{"id":3998,"date":"2013-03-17T10:49:12","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T18:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=3998"},"modified":"2013-03-17T11:15:22","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T19:15:22","slug":"did-i-call-it-did-i-call-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=3998","title":{"rendered":"Did I Call It? Did I Call It?<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

They're not saying it looks like this, though.<\/p><\/div>\n

So Lever et al<\/em> have found something in the rocks, deep below the Pacific seabed (Source paper<\/a>; supplementary materials<\/a>; Wired popsci commentary<\/a>). It eats inorganics, notably sulfur\u2014<\/p>\n

(\u03b2ehemoth assimilates several inorganic nutrients 26-84% more efficiently than its closest terrestrial competitors. This is especially problematic when dealing with sulfur<\/a>.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014it’s an anaerobe\u2014<\/p>\n

(“\u03b2ehemoth doesn’t just predate other life, it predates photosynthesis. It predates oxygen<\/em>. It’s over four billion years old. And all the other really ancient bugs we’ve found, the Archaebacteria and the Nanoliths and so forth, they’re still anaerobes to this day. You only find them in reducing environments. And yet here’s \u03b2ehemoth, even older, and oxygen doesn’t bother it at all…<\/a><\/p>\n

…Would there be any reason why someone\u2014hypothetically\u2014might want to take an organism like \u03b2ehemoth, and tweak it?”<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"

Modified from Lever et al supplementary materials<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2014and they found it on the Juan de Fuca Ridge \u2014 less than 200km, in fact, from where Starfish<\/em> places Beebe Station.\u00a0 There’s speculation<\/a> that life itself got started down there, that this bug beneath the seabed could be not only the most ancient form of life on the planet but might also comprise the planet’s biggest ecosystem. That system would, however, be very much simpler than the sort we’re used to despoiling way up here\u2014<\/p>\n

(Simple or complex. File or Infection. Checkers or Chess. \u03b2ehemoth<\/em> or biosphere<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n

It was all the same problem, really. 1211 knew exactly which side it was on.<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh: and they’re bringing it back.<\/p>\n

They haven’t named it yet.\u00a0 I know what I’d call it.<\/p>\n

Let’s just hope the parallels stop there.<\/p>\n

\"\"

This has nothing to do with the current post, but does convey a sense of one of BOG's common moods. (This picture was not taken while he was licking his lips; his tongue just sticks out like that.)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Lever et al have found something in the rocks, deep below the Pacific seabed (Source paper; supplementary materials; Wired popsci commentary). It eats inorganics, notably sulfur\u2014 (\u03b2ehemoth assimilates several inorganic nutrients 26-84% more efficiently than its closest terrestrial competitors. This is especially problematic when dealing with sulfur.) \u2014it’s an anaerobe\u2014 (“\u03b2ehemoth doesn’t just predate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,25,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-deep-sea","category-rifters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3998"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4014,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions\/4014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}