living without oxygen

[frostfire]

A quater of all the species on earth is nearly dead; the conclusion of American geologist Christopher House. House has just finished a research about live under the oceans floor just west of Peru, where he and his team took samples at 50 metres depth. The amount of bacteria in these samples was much higher than anybody had of anticipated; Only a tiny part of the nutricians that are in the ocean get that deep, but it was still crawling with bacteria: a billion were found per square centimetre! If that number complies for all the worlds sea, the number of living biomass has been assessed far to low and it would mean that 10-30% of the worlds live, under the oceans floor lives.
The 90% of what was found, was the archae bacteria, a primitive bacteria that dates from the time when the atmosfeer didn't contain oxigen, so they don't need oxigen. They have totally adjusted to the harsh live deep under the ocean floor, their metbolism is extreemly slow and they only divide every couple of thousand years; compared to normal standards, they are as good as dead.
These underground bacteria must have a great and unknown role in the geochemical cyclus of the earth and they seem to form a insurance for live; whatever happens to the earth, they will survive it.
House has mentioned that these nearly dead bacteria are excelent candidates to be found as 'aliens' on places like Europa (Jupiters moon) and Mars. The next part of the research is to find out how they can function at such a low speed and how you can tell if they are dead, that is, IF they do die...

[paul m]

Not the only things down in the deep - incredible that these animals can survive with such low oxygen levels.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Live fish caught at record depth

[frostfire]

It is so amazing that things are able to live at such pressure levels and barely without oxygen. I can't even begin to imagine what the situation is that they live in or what the creatures themselves look like. Fascinating! I'll be keeping my eye out for articles on findings of further research, as, as they say in the article in Pauls post, it is important to know more about the deep sea world that is being destroyed .