THERE LIFE EVERYWHERE

                                     THERE LIFE EVERYWHERE
Is not proving easy to find alien life on other planets, but at this rate we will end up finding it in ours. The deepest hole that has ever been introduced under the ocean floor -in a mission of the International Ocean Discovery Program, IODP- found bacteria at 2.4 kilometers below the ocean floor with Japan. Down there is not much to do, really, and microorganisms subsist on a meager diet of hydrocarbons and a boring style living close to hibernation. But the fact is they are there, and who knows how below. Already have a name: the intraterrestrials.

This microbiological journey to the center of the Earth is just one of the tracks that recent science is getting on the stubborn resistance of organisms to a level that not long ago were considered incompatible with life. Since the radioactive environment of nuclear power plants to hydrothermal vents of the mid-ocean ridges where the boiling gases emerge from hell, bacteria seem to be everywhere where we were able to watch. The Martians live among us.
The findings of IODP were presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union which, despite its name, is held from 15 to 29 December in San Francisco, and is the largest World Congress on geoscience and space, this year some 24,000 attendees. Project scientists drill deep belong to the University of Southern California, Caltech, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, the Desert Research Institute of Nevada (DRI) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, along with two scientists Japanese institucionaes (CDEX and JAMSTEC).

IODP Expedition 337 took place between July and September 2012, off the coast of Shimokita, Japan. The Japanese ship Chikyu, whose appearance is vaguely similar to an oil rig, introduced a "drill monster" in the words of the researchers IODP- first plunged 1,180 feet to the seabed and then drilled a record 2400 meters under the bottom and through the geological strata. Samples therefore proceed 3.5 miles below the sea surface.
In these inhospitable depths, where there is no single photon of light or an oxygen molecule with a presence short of residual water and very little to be mouthed, scientists have found some unusual, small and spherical bacteria, and they have also been able to grow them in the laboratory and subjected to a series of microbiological experiments.
The area, located in an ocean basin formed by the subduction of the Pacific plate, was chosen because previous studies of seismic type indicated the presence of hard coal strata at depths of about two kilometers. By moving inward in the strata, the temperature grows at a rate of 24 degrees per kilometer, so that bacteria live about 50 degrees, which can be considered comfortable conditions, given the circumstances.
Scientists have found some unusual, small and spherical bacteria, and have also been able to grow them in the laboratory and subjected to a series of microbiological experiments

As the bacteria live in an environment of coal and hydrocarbons, the researchers reasoned that their livelihood could consist of products of the partial degradation of these compounds such as methane and other small molecules of carbon. And they were spot on: under controlled laboratory conditions, the intraterrestresprosperan based on those small carbon compounds (methyl compounds, technically).
Your kitchen -the cell's metabolism is slowed until end next to hibernation, and consume minimum energy necessary to maintain its vital functions. Both your food bland as this metabolism methylated compounds idling are probably adaptations to the extreme depth.

Scientists still have much work ahead, albeit in a rather fascinating character. They know, for example, if there are a variety of intraterrestrials bacteria form a complex ecology in the bowels of the planet, or small spherical microbes that have been detected are solitary inhabitants of that environment. Certainly respond genomic analyzes this issue and shed light on many others.
For example, how the bacteria got there? Due to plate tectonics, the strata that today form coal deposits in the depths were once wetlands area. Perhaps the bacteria already living there in those earlier times, and just have sunk to their environment following the tectonic destination environment. Or maybe the bacteria have been able, somehow, to travel there below. Genomic affinities of intraterrestrials with their distant cousins of the surface indicate the most likely path.
Meanwhile, microbiological Journey to the Center of the Earth should continue until a really deep incompatible with life. If such a thing exists.

JAVIER SAMPEDRO

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