The exact origin of organic chemicals is still unknown
Scientists have discovered evidence of microbial life in the vast depths during the study of organic substances in the debris of rocks of mud volcanoes near the Mariana trench.
While some scientists hope to find signs of alien life forms lurking under the surface of Europa, satellites of Jupiter, other researchers learned that on Earth, or rather, deep beneath its surface, might live a strange unknown organisms.
“This is another testimony of the richness and breadth of the proliferation of the biosphere on our planet,” said lead researcher Oliver Plumper from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
When the researchers analyzed 46 samples of rocks from the mud volcano, they found chemicals associated with bacterial products, including hydrocarbons, lipids and amino acids. This does not mean that they have found direct evidence of life – but in the absence of other explanations, scientists believe that mud volcanoes contain traces of organisms that once existed deep inside the planet.
“The findings give us a new understanding of the habitability of the planet. Given the difficulty of obtaining samples from the depths of the Earth, we do not have enough opportunities to explore how microbial life can exist in the absence of photosynthesis,” explains one of the researchers Ivan Savov of the University of Leeds in the UK.
Although scientists acknowledge that the exact origin of organic chemicals is still unknown, their own calculations show that life can exist at a depth of 10 kilometers below the deepest point of the ocean floor, at this depth the calculated temperatures approaching 122 degrees Celsius, which is considered a temperature limit for terrestrial life forms.
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