2 billion year old subsurface microbes draw energy from minerals

[scruffy]

Living microbes found in 2 billion year old rocks, 15 meters beneath Earth's surface.

Where there is no sunlight.

The microbes draw energy from nearby mineral reactions.

Living microbes discovered in 2-billion-year-old rocks

2-billion-year-old microbes found in South Africa offer insights into early life on Earth and clues for extraterrestrial exploration.

www.earth.com

 

[toobfreak]

Living microbes found in 2 billion year old rocks, 15 meters beneath Earth's surface.
Where there is no sunlight.
The microbes draw energy from nearby mineral reactions.

Well sure, Scruff, how else did life begin and survive. Life began at the bottom of the ocean in deep smokers and had no where to go but down into the deep rock. That is how it survived both the Vredefort and Sudbury asteroid impactors annihilating the surface of the Earth two billion years ago. Down there was heat, safety and energy. It was only after the surface continents stabilized during the Statherian Period leading into the Meso-Proterozoic Era that life finally found the stability and energy as days grew longer, weather cleared, and oxygen increased by the dissolution of anarobic life that the oceans finally became habitable and finally, the continental dry surface of the Earth.

 

[JGalt]

Living microbes found in 2 billion year old rocks, 15 meters beneath Earth's surface.

Where there is no sunlight.

The microbes draw energy from nearby mineral reactions.

Living microbes discovered in 2-billion-year-old rocks

2-billion-year-old microbes found in South Africa offer insights into early life on Earth and clues for extraterrestrial exploration.

www.earth.com

It's eating all our minerals!!

Soon there will be no more minerals. We must stop this evil virus at all costs, before there are no minerals left.

What will all those old goobers do without their minerals???

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[scruffy]

How does the energy get from the minerals to the microbes?

 

[JGalt]

How does the energy get from the minerals to the microbes?

Either magic or sorcery, I'd guess.

 

[toobfreak]

How does the energy get from the minerals to the microbes?

First of all, is the rock igneous granite or basalts? No doubt the energy there was the heat of the deep Earth + natural radiation (uranium) which triggered and released chemical reactions within the organic compounds in the rock, combined with water, alkali compounds, potassium, sodium and calcium. The very nature of granite formation out of basalts is that it is a more porous thus lighter rock bringing it to the suface of the mantle whose porosity takes on both water and clays from the deep ocean providing durable homes for microbes to inhabit.