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The alternative explanation is that they mined the rock for food? That's just as interesting.
by dmurray 7y ago
The alternative explanation is that they mined the rock for food? That's just as interesting.
- mattkrause 7y agoI think that's actually the result! I read @glofish's proposal as suggesting that bacterial excretions(?) indiscriminately dissolve the rock. The paper (linked above) does try to address this in a few ways. Iron, the putative energy source, is specifically concentrated on the surface of the inoculated samples--but other metals aren't. The bacteria are also mostly found on the mineral edges. They discuss this near Figure 5/6 and in the supplement.
- fsckboy 7y agoin a thread about misleading wording... usually "mining rock" means extracting rock, while "mining a mountain" means extracting minerals from the mountain. Your "mined the rock" means the latter sense of the word mine. and as to the original "misleading title" claim, the way they meant the word wait was "scientists were willing to conduct a 2 year experiement because the data was worth the wait"
- glofish 7y agono what I meant is that during the process of grinding up the rock they mixed in the organic matter from the surface of the rock into the dust itself, the bacteria lived off that substance.