Scientists have discovered a zombie world hidden a few kilometers from the surface.
The bowels of the Earth are roomy. Who knows who will be found there next time.
200 scientists from 52 countries working on the Deep Carbon Observatory project announced a sensational discovery. They discovered a gigantic ecosystem - a previously unknown world hidden in the bowels of the Earth. There, at a depth of several kilometers, living creatures have settled, the biomass of which is hundreds of times greater than the weight of all mankind. According to scientists, there are 15 to 23 billion tons of it. And the entire deep ecosystem covers a volume of 2 billion cubic kilometers. Maybe more.
So far, it turned out that every little thing lives underground - bacteria and microorganisms. But worms also come across - for example, nematodes. Both were found at a depth of 5 kilometers.
Many underground organisms are similar to their surface counterparts. About 70 percent of those that live above are found below. But they behave differently - without "seeing" the sun's rays, they extract energy by oxidizing inorganic substances. That is, the surrounding rock.
Nematodes from the underworld.
Is underground life in full swing? Or is it in full swing? Not at all. "Down" are extremely slow - they save energy, spending it mainly on the restoration of their own damaged cells, and not on reproduction and other fun. But there is a metabolism - albeit completely negligible.
Scientists call the underground inhabitants zombies. And they believe that they live in a different time dimension.
Promotional video:
“Some zombies have lived for millennia,” says Rick Colwell, a microbiologist at Oregon State University. - It flows extremely slowly - as if in a slow motion movie. Nothing particularly bothers them. Is that earthquakes or tectonic shifts.
The scientist explains that people are focused on much faster processes, based, for example, on the change of day and night. Zombie rates are geological.
Colony of bacteria that produce methane: they were taken from a depth of 5 kilometers.
Scientists learned about the existence of a living underground world by drilling deep wells. Drilled for almost 10 years - both from the surface and from the seabed. And here's the result - the opening of an entire ecosystem. Its mysteries have yet to be solved. A lot of them.
Scientists would like to know how underground life spreads. How it penetrates rocky rocks. They do not understand why the one under the American continent is no different from the one that climbed under the African one.
Was underground life once one? It was divided by global geological processes, as a result of which the continents moved away from each other? Or are the underground communities migrating in some way?
Perhaps life on Earth generally originated in the depths, and then rose to the surface - to the Sun? Or, on the contrary, once and for some reason sank?
I would like to clarify how underground communities breed. Or, once they appear, they remain unchanged for millions of years?
And the most important thing. Life was found in not the most suitable place for her. And this inspires hope: suddenly some organisms have hidden in a similar way on other planets. For example, on Mars? Alas, the answer to this question can be obtained only after getting there. You will also have to drill wells …
Sooner than 50 years later, we’ll hardly know anything. But the chances that our earthly microbes are not alone in the universe have grown slightly.
The artist depicted the underworld (indicated by dots) so that people could imagine its scale.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY