Life Without Air

One of the most extraordinary things brought to light by the makers of the BBC’s “Blue Planet” series in their extraordinary episode The Deep was the way in which the discovery of deep sea hydrothermal vents — first identified by scientists in the late 1970’s — was forcing the scientific community to reconsider some of their most long-held and cherished principles about life:

Up until the discovery of these incredible bacteria (able to withstand the hottest temperatures of any other living thing on earth), scientists didn’t believe it was possible for anything to survive in the extreme environment around deep ocean vents (extreme pressure, high temperature, no sunlight). The discovery of the deep-sea thermal vents and the communities of life they support has completely changed the way we define life, perhaps going a long way to explain how life on earth first began.

Now, thanks to a team of scientists from Marche Polytechnic University, we may be facing another “scientific crossroad:”

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Living exclusively oxygen-free was thought to be a lifestyle open only to viruses and single-celled microorganisms. A group of Italian and Danish researchers has now found three species of multicellular animal, or metazoan, that apparently spend their entire lives in oxygen-starved waters in a basin at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

The discovery “opens a whole new realm to metazoans that we thought was off limits”, says Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

I love it. Every time we allow our Baconian tendencies to kick in — every time we begin to think that we’re “finally getting to the bottom of things” — something like this happens. Just as we become convinced that life on Earth requires photosynthesis, we discover chemosynthesis. And now we don’t even need oxygen?

What will He think of next?

Author

  • Joseph Susanka

    Joseph Susanka has been doing development work for institutions of Catholic higher education since his graduation from Thomas Aquinas College in 1999. Currently residing in Lander, Wyoming — “where Stetsons meet Birkenstocks” — he is a columnist for Crisis Magazine and the Patheos Catholic portal.

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