA scientists announced the discovery of the chemical ingredients for life in Mars rocks, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. The discovery suggests Mars could have once supported microbial life, scientists said.
Live microbes living inside rocks 1900ft below the sea floor beneath 8500ft of water is interesting.
Anyone else like to build Metal Earth (or similar) kits? I just finished one, which was probably the most challenging one I have completed, simply because a lot of the parts were so small. My eyes aren't what they used to be, so magnification was required.
Today, I learned that woodpeckers make holes in dead trees in order to store acorns during the summer, which then becomes their source of food during the winter.
What kind of woodpecker is that? It doesn't look like any of the four varieties we have here. And the ones we have here don't store nuts that way, to my knowledge
What kind of woodpecker is that? It doesn't look like any of the four varieties we have here. And the ones we have here don't store nuts that way, to my knowledge
The Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) is native to the US west coast as well as Central America.
For context in the following story, the bridges across the Chicago river are all drawbridges, the surface of which is pleated metal. So the "road" is 90% open space, through which water freely passes straight down.
Chicago marks 20 years since Dave Matthews Band’s infamous bridge incident
By Dane Placko Published August 7, 2024 4:50pm CDT
CHICAGO - Thursday marks exactly 20 years since one of the most revolting moments in Chicago music history.
About 120 people on a Chicago River architectural tour boat were hit by 800 pounds of excrement when the driver of a Dave Matthews Band bus emptied its septic tank on the Kinzie Street Bridge. The horrific accident sparked new efforts to restore the Chicago River.
Twenty years later, the Dave Matthews bus dump has become a stain on a city flush with history.
Today, the exact spot of the slurry slam is marked by a sticker on the bridge, and for a time an actual plaque provided by Riot Fest.
Margaret Frisbie, executive director of the Friends of the Chicago River remembers the day it happened. The organization was hosting a kayaking event for hundreds of people just a few hundred yards downriver.
"Of course, our initial reaction was shock and horror for the people who were on the boat and how terrible it was," Frisbie recalled.
Friends of the Chicago River received a $50,000 donation from the Dave Matthews Band after the sickening soaking, part of a $200,000 settlement with the City of Chicago.
But more important, Frisbie said, is that it brought new attention to the goal of restoring the river.
"A shot in the arm to wake people up that you cannot treat natural resources this way. And in this unfortunate incident, people were hit. What it tells you is if one bus driver was pulling a lever like that, other people were doing it too," she said.
The bus driver, Stefan Wohl of Texas, pleaded guilty to reckless conduct and was sentenced to community service and a fine.
"There is certainly no joy in reliving the 2004 event that traumatized our passengers, crew and family businesses," a spokesman for Chicago's First Lady Cruises said in a statement.
"Our companies have provided acclaimed experiences on Chicago’s waterways for more than 87 years, and we choose to not let what took place that day diminish our contributions in showcasing the city we love with the world."
Today, many people walking over the century-old bridge have no idea they're treading on twisted history.
"Never, never, never. Not in a million years. I'm 27 years old," said Lindsay Kuper, who lives in a residential building near the bridge. And now that she knows? "Woof! Wow. I love the Dave Matthews Band, but that is not what I wanted to hear. I feel bad for the people who were on that tour."
On Thursday the sordid story will be celebrated with a dance party at the Hideout called "Don't Drink the Water." But don’t bother trying to get tickets--it's already sold out.
Well, having been diagnosed four years ago with just about the nastiest version (Gleeson 9), and having been probably at the higher end of that scale, it obviously wasn't enough! So my advice is - get on with it, why are you still here reading this drivel?
... and to address the elephant, I have had the op, the radiotherapy, the chemo and am now on hormone therapy, with a probable outcome that I will die of something else. That is only because I had/have regular medicals/PSA tests, and while the cancer had metastisised it was caught before it had properly taken hold elsewhere. Technically I am stage 4 terminal, and 10 years ago it would have been terminal (in fact, I would not be here now with the treatments then available), but today it is being treated more as chronic illness.
Sad to say four years ago I lost a good mate, he missed one of his annuals, next time they said, 'sorry Gerry, nothing we can do for you', 18 months later he was gone.
And cycle in and out of ketosis to facilitate the occurrence of apoptosis and autophagy, which are the body's ways of preventing and destroying cancerous cells and components.
I have observed an interesting trend at play in the supermarket.
In the 19th century, when the development of prepackaged, shelf-stable foods led to the evolution of the hardware store into the general store, the business model remained unchanged from the days of selling nails and rope. The goods were mostly kept behind the counter, or in a storeroom, with a few examples on display on shelves inaccessible to the shopper. As meat and produce began to be introduced, they as well were stored in glass cases accessible only from the shopkeeper’s side.
The customer would hand a written list to the shopkeeper, or dictate their needs verbally, and the goods would then be fetched by store clerks, bulk goods like dried beans and flour measured out of a barrel and bagged, cans fetched from a back room, bacon sliced and wrapped, bread wrapped in paper, and the whole order tied up with string and handed to the shopper complete.
This model was both slow during periods of high demand, and also labor-intensive.
In 1916, Clarence Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, TN. In it, all merchandise was out on shelves with the price of each item clearly displayed. The customer was free to browse, selecting their own items and placing them in a store-provided basket. Then they were taken to a front desk, where a cashier rang up the total and placed all of the items into a bag.
This idea quickly caught on, and was broadened to include perishable items such as fresh vegetables, meat, fish, and dairy products as mechanical refrigeration became widespread and affordable. Eventually, even the cashier was mostly done away with in the relentless quest for efficiency in a business with historically narrow margins.
The modern supermarket has become a mind-numbingly massive and complex ode to industrialized agriculture and government subsidy, carrying a massive selection of products, many of which only marginally meet the definition of "food," and with tremendous amounts of duplication, with ten different varieties of every product, differentiated primarily by the artwork on the packaging.
And yet, walk through any supermarket these days, and you’ll encounter employees pushing around huge, multi-compartmented carts, pulling items off the shelf, scanning them, then placing them into a bin before rushing off to pick the next one. When the customer arrives, their order is bagged and waiting for them, often brought directly out to the car.
Now, this was obviously one way of coping with the draconian economic-shutdown orders issued by many states and cities during 2020. But though that time is past, this phenomenon seems to be growing. More and more parking spaces have signs limiting their use to order pickup, and many supermarkets have even undergone renovations to dedicate space to the processing and holding of pickup orders.
Customers who once praised the benefit of being able to examine the goods for sale and make their own selections are now trading that all back for a written list of items which may or may not even be in stock, and trusting the whims of rushed and low-paid workers to make appropriate selections and substitutions.
Not for me, thanks. I don’t mind the self-checkout machines which so many people deride, but that’s about the limit for me.
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