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Published online 22 May 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.850

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How low can life go?

Microbes thrive more than a kilometre beneath the sea floor.

Heidi Ledford

Microbes have created a home in 111-million-year-old rock buried 1.6 kilometres below the sea floor, researchers have found.

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  • "seek out a molecule of ATP" but not "eek out a molecule of ATP" ! so mysterious!

    • 23 May, 2008
    • Posted by: liping li

  • "..Parkes the next step in his research is clear: "We'd love to go deeper," he says - perhaps as much as 6 kilometres in the hope of seeing life at the very limit." What on earth is he talking about? On January 23, 1960, Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh descended to the Mariana Trench in the submersible Trieste. At a depth of 10.9 kms they reported seeing an animal resembling a type of flatfish that was about a foot long. And at a depth of 8.4 kms, an 8-inch-long Abyssobrotula galatheae, a species of cusk eel, was collected from the Puerto Rico Trench.

    • 23 May, 2008
    • Posted by: Richard Dawson

  • @ Richard Dawson: They mean 6 km under the sea floor (as stated in the article, they have gone 1.6 km UNDER the sea floor)

    • 24 May, 2008
    • Posted by: Bob Bob

  • See these items about the discovery, in 1999, of "nanobes" 5km down: http://users.tpg.com.au/horsts/swaprock.html#nanobes Unfortunately the study of this possible new lifeform has had a shaky history since then. See also the report at http://tinyurl.com/3z4b9b

    • 25 May, 2008
    • Posted by: Michael Paine

  • Oops - that was silly. I wonder if there is a difference in the subterranean microbial life below the continents vs that below the oceans at similar depths.

    • 26 May, 2008
    • Posted by: Richard Dawson

  • I didn't find where the estimate of 120º as the maximum temperature for microbial life comes from. Anyone got it?

    • 28 May, 2008
    • Posted by: Luiz Fernando Alvarez