Life could exist up to 10 kilometres beneath the sea floor | New Scientist
https://www.newscientist.com/.../2127488-life-could-exist-up-to-10-kilometres-beneath-the-sea-floor/
LIFE might eke out an existence far deeper inside Earth than we imagined. Samples from a mud volcano contain biological signatures
that suggest microbes lived in the material when it was several kilometres beneath the ocean floor. “We might have a very big biosphere
below our feet that’s very hard to get to,” says Oliver Plümper of Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Other researchers agree life could exist at such depths, but say the case is not yet proven. “They don’t have conclusive evidence,”
says Rocco Mancinelli, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, who studies life in extreme environments. Plümper’s team studied
46 samples drilled from the South Chamorro mud volcano, near the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana trench. Here, one tectonic plate
slides under another. The heat and stress causes some of the material on the subducting plate to become a buoyant mineral called
serpentinite that rises and erupts out of mud volcanoes.
Examining the serpentinite in their samples, the team found chemicals usually produced by life, including amino acids and hydrocarbons.
