https://deepcarbon.net/life-deep-earth-totals-15-23-billion-tonnes-carbon#ftnt1
It’s better to read the original, but for those too lazy, here’s the gist:
“Geophysicists from the Deep Carbon Observatory collaboration have prepared a surprise for the opening of the annual American Geophysical Union conference. The conference is opening right now, as this note is published, and here’s the news: the Earth’s subsurface is inhabited by a vast number of living creatures.
How vast? Converted into pure carbon – about 20 gigatons. We’ve written before about how much life in gigatons exists on the planet. A reminder: excluding plants (disproportionately heavy due to the lignin polymer), the planet’s surface is inhabited by 100 gigatons of living creatures, 80% of which are microbes. Of the creation’s crown, along with its wives, children, dogs, and reindeer, as well as other domesticated pets, only 0.16 gigatons exist. Thus, there are four times fewer subterranean microbes than surface ones, and 130 times more than our entire, so to speak, civilization.”
A team of researchers led by Cara Magnabosco in New York estimated the subsurface continental population on our planet at 10 to the 29th power (a hundred trillion quadrillion) cells. Meanwhile, scientists from Tennessee claim that a significant part of this living kingdom consists of entirely unknown and unexplored groups of organisms, which cannot be cultivated in a laboratory. Apparently, the vast majority of this abundance are bacteria and archaea. However, the collaboration’s co-chair Mitch Sogin believes that the data obtained may challenge the conventional division of terrestrial life into bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, proposed in 1977 by Carl Woese. It might be in the Earth’s depths that we find the earliest, previously unknown branches of the tree of life. Researchers believe that up to three-quarters of the diversity of Earth’s microbes are yet to be discovered underground.
The “Deep Carbon Observatory” has been operating for ten years and brings together over three hundred researchers from around the world. The data was obtained by drilling the Earth’s crust at hundreds of different points on all continents, as well as by drilling the seabed. Living organisms have been found at depths of up to 5 km beneath the continent’s surface and more than 10 km beneath the ocean surface. The most enduring of Earth’s organisms is an archaeon named Geogemma barossii, capable of existing and reproducing at +121°C.
Learning the behaviors of subterranean creatures turns out to be quite harmless even from a strictly practical perspective. For instance, people have recently come up with the idea of injecting carbon dioxide underground to reduce its concentration in the atmosphere somewhat. It turns out some subterranean creatures rejoice over carbon dioxide and respond with such vigorous growth that they can quickly clog wells with their mass.
The sensation wouldn’t be a true sensation if it didn’t contain a mysterious element. For example, here’s an intriguing question: although the diversity of subterranean microbes is enormous, the bulk is formed by several most common genera of bacteria and archaea. How did it happen that the same creatures inhabit layers of basalt in Africa and Canada? Did they crawl there from the surface through cracks or somehow spread directly in the depths without coming to the surface?
Another question: what is the main source of energy for the inhabitants of the underground kingdom, where solar photons cannot penetrate? Hydrogen, methane? The energy of radioactive decay?
A third question: could it be that life on the planet began from the underground world, or did life penetrate into the depths later? Some representatives of the deep ecosystem – scientists call them “zombies” – are capable of pausing between cell divisions for millions of years. How have they managed to evolve into such advanced beings? How did they adapt to the changing conditions of the Earth’s depths?
And of course, one more question, the most intriguing. If life is teeming within the earth’s crust, which terrestrial science has only now discovered, then this life knows how to not betray its presence on the planet. Thus, there is no reason at all to rule out the existence of life on practically any celestial body in the Solar System. Everything we knew till now about Mercury, Venus, Mars, etc., unequivocally indicated that no one lives there. But to figure out whether anyone lives there, we might need to start solving the problem all over again. Mars’s InSight will soon see who sits inside Mars. But if it turns out that deep microbes are a natural consequence of planet’s life activities, things on Mars might not stop there.
It’s frightening to think about how much new we will all soon learn, and let’s rejoice at that. We are fortunate to live in such a country and in such an era where the most natural state of the soul is being angry at someone’s stupid ignorance. But there is also the flip side: if ignorance angers you, the multiplication of knowledge should please and comfort you. For the sake of this joy, that is, to maintain some emotional balance, we introduced you to this beautiful news today. We will continue to do so in the future.” https://snob.ru/entry/169378
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 