https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-does-life-happen-when-theres-barely-any-light-20250129/

"In early 2020, Hoppe found herself testing the limits of photosynthesis directly, camped aboard an icebreaker ship that had been deliberately rammed into an ice floe and allowed to drift with its engines off through the polar night. A rotating crew of scientists with the expedition Mosaic (Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) occupied RV Polarstern on its journey to gather as much data about the Arctic winter as possible.

"Hoppe and her colleagues worked in the darkness of 24-hour night, amid expanses of glittering ice and wind chills down to minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit. Cracks and ridges in the ice constantly shifted the route to a permanent hole in the ice, named Ocean City, from which Hoppe and her team gathered hundreds of liters of seawater samples and hauled them back to the ship for analysis.

***

"In February, the darkness of the polar night was nearly absolute, and not even photons from a bright moon or fleeting twilight could reach the dark waters below. Then, in late March, the sun briefly surfaced over the horizon. Beneath that ice, the light sensors recorded an astronomically small number of photons: an upper range of 0.04 micromoles per square meter per second, a number very close to the theoretical minimum amount of light that photosynthesis can run on. The actual amount of light was probably lower.

***
'Pairing Fuchs’ light data with Hoppe’s microalgae observations clinched it: At the end of March, right when the barest amount of sunlight returned, the microalgae not only had their photosynthetic machinery up and running but were also growing and building biomass. Her team concluded that they’d made the first-ever field observation of photosynthesis at just around the theoretical minimum — where the amount of light was an order of magnitude lower than what had been observed in nature before.

"Her team found that during the darkest periods of polar night, the microalgae didn’t show a measurable uptick in carbon uptake — they were neither growing nor photosynthesizing. Yet they weren’t totally dormant either. The cells kept running on low power. Then, as soon as the light levels rose enough to support active carbon fixation in late March, the algae were ready to explode into action."

Comment: another study of extreme life demonstrating how pliable life is, covering the Earth in every place possible.

https://www.sciencealert.com/surprise-discovery-reveals-animal-life-thriving-under-the-...

"In hidden cavities beneath the floor of the deep ocean, in the oases created by hydrothermal activity, whole communities of multicellular animals are living their best lives down in the darkness.

"The discovery suggests a much more complex hydrothermal ecosystem than we knew about, at ocean depths shrouded in permanent darkness, where crushing pressure and intense cold create conditions deeply inhospitable to air-filled surface-dwelling humans.

***

"'These cavities were described by geologists previously but they have not seen animals and us biologists did not know that the cavities are there but once we tried to collect the rocks so we can search for tubeworm larvae on the surface we broke into the cavities and discovered the animals."

"At 2,515 meters (8,250 feet) below the ocean surface, the hydrothermal vent field of the East Pacific Rise is at depths difficult for humans to reach. But this volcanically active area of the seafloor is speckled with holes, through which heat and minerals seep, providing a chemosynthetic basis on which marine food webs proliferate.

***

"These cavities were at depths around 10 centimeters (4 inches) below the seafloor, filled with water warmed by volcanic activity to temperatures around 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), and at least 10 species were documented within them, including polychaete worms, sea snails, and the giant tube worm, Riftia pachyptila.

"Some of the same species were also found on the surface, and in a lava crack, suggesting a connection between the seafloor, and the cavities below.

"'The fact that live large tubeworms were found means that the hypothesis of larvae being able to colonize vents from below has been confirmed," Bright explained. "Some settle if conditions are right in the subsurface, some might with the vent flow be flushed out from the subsurface and colonize the surface."

"The conditions in some of the cavities are also very similar to conditions around the vents on the seafloor surface, which could mean that the sub-surface communities are quite extensive. This could mean that the cavity communities may be the source of seafloor vent colonization after a volcanic eruption takes place.

"It's not currently known how common these cavities are, or how extensive. But the discovery tells us that we need to be doing more to both understand and protect the animals living far beneath the waves from human activities such as deep-sea mining, the researchers say."

Comment: Life can exist anywhere. Entries before have shown how active the deep sea vent areas are.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231110112455.htm

"'This bacterium subsists on phosphite oxidation, and as far as we know, exclusively on this reaction. It covers its energy metabolism this way, and can build up its cell substance from CO2 at the same time," explains Schink. "This bacterium is an autotrophic organism, like a plant. It does, however, not need light like a plant, as it draws its energy from phosphite oxidation." Surprisingly, it turned out that the bacterium is not only a new species, but actually forms an entirely new genus of bacteria.

