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When growing up, just about everyone played outside and enjoyed digging in the dirt. While digging, you undoubtedly found lots of living things including worms, grubs, ants, and much more. If you keep digging, however, you likely found that the dirt eventually became more compact and harder to get through, and that the number of rocks in your way kept growing.
Another thing you may have noticed if you were paying attention is that the number of living things got fewer and fewer the deeper you dug. Now, even though every child has dreamed of digging all the way through the Earth and coming out the other side, that is actually not possible, and all kids give up before getting more than a few feet down.
What that type of play taught most people (whether they realized it or not) is that the deeper you go, the fewer living things there will be. This may be one of the reasons most people believe that life does not exist deep within the Earth.
Even many experts once thought that was the case because the deeper you go, the more hostile to life the environment becomes. There is more pressure, greater levels of heat, and almost no oxygen down there to support life.
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In reality, however, life has been found far under the surface in places where scientists would have once thought it impossible. In fact, modern researchers have found that there is so much life in these deep ecosystems that this part of the planet has been dubbed the ‘Subterranean Galapagos.’
Of course, the life at these depths is not going to be large mammals or other creatures that most people are used to seeing. Instead, it is billions of microbes. It is estimated that about 70% of the total number of microbes on the planet actually live deep underground.
Much of this was discovered as samples were taken from the depths during the digging of mines, oil wells, and other activities that require access hundreds, or even thousands, of feet down. Karen Lloyd is an Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Tennessee. In 2018, she put out a statement that said:
“Ten years ago, we had sampled only a few sites – the kinds of places we’d expect to find life. Thanks to ultra-deep sampling, we know we can find them pretty much everywhere, albeit the sampling has obviously reached only an infinitesimally tiny part of the deep biosphere.”
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People like Lloyd often work with drilling companies to get access to samples for study. Some of the samples come from between 2.5 and 5 kilometers (1.55-3.1 miles) below the surface. They got samples from both areas below land and those below sea to study.
The fact that life has been shown to survive even in areas with very low oxygen, almost no nutrients, high pressure, and extreme temperatures shows that life can find a way almost anywhere.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read a story that reveals Earth’s priciest precious metal isn’t gold or platinum and costs over $10,000 an ounce!
Categories: NATURE/SPACE
Tags: · digging, ecosystem, extreme life, life, microbes, microorganisms, mines, oil wells, science, single topic, subterranean, subterranean life, top