Could aliens be discovered living in OIL? Microbes found inside tiny water pockets could expand search for life in outer space
comments
Tiny creatures hidden inside oil on Earth could help researchers find alien life in deep space, researchers claim.
German scientists believe that have discovered microbes living within droplets of water found within a lake in Trinidad and Tobago.
Their discovery suggests that life could exist within similar ponds in distant moons such as Saturn's satellite Titan.
Scientists believe that have discovered microbes living within droplets of water found within Lake Pitch
The find was made on Pitch Lake, located at La Brea in the southwest of the country, which is the largest natural deposit of asphalt in the world.
The lake is a source of oil - it rises to the surface, where it solidifies and forms a hard crust.
Scientists had previously believed oil was too toxic to support life, they thought it could only thrive at the boundary where oil and water meet.
The study renews hopes of finding alien life on Titan. Last year, measurements of a big sea on Titan (pictured here in front of Saturn) revealed it contained about 5,590 cubic miles (9,000 cubic km) of mostly liquid methane. This equivalent, say scientists, to about 40 times the proven reserves of oil and gas on Earth
The study suggests found that a range of microbes could survive within water droplets in the oil itself
DID LIFE BEGIN UNDERGROUND?
Life on Earth may have come from deep underground, rather than from the surface, according to a study of our planet's deep subterranean.
Last year, researchers found microbes living and reproducing as deep as 5km (3.1 miles) below ground providing clues to where life on Earth originated some 3.5 billion years ago.
The study suggests these microbes may have survived in isolation from the Earth's surface for billions of years.
But this latest study suggests microbes could survive within water droplets in the oil itself.
'Inside them we found complex microbial communities, which play an active part in oil degradation," said Professor Rainer Meckenstock from the Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU).
These water droplets contain a huge range of microbial species which breaks down the oil into different organic substances.
The discovery renews hope of finding alien life in Titan, which has hydrocarbon lakes on its surface, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University in Pullman, told Live Science.
Last year, measurements of a big sea on Titan revealed it contained about 5,590 cubic miles (9,000 cubic km) of mostly liquid methane.
This is equivalent to about 40 times the proven reserves of oil and gas on Earth.
The latest discovery was made on Pitch Lake, located at La Brea in the southwest of Trinidad and Tobago
Pitch Lake is a natural source of oil; the oil rises to the surface, where it solidifies and forms a hard crust
Put the internet to work for you.
0 comments:
Post a Comment