Atomic Extremeophiles Thrive Where the Life-Giving Energy of the Sun Never Reaches

"Life finds a way."  Thanks to a research time involving Princeton, Indiana University, and others, that isn't just a sappy Disney quote - it's an incredible fact.  They found extremophile bacteria buried over two miles into solid rock, where the life-giving energy of the sun never reaches - the energy every other species on Earth depends on.  Instead they found their own power source - radiation!

The hardy organisms have a unique biology with a very refined palate, consuming the by-products of radioactive breakdown to stay alive. Uranium decay cracks water molecules apart, recombining into peroxide (which you might know as bleach).  This combines with fool's gold (pyrite) to release ions, which the cells' specialized metabolism can derive energy from.  To summarize: these things sit on uranium, drink bleach and eat solid rock, thereby making every single "Iron Stomach" contest in human history look like a day at the buffet.  Hell, these things make Batman look like a daycare attendant.

Don't worry though: monster movies may have taught us that atomic-animals immediately grow to fifty times their normal size and begin eating humans, but these bacteria barely grow to regular size. Their nuclear processes aren't the fountains of energy that our nuclear reactors are, and the subterranean cells grow and divide over a hundred thousand times slower than their surface-borne cousins, dividing only once every three hundred years.  It's a pure and simple testament to the power of life, the ability to hang on by the very atomic skin of figurative fingernails for no better reason than just "to be", that they exist at all.  Think about that next time you feel hungry.

The discovery of organisms like this has wider implications beyond sheer awesomeness: in the search for extraterrestrial life, is increases the number of possible locations for lifeforms, as well as reminding us not to assume that they'll need what we need.  Because if life can exist in perpetually-disinfected nuclear pile, it can exist anywhere.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

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Related Galaxy posts:

Extremophiles & the Search for Life in the Solar System
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Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
Non-Carbon Lifeforms -Why We May Overlook Extra-terrestrial Life
Did Life Originate from Clay -Science Fiction or Reality?
Life from the Center of the Earth - The Shadow World of Our Hidden Biosphere
Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
What Lies Beneath -A Mystery at the Earth's Center
Unknown Species of the Underworld Discovered

Source:

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/microbes/eatingradio.jsp

Comments

[Joe]

although less impressive, there is life (tube worms, etc.) at deep sea vents that survive entirely without the sun's energy.

[Scott B.]

Bleach is chlorine. I'm not sure but I would imagine it would create hydrogen peroxide, a bleaching agent?

Pyrite = FeS2
Hydrogen Peroxide = H2O2

FeS2 + 3H2O2 -> Fe(OH)2 + 2H2SO4

Or Iron(II) Hydroxide & Sulfiric Acid

Biological oxygenic photosynthesis.

[Nebo]

We've known for a while about bacteria that live in rocks deep underground and just barely life off the trace organic molecules present down there. Life in rocks is nothing new. Nor is living on chemicals: thriving echosystems are known to exist around underwater volcanic vents, powered entirely by chemosynthetic organisms consuming the vents' sulfurous exhaust. The significance of this discovery is much more subtle.

All life that we know of evolved from the same set of starting conditions: oceans of liquid water and a nearby useable source of energy (solar / geochemical).

Presumably the first life forms on Earth were born when the oceans condensed, leached minerals from rocks, gathered organics, and mixed all these ingredients to create self-replicating entities.

But these entities soon had to run out of their primitive food source(s) (exponential growth tends to do that) and evolve to draw energy from new sources. Some choose the sun, others (debateably) formed around ocean vents. Now we know there is a third energy source that can sustain life: natural radiation.

We knew all this can happen on other planets, if they have liquid water on the surface (producing photosynthetic organisms) or in buried oceans (chemosynthetic organisms). But now, we know that life can sustain itself in solid rock with no movable liquid water at all.

In other words, the real significance of the find is this: The criteria for life as we know it existing on a planet just changed from “needs energy and pools of liquid water” to “needs energy and liquid water somewhere, even inside underground rocks”.

Any rocky planet with a cold (under ~100*C) crust and a hot core could match the new criteria. (At some depth, the temperature / pressure conditions for water to be liquid would have to be met.) Mars, as well as many extrasolar planets too far from their parent stars to feasibly contain oceans of liquid water, could have some form of life.

Exobiologists rejoice!

[Miko]

I'm not a chemist, but I'm pretty sure I've never known peroxide (H2O2) to be bleach (NaOCl). Maybe things have changed since highschool chemistry though.

[Miko]

I'm not a chemist, but I'm pretty sure I've never known peroxide (H2O2) to be bleach (NaOCl). Maybe things have changed since highschool chemistry though.

[BCCStu]

Really neat stuff, I would guess this bacteria shares some of the same characteristics as the creatures around vents at the very deep parts of the sea. Heat is a marvelous thing!

[Barrie O'Leary]

I am privileged to have this gimmer of understanding. Thank you. Hydrogen peroxide is A bleach, however. Peroxide blondes
owe their jazzy hair colouring to this reaction. You have heard of that term, no?

[Forthac]

I do believe "life finds a way" was in fact from Jurassic park, not a disney movie.