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Radioactivity may fuel life deep underground and inside other worlds
- ISL 5y agoI was lucky as an undergrad to attend a small lecture by Tommy Gold [1] near the end of his life, where he advocated the ideas described in his book Deep Hot Biosphere. He was often ahead of his time and unafraid to take controversial positions to get there (including the now-accepted, but once derided, phenomenon that we know today as the pulsar). You might be right again, Tommy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold
- hn8788 5y agoSort of off topic, but I wonder if that idea was part of the inspiration for the origin story of Godzilla, or if it's just a coincidence.
- ycombinete 5y agoWasn’t Godzilla a metaphor for the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atom bombs?
- gameswithgo 5y agoyes, godzilla was inspired by nuclear tech
- zzzbra 5y agoto think that some people called the new godzilla movies dumb…
- gus_massa 5y agoThe idea is that the radioactivity produces Hydrogen and Sulfate, and some bacteria (or achaea?) can "burn" the Hydrogen extracting an Oxygen from the Sulfate. So no Godzilla down there.
- eloff 5y agoUnless there are little animals eating the bacteria, and bigger animals eating them, etc. I mean it's preposterous, but not impossible if for some reason the rock was porous enough. Maybe inside a small moon or asteroid.
- arcticbull 5y agoThere are also radiotrophic fungi found in Chernobyl like Cryptococcus neoformans. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus
- gus_massa 5y agoI'd like to say "nah", but there is a weird case: "The bizarre beasts living in Romania's poison cave" http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150904-the-bizarre-beasts-living-in-romanias-poison-cave http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150904-the-bizarre-beasts-l... (HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11682816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11682816 889 points | May 12, 2016 | 163 comments) Anyway, in this cave there are snails, shrimps, insects and spiders, but not vertebrates.
- undersuit 5y agoThe larger animals could eat the rocks and specialized cells lining the stomach would be responsible for converting the energy released from the hydrogen sulfide reactions into an energy pathway like our ATP.
- ekianjo 5y agoYou can't have animals with bones when carbon is naturally lacking, which is exactly what the article says: such areas don't have much carbon in the first place.
- eloff 5y agoWouldn't you need calcium for bones? Or both? Anyway there are plenty of animals that don't have bones - and there's no reason to assume our chemical kind of bones are the only kind possible. You could maybe have iron bones evolve on some worlds - I don't know of anything that would prohibit that.
- baron816 5y agoHollow Earth Theory
- generalizations 5y ago*Pourous Earth Theory
- Pulcinella 5y agoSomewhat related, turns out that it is possible for nuclear reactors to exist naturally in the environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
- tim333 5y agoMakes me feel a bit better about man made nuclear fission if nature has been at it for 2 billion years at that site. (article with photos http://worldkings.org/news/recognized-records/worldkings-the-constant-world-records-seeking-journey-p-87-oklo-reactor-world-s-first-and-only-natural-nuclear-fission-reactor http://worldkings.org/news/recognized-records/worldkings-the...)
- BrimmStone127 5y agoIf I recall correctly this is part of the plot to Isaac Asimov's book The God's Themselves. It's always amazing to see how prolific his writing has been.
- Geee 5y agoI think it's possible that life evolved in two directions. There's sun based evolution and Earth based evolution, because these are the fundamental energy sources for life. Some creatures crawled on land, and some creatures went deeper into the ground. The land creatures evolved into intelligent beings, but we don't know about the others. If we assume that UFOs and aliens are real, then I think the most likely origin for them is the deep Earth, not space.
- catlifeonmars 5y agoBy definition, they wouldn’t be aliens then, would they?
- echelon 5y agoIf there's another industrialized civilization on earth, we would have seen evidence of it.
- Geee 5y agoThat's true. However, there wouldn't be much evidence if there's only a relatively small amount of them, or they're really good at hiding their activity. It's also possible that their civilization peaked millions of years ago and they are now mostly existing in some kind of post-biology state, which wouldn't show any signs to the surface.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
- neonological 5y agoHave you guys ever wondered that if the core fundamental definition of life just starts off as some molecule that self replicates. And that the resulting complexity of life is just errors that happen during replication that are naturally selected to reverse entropy, then could there be other forms of life that are not based on water or carbon? I get that the carbon atom and water facilitates organic chemistry which results in tons and tons of complicated permutations and configurations of molecules necessary for life but are there other atoms in other conditions that allow permutations that that are equal in complexity? Could some form of life be non-carbon based life be able to exist say in the middle of the sun? I heard deep in Jupiter's atmosphere is a sea of liquid metal hydrogen. Could a different form of life exist as non-organic chemistry with high pressure liquid hydrogen as an integral part of the self replicating machinery? Any experts on bio molecular stuff care to weigh in? I'm positive this stuff has been speculated on, but I've also heard that a lot of experts don't consider non-carbon based life without water to be viable or likely simply because organic chemistry facilitates so many complex chemical permutations necessary for life.
- NegativeLatency 5y agoProbably hard to form stable molecules and arrangements of molecules with all that plasma and energetic electrons bouncing around
- adrian_b 5y agoThere are chances that it is possible to have some slower form of life at much lower temperatures than on Earth, where the elements H, C, N, O and S still have the major contribution but instead of water some other solvent is used, e.g. hydrocarbons or ammonia. On the other hand, at very high temperatures, e.g. in the Sun, life is certainly impossible because you cannot have even molecules, much less more complex structures. Everything is a homogeneous mixture of atoms, ions and electrons and any kind of structure would be broken instantly by the agitation of the particles. If there is any metallic hydrogen on Jupiter, it can be found nowhere close to the atmosphere, but in the core of the planet, at extreme pressures.
- philipswood 5y agoThere's this cool essay by Isaac Asimov considering viable chemistries for life: "Not as we know it. The chemistry of life" http://www.bigear.org/CSMO/HTML/CS09/cs09p05.htm http://www.bigear.org/CSMO/HTML/CS09/cs09p05.htm I was surprised to realise (that besides being a prolific author) that he was a professor of biochemistry. He ends up with a: "list of life chemistries, spanning the temperature range from near red heat down to near absolute zero: 1. fluorosilicone in fluorosilicone 2. fluorocarbon in sulfur 3.*nucleic acid/protein (O) in water 4. nucleic acid/protein (N) in ammonia 5. lipid in methane 6. lipid in hydrogen Of this half dozen, the third only is life-as-we-know-it. Lest you miss it, I've marked it with an asterisk."
- dukeofdoom 5y agoThe cave systems are the last frontier of Earth's exploration. We don't actually know the full extent of the cave networks below us.
- BelenusMordred 5y agoDeep oceans surely fit the bill as well? We've mapped something like one-fifth of the sea floor.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoFor sure, but are there caves below the oceans?
- flal_ 5y agoDoes someone know if radiolysis is being researched as a source of commercial hydrogen ( like, for fuel cell vehicle for example ) ? I mean a nuclear reactor might produce heat and hydrogen from radiolysis if I understand correctly ? Is this practical at scale ?