***

"They produced a pure culture of this new bacterial strain, in which they were finally able to identify the key enzyme that triggers the oxidation of phosphite to phosphate.

"'The breakthrough came with Nicolai Müller and his enzyme experiments," says David Schleheck. Nicolai Müller succeeded in clearly demonstrating the enzyme's activity, thereby uncovering the biochemical mechanism behind the key enzyme. Olga Mayans and Jennifer Fleming created a three-dimensional model of its enzyme structure and active centre to understand the reaction pathway.

"'What was very surprising was that during its oxidation, phosphite is apparently coupled directly to the energy-carrier precursor AMP, whereby the energy carrier ADP is created. In a subsequent reaction, two of the generated ADPs are converted to one ATP, on which the organism ultimately lives," Nicolai Müller outlines the reaction pathway.

***

"...the research team thinks that this type of metabolism is by no means new, but very old, even ancient: around 2.5 billion years old.

"'It is assumed that in the early days of evolution, when the Earth was cooling down, phosphorus was still present to a large extent in a partially reduced form and was only later gradually oxidized. The metabolism we have now discovered fits very well into the early phase of the evolution of microorganisms," Bernhard Schink explains.

"The biochemical mechanism that the bacterium uses for its metabolism is therefore not new, but has most probably been preserved from the primeval times of our planet: back when life on our planet began and the first microorganisms had to feed on inorganic compounds such as phosphite. Thus the new scientific findings provide clues to the early biochemical evolution on our planet. In addition, they provide the key to a biochemical mechanism that makes life possible in very hostile places, possibly even on alien planets."

Comment: another example of how life can use many avenues for energy production.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-reveal-common-shrub-efficiently-harvests.html

"The identification of this unique mechanism, in which the plant excretes salts to extract and condense water onto the surface of its leaves, has the potential to inspire the development of new technologies, and improve existing ones such as cloud seeding, to harness atmospheric water resources.

"Tamarix aphylla, or athel tamarisk, is a halophytic desert shrub, meaning it can survive in hypersaline conditions. Over time, the plant has evolved to take full advantage of the prevalent humidity and fog occurrences in the UAE.

"Many plants and animals that inhabit arid regions have developed water-harvesting mechanisms and morphophysiological traits which have given them the ability to utilize abundant, untapped sources of water such as fog and dew. The fundamental principles governing this natural water collection serve as an inspiration for emerging water-collection technologies, which are developed to maximize the efficiency of the existing methods for harvesting aerial humidity.

"In the paper titled "Harvesting of Aerial Humidity with Natural Hygroscopic Salt Excretions," published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the researchers present their exploration of the physicochemical aspects of salt release and water collection mechanisms by Tamarix aphylla that has allowed it to thrive in hypersaline sands.

"The plant absorbs saline water from the soil through its roots, filters out the salt, and expels the concentrated salt solution onto the outer surface of its leaves. The researchers found that as the salt solution undergoes evaporation, it transforms into a hygroscopic crystalline mixture composed of at least 10 different minerals.

"It was discovered that some of these salt crystals have the ability to attract moisture from the air even when the humidity levels are reasonably low (~55% relative humidity). This moisture condenses onto the surface of the plant's leaves and is then absorbed."

Comment: How did this adapt? Growing at the edges of the saline desert and gradually moving in makes sense. Salt attracts water which means extruding it to leaf surface is an obvious purposeful move. Could enough mutations have occurred to allow this happen? That is the issue only a study of mutation rates can answer. It is adaptation or God's design?

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-animals-ocean-twilight-zone-upcycled.html

"Living at the edge of darkness, the community of microbes and tiny animals in the ocean's twilight zone upcycle nutrients to ensure their survival. A study led by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed that small, free-floating animals called zooplankton rely mainly on an even smaller class of organisms, called microzooplankton, to consolidate the sparse waste products in the water and transform it into higher-quality food.

***

"The twilight zone, about 200–1,000 meters below the ocean surface, is the layer where the well-lit surface ocean transitions to the ocean's dark interior. In this zone, it is too dark for plants to grow, so the communities that live there are almost entirely reliant on material produced in the overlying water to survive.

