'Quite Unfamiliar:' Parallel Universe Discovered Under Ocean Floor

Deep sea glass sponges retrieved at 1,400 feet. Scientists in a new paper detailing two decades of study believe life might be supported underneath the surface of the ocean floor by chemical reactions, possibly supporting a realm bigger than the one we know today. (NOAA)

Scientists claim they have discovered a vast realm underneath the ocean floor that could be home to a range of small species—as well as other things (mermaids?) that they do not know of. The realm is a sort of parallel universe, basically disconnected from the rest of the Earth, linked to the one we know only be seawater.

In this realm, instead of needing sunlight or other common “food” thought to be principal ways life is supported on Earth, beings are surviving on fuel coming from chemical reactions of rocks and seawater, according to the researchers. They believe they may have discovered the largest ecosystem on the planet. The paper published on March 14 is the culmination of two decades of research, according to Wired, starting with “strange microscopic holes in the basalt rocks that form much of Earth’s outer crust.”

“All these pieces of evidence have been coming together for over 15 years. It was time to put it all together,” said microbial ecologist Andreas Teske of the University of North Carolina, a co-author of the new study. “We now have the best available evidence that there is in fact microbial life in the cracks and fissures of deep ocean basalt. The question is, how far does it extend?”

The researchers took samples from the crust of the Juan de Fuca Plate, about 120 miles off the cost of Washington, drilling 1.5 miles below the ocean’s surface, and through another 1,000 feet of sediment.

A map showing the age of Earth’s seafloor crust. The colors signal different ages; red is young, blue is old. (NASA via Wikimedia Commons)

From Wired:

“At that depth, there exists rock and water and carbon dioxide, and few if any traces of organic matter produced from sunlight in the illuminated surface world. The researchers put their rocks in a laboratory apparatus designed to simulate that environment, then spent the next seven years observing what happened.

They measured chemical ebbs and flows, slowly learning the system’s elemental cycles. Though the microbe populations didn’t grow at the densities necessary to convenient find them under a microscope, the researchers scoured their rocks for microbial DNA, identifying sequences that could be compared to known genes. Out of this emerged a picture of the oceanic crust community and how it lives.

Fundamental to the ecosystem is hydrogen, which in the absence of sunlight provides the energy on which all other biological processes rely. The hydrogen is released by reactions between iron- and sulfur-rich rocks and seawater, then used by microbes to fuel their conversion of carbon dioxide into organic matter.”

Although the researchers know the matter supports some organisms, some doubt it supports larger beings. Two, though, didn’t rule it out.

Teske, of UNC, said that deep subsurfaces could be the best hiding place for life on other planets.

And Biogeochemist Everett Shock of Arizona State University, who was not involved in the research, said that his bet is on fungi, “But there are other possibilities, including things that may be quite unfamiliar.”

“Our ignorance about these systems is staggering,” he added, “and accessing them is not at all easy.”