Living microbes have been found in sediments 1.2 kilometres below the seafloor where the temperature reaches 120°C, showing that life may be possible far deeper than previously thought
Living microbes have been found in sediments 1.2 kilometres below the seafloor, where the temperature reaches 120°C. The discovery shows that life in seafloor sediments can survive higher temperatures than previously thought and is therefore present at greater depths than we realised.
It is possible that there is life at even higher temperatures. “The only way to find out is to go back and drill deeper,” she says, though in lab experiments so far, no microbes have been foundIn 2016, Treud and her team did experiments aboard their ship on samples taken from up to 1.2 kilometres below the seafloor inoff the coast of Japan. The seafloor at the drill site is 4 kilometres below the water surface, and the samples included sediments that were up to 50 million years old.
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