"To obtain their food, microzooplankton, which are about the size of a human red blood cell, recycle old organic material that settles from above—mostly fragments of excrement from animals living at shallower depths. This process concentrates nutrients in an environment that is otherwise a food desert for other, larger organisms.

***

"'We discovered how the community of zooplankton living in the twilight zone of the Northeast Pacific makes a living, despite inhabiting a notably unproductive region where the supply of food from the surface is exceedingly low," said Shea.

"The zooplankton, which are about the size of a sesame seed and often smaller, eat the microzooplankton, which are relatively nutritious compared to the detritus they feed on. In this way, the food web is highly efficient and organized around the recycling of relatively low-quality food that exists in this environment.

"'Although we know that microzooplankton exist below the well-lit surface ocean, they are not very abundant, and so it has previously been difficult to evaluate whether they are an active component of the community," said Shea. "So, it was exciting to find that they were key contributors to this deep sea food web."

"Regions of the ocean where the plankton community is more efficiently utilizing organic matter, such as the study area, are places where the ocean has a naturally lower capacity to absorb some of the carbon dioxide produced by humans. "So understanding how zooplankton communities process carbon, which, to them, represents food and energy, helps us to understand the role of the ocean in absorbing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," added Shea."

Comment: a perfect food chain in a living ecosystem following the rule, everyone has to eat.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-a-fierce-desert-microbe-crusts-show-how-life-tamed-th...

"...Patrick Jung couldn’t get the checkerboard out of his head. Having spotted what looked like lichens on some of the dark pebbles, Jung suspected that something more might inhabit them. Eventually, he picked up a rock, dribbled some water on it from a bottle, and peered at it through his handheld magnifying lens. The face of the black stone erupted with green. The rubble had come alive.

"Jung whipped a photosynthesis monitor out of his pack. One tap of its fluorescent blue sensor confirmed that something within the rocks was converting carbon dioxide to oxygen. After Jung’s colleagues, Büdel included, replicated the experiment, they all danced with excitement under the desert sun...All around them, the dark patches repeated across the landscape, each one filled with its own microscopic universe.

***

"...dedicated to the study of the unusual community of microbes, now known as grit crust. His team has worked to understand the extreme adaptations that have allowed these microorganisms to inhabit a land so infamously hostile, where they are refreshed only occasionally by sips of fog. The answers they have uncovered offer clues about how life may have first found a grip on our planet’s surface billions of years ago.

***

"The discovery of the grit crust transformed the desert for Gutiérrez Alvarado, who has patrolled it every day for the last decade. “It’s not only rocks, not only empty space,” he said, peering out over the patches of pebbles. “Everything is breathing now.”

***

"Driving through Pan de Azúcar with Gutiérrez Alvarado is like riding in a geological time machine. Ancient volcanic caverns from one epoch fade to rolling hills of eroded sand from another, between the hills peeks an outcropping of the mother bedrock, a heap of quartz spiced with different minerals. At its feet lie its progeny, smaller chunks that have broken off over millions of years. Below them sits a parade of progressively smaller rocks, all the way down to the earring-size grains that first captivated Jung. The pebbles, which litter the desert floor, are known locally as “maicillo” and in English as “grit.” The substrate is amply porous, offering plenty of cracks and corners for microbes to nuzzle into. Wedged into the crevices of each grade of rock are tiny thickets of green and black life.

"...From DNA samples, he deduced that the grit crust is composed of several hundred species of cyanobacteria, green algae and fungi — including several previously unknown lichen combinations...his colleagues sliced the stones thin for imaging. The photos showed how individual fungal hyphae had drilled deep into the rocks, carving out networks of branching canals.

"At first glance, the grit crust could seem like a routine example of what researchers call a biological soil crust, or “biocrust” — a community of coexisting bacteria, fungi, algae and other microorganisms that caps the soil in coherent sheets. Around 12% of Earth’s land is covered by biocrusts. Ecologists often refer to these colonies as the planet’s “living skin.”

"Over the last century, scientists have identified biocrusts around the globe and worked to understand their role in shaping ecosystems. They’ve learned that the crusts anchor soil grains in place and provide the organisms growing in that soil with essential nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. In 2012, Büdel and colleagues estimated that biocrusts soak up and recycle around 7% of all the carbon and nearly half of all the nitrogen that is chemically “fixed” by terrestrial vegetation. The role of the biocrusts in procuring digestible nitrogen is particularly critical in arid deserts: Elsewhere, lightning can often convert atmospheric nitrogen to nitrates, but in the deserts, electrical storms are rare.

***

“...van den Brink marveled. “How does anything survive here?” An enormous article filled with much more information about how these plants survive.

"The answer is the distinctive thick fog that rolls up the Chilean coastline, a weather phenomenon known locally as the camanchaca. With so little rainfall, all life in Pan de Azúcar ultimately depends on whatever moisture the fog carries. The guanaco, for example, relies on sips of water that is trapped by mosses clinging to cacti, which grow in soil fertilized by grit crust.

***

“'The grit crust is setting a new threshold for conditions that make life possible,” Jung said.

***

"While all biocrusts perform some degree of weathering, the larger grains of the grit crust are especially suited for it. The process reveals the full potential of microbes to impact their environment. A microbial skin can glue together pebbles, break them down into soil and fertilize that soil with essential nutrients. In effect, the crust can “terraform” the desert.

***

"Gregory Retallack, an emeritus professor, believes he has found evidence for communities resembling biocrusts in fossilized soils (or “paleosols”) as far back as 3.7 billion years ago — challenging the common assumption that life originated in the sea. “The evidence from paleosols is pretty clear that there were all sorts of things on land, even very early on,” he said. “You can see these microbial crust fabrics just with the naked eye.'”

Comment: this establishes that these were the first land plants

https://mindmatters.ai/2022/06/earths-weirdest-life-forms-show-that-et-life-is-possible/

"It’s not clear what The Blob at the Paris Zoo even is, in scientific terms. It has 720 sexes, no limbs, and no brain. Yet it makes decisions. Stranger still: “Polycephalum’s type of organism is thought to have existed for roughly a billion years though it has only been studied intensively in recent decades. It is technically called a “protist” (a catch-all category for life forms that are hard to classify). It makes decisions with no apparent source of intelligence.”

"Among the life forms known as extremophiles are many creatures that no scientist expected to find. That includes the Deinococcus radiodurans bacterium which can survive “15,000 gray dose of radiation, where 10 grays would kill a human and it takes over 1,000 grays to kill a cockroach. This species, in fact, is exemplary in many ways, encompassing also the ability to survive cold, dehydration, vacuum and acid.” (LiveScience, (August 2, 2011) From the BBC (September 22, 2020),we learned that some radiodurans survived three years on the outside of a spacecraft.

"Loriciferans can survive with no oxygen.

"Deep in Canada’s Kidd Mine 350 miles northwest of Toronto live microbes that breathe sulfur and eat fool’s gold (pyrites) – (NBC News, September 7, 2019)

"They’re not alone down there, according to NBC News: “In the eye-opening report, a team led by Cara Magnabosco, a geobiologist at the Swiss technical university ETH Zurich, estimated that some 5 x 10^29 cells live in the deep Earth.”

"One fellow deep Earth dweller, Geogemma barossii can stand temperatures of up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 Celsius). They can be viewed in the video below at 39 seconds.

"A fungus living at Chernobyl eats radiation: “In 1991, the strange fungus was found growing up the walls of the reactor, which baffled scientists due to the extreme, radiation-heavy environment. Researchers eventually realized that not only was the fungi impervious to the deadly radiation, it seemed to be attracted to it.'”

Comment: My view is if life started in the Hadean period of chaos on early Earth, it had to have very tough aspects of its resistence to adversity. That life is here is a miracle I would attribute to a designing God.

"'These deep-ocean sediment assemblages comprise not only taxa that are known to be important drivers of the biological carbon pump but also several taxonomic and functional groups that have been overlooked in what is arguably one of the most fundamental ecological processes of the world ocean," the authors write.

"'Together, our results highlight the [deep ocean sediment] as one of Earth's richest modern ecosystems and fossil archives[/b].'" (David’s bold)

DAVID: Again, an example of the diversity of life where I believe life started.

Another eye-opening article, for which many thanks. I also appreciate your two bolds and your comment. The diversity of ecosystems and of life forms is truly a source of wonderment, regardless of whatever theories we may devise about how it all happened.

https://www.sciencealert.com/dna-shed-by-deep-sea-organisms-reveals-an-abyss-teeming-wi...

"Sweeping the ocean floor at hundreds of points throughout the world, researchers have revealed an astonishing diversity of microscopic life thriving in the deepest and darkest parts of our planet.

"The sediment collected at each spot was analyzed for environmental DNA (eDNA), which marine animals shed as they go about their lives. While sea creatures cast off some of that eDNA, among that material is also evidence of microbes and other tiny animals that make up the shadowy ecosystem at the bottom of the world.

***

"In the end, the researchers found most eukaryotic organisms living on the ocean floor are unknown to modern science. What's more, it looks as though the ocean's abyss is home to at least three times the diversity of microbial life as the waters above.

"It's the first time scientists have put together a consistent molecular dataset of the ocean realm on a such global scale, and while the meta-analysis isn't comprehensive, it's an impressive start.

"'We compared our deep-sea benthic DNA sequences to all reference sequences available for known eukaryotes," says geneticist Jan Pawlowski from the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

"'Our data indicates that nearly two-third[s] of this benthic diversity cannot be assigned to any known group, revealing a major gap in our knowledge of marine biodiversity."

***

"The current analysis mostly looked for smaller-sized organisms, like diatoms and dinoflagellates, and tiny animals, like worms and small molluscs. The diversity of plankton found matches other evidence suggesting the deep sea is also home to a diversity of larger animals.

"The tiniest creatures, however, are often the glue that holds food webs together. They are also critical regulators of the global climate, helping to bury carbon in the deep ocean. (my bold)

"'These deep-ocean sediment assemblages comprise not only taxa that are known to be important drivers of the biological carbon pump but also several taxonomic and functional groups that have been overlooked in what is arguably one of the most fundamental ecological processes of the world ocean," the authors write.

"'Together, our results highlight the [deep ocean sediment] as one of Earth's richest modern ecosystems and fossil archives.'" (my bold)

Comment: Again, an example of the diversity of life where I believe life started.

https://www.sciencealert.com/common-microbes-have-been-found-producing-oxygen-without-s...

"At the moment, the researchers aren't certain how the microbes are pulling off this trick, and the amount of oxygen produced appears to be relatively small (just enough for their own survival) – but it does look to be different to the few oxygen-without-sunlight processes that we already know about.

"What the new pathway does show is that the oxygen production from N. maritimus gets linked to its production of gaseous nitrogen. The microbes are somehow converting ammonia (NH3) into nitrite (NO2-) – a process they use to metabolize energy – in an oxygen-depleted environment.

"In turn, this requires them to make their own oxygen, which the team detected traces of, along with the byproduct of nitrogen gas (N2).

"This process removes bioavailable nitrogen from the environment – and that's a new wrinkle in the nitrogen cycle, which underpins all ecosystems. This finding could have "far-reaching" consequences, and that needs more investigation."

Comment: obviously life is made to be tough. There is much to be learned ab out extremeophiles.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302438-remarkable-trove-of-species-found-living-b...

"An astonishing variety of marine life has been discovered on the seabed in the darkness hundreds of metres below Antarctica’s ice shelves, including corals, clams, sea mosses, snails and worms.

"In 2018, a German research team drilled holes in the Ekström ice shelf using hot water and collected samples from two sites on the seabed beneath. An analysis of the samples suggests the environment is home to 77 species – a greater number than found during all previous studies below Antarctica’s ice put together.

“'It’s a tantalising view of one of our least-known habitats,” says David Barnes at the British Antarctic Survey, who studied the organisms under the microscope. “These two samples are very rich. The thing that really leaps out is just how rich the bryozoans – the sea moss animals – are.”

"Radiocarbon dating shows some of the bryozoans are several thousand years old. Most of the species found are immobile, so their discovery in such a hostile and low-food environment suggests they are surviving on phytoplankton carried by poorly understood currents beneath the ice shelves.

"They appear to be growing just as fast as the same species found growing on open-water continental shelves, to Barnes’s surprise. He says it shows how long life can persist with very little food and by conserving energy.

"The research follows another study earlier this year that found a surprising array of sponges on a boulder deep beneath Antarctica’s ice. The variety of life found this time suggests that environments below the ice are more habitable than previously thought, says Barnes. “Perhaps life is capable of surviving much more ice cover than we thought was the case,” he says.

"However, Barnes and his colleagues note that this undisturbed and biodiverse habitat beneath the ice “could be the first habitat to go extinct” as Antarctica’s ice shelves collapse due to climate change."

Comment: Just more proof as to how tough life is. Not surprising, since original life started under severe conditions.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/life-lava-caves-ignores-food-surface-eats-rock-instead

"researchers found that many bacteria growing on the walls of lava caves spurn the feast flowing over them. Instead, they produce their own energy from surrounding minerals or dissolved chemicals and build the molecules they need using carbon in the air or rock.

"'This means that even in a very well-connected environment in the shallow subsurface, we still have evidence for life that is very independent from the surface living and thriving," said Matthew Selensky, a geobiologist and doctoral candidate at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

***

"'Organisms that use other sources of energy besides solar energy exist pretty much everywhere on the planet," said Caitlin Casar, who earned her doctorate in the same lab as Selensky but was not involved in the new study. "You can find them at the surface of the Earth, you can find them in soil, you can find them deep in the Earth's crust, you can find them at the bottom of the ocean, in the ocean's water column, in the air."

***

"...the researchers found that the water seeping in from the surface was full of carbon that had been fixed by plants or other photosynthetic organisms using the Calvin cycle. Some cave features appeared to contain microbes that lived off this surface food, "sort of fighting for table scraps," said Selensky. But in biofilms, some types of molecules the researchers examined had C-13 levels that were much lower. This indicates that a large fraction of the bacteria in the biofilms were surviving off the minerals and CO2 in the cave -- a lifestyle known as chemolithoautotrophy, or lithoautotrophy for short, according to Selensky.

"'The assumption for a lot of people is that if you're on the surface or close to the surface, you have this amazing energy source, the sun … and essentially photosynthesizers can outcompete everything else," he said. "I do think that lithoautotrophy is almost an underestimated metabolism in these environments.'"

Comment: no surprise to us. Organisms can live anywhere they wish. Life was designed to appear and survive from the beginning. Only by design.

https://theconversation.com/ancient-microbial-life-used-arsenic-to-thrive-in-a-world-wi...

"Our team of geologists, physicists and biologists had found hints in fossilized stromatolites that arsenic was the chemical of choice for ancient photosynthesis and respiration. But modern-day versions of these microbial communities still live on Earth today. Perhaps one of these used arsenic and could offer proof for our theory?

***

"In 2014, our team found the first clue that stromatolites were produced by arsenic-assisted photosynthesis and respiration. We collected pieces of 2.72-billion-year-old stromatolites from the pre-oxygen world by drilling into an ancient reefs in the Outback of Australia.

***

"Our destination was Laguna La Brava, a very salty shallow lake deep into the harsh desert. A shallow stream, fed by a volcanic groundwater spring, led into the lake. The streambed was a unique, deep purple color. The color came from a microbial mat, thriving quite happily in waters that contained unusually high amounts of arsenic, sulfur and lithium, but missing one important element – oxygen.

"We cut a piece of the mat and looked for evidence of minerals. A drop of acid made the minerals fizz – carbonates! – this microbe community was forming stromatolites. So our team went to work, camping out at the site for days at a time.

***

"All that was left was to show that the two types of arsenic could be detected in the modern stromatolites. We went back to France, and using an X-ray emission technique made chemical maps from the Chilean samples. Every experiment we performed supported the presence of a vigorous arsenic cycle in the absence of oxygen in this unique modern stromatolite. This validates, beyond doubt, the idea that the fossil Australian samples that we studied in 2014 held evidence of an active arsenic cycle in deep time on our young planet."

Comment: Before oxygen and photo synthesis there had to be another method to be designed.

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-hydrogen-supported-life-beneath-glaciers.html

"The work examines the ways water and microbes interact with the bedrock beneath glaciers, using samples of sediment taken from glacial sites in Canada and Iceland.

"'We kept finding organisms in these systems that were supported by hydrogen gas," said Boyd of the inspiration for the project. "It initially didn't make sense, because we couldn't figure out where that hydrogen gas was coming from under these glaciers."

"A team of researchers, including Boyd, later discovered that through a series of physical and chemical processes, hydrogen gas is produced as the silica-rich bedrock underneath glaciers is ground into tiny mineral particles by the weight of the ice on top of it. When those mineral particles combine with glacial meltwater, they let off hydrogen.

"What became even more fascinating to Boyd and Dunham was that microbial communities under the glaciers could combine that hydrogen gas with carbon dioxide to generate more organic matter, called biomass, through a process called chemosynthesis. Chemosynthesis is similar to how plants generate biomass from carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, although chemosynthesis does not require sunlight.

***

"'The organisms we were interested in rely on hydrogen gas as food to grow, and most are also anaerobes, meaning oxygen will kill them," said Dunham,

***

"'Considering that glaciers and ice sheets cover about 10% of the Earth's landmass today, and a much larger fraction at times in the planet's past, microbial activities such as the ones Eric measured are likely to have had a major impact on Earth's climate, both today and in the past," said Boyd. "We've known for a while that microorganisms living beneath ice sheets or glaciers can fix carbon, but we never really understood how. What Eric's pioneering work shows is that not only are these organisms completely self-sustainable in the sense that they can generate their own fixed carbon, they also don't need sunlight to do it like the rest of the biosphere that we're familiar with.'"

Comment: Extremeophiles never cease to amaze.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201203144239.htm

"An international research team that included three scientists from the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography has discovered single-celled microorganisms in a location where they didn't expect to find them.

"'Water boils on the (Earth's) surface at 100 degrees Celsius, and we found organisms living in sediments at 120 degrees Celsius," said URI Professor of Oceanography Arthur Spivack, who led the geochemistry efforts of the 2016 expedition organized by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and Germany's MARUM-Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen. The study was carried out as part of the work of Expedition 370 of the International Ocean Discovery Program.

***

"The research published in Science today focused on the Nankai Trough off the coast of Japan, where the deep-sea scientific vessel, Chinkyu, drilled a hole 1,180 meters deep to reach sediment at 120 degrees Celsius.

***

"According to the study, sediments that lie deep below the ocean floor are harsh habitats. Temperature and pressure steadily increase with depth, while the energy supply becomes increasingly scarce. It has only been known for about 30 years that, in spite of these conditions, microorganisms do inhabit the seabed at depths of several kilometers. The deep biosphere is still not well understood, and this brings up fundamental questions: Where are the limits of life, and what factors determine them? To study how high temperatures affect life in the low-energy deep biosphere over the long-term, extensive deep-sea drilling is necessary.

"'Only a few scientific drilling sites have yet reached depths where temperatures in the sediments are greater than 30 degrees Celsius," explains study leader Hinrichs of MARUM. "The goal of the T-Limit Expedition, therefore, was to drill a thousand-meter deep hole into sediments with a temperature of up to 120 degrees Celsius -- and we succeeded.'"

Comment: We boil water to purify it. Glad these guys aren't around to bother us. It goes to show God made sure life was tough enough to survive here and evolve us under His direction.

David’s comments:
I assume the life found got there when the Antarctica was warm, and adapted as the climate changed. All living material is made to be tough. And to survive makes no mistakes as seen in complex multicellular forms.

It seems as if extremeophiles can be larger than microscopic. Again we see life thriving everywhere on Earth.

dhw: Yes indeed, and it is the astonishing variety and adaptability of these organisms that makes me all the more inclined to accept the theory that they are possessed of an autonomous mechanism which enables them to thrive in all conditions. This is not an attack on the concept of a Creator God – on the contrary, in my view such a mechanism provides the most convincing evidence of a designer. But the greater the variety (both within species and in speciation itself), the less likely I find it that every one was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, or that a designer kept stepping in to make all the necessary adjustments to enable each organism to survive each change in its living conditions.

I can't disagree that a powerful epigenetic mechanism following some instructive guidelines may exist, but is yet to be found. Like yesterdays double DNA discovery.

Yes indeed, and it is the astonishing variety and adaptability of these organisms that makes me all the more inclined to accept the theory that they are possessed of an autonomous mechanism which enables them to thrive in all conditions. This is not an attack on the concept of a Creator God – on the contrary, in my view such a mechanism provides the most convincing evidence of a designer. But the greater the variety (both within species and in speciation itself), the less likely I find it that every one was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, or that a designer kept stepping in to make all the necessary adjustments to enable each organism to survive each change in its living conditions.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/marine-life/the-smaller-side-of-arctic-life/?utm_sour...

"Two Russian scientists have set out to document what they say are among the most undervalued creatures in the Arctic.

"Shell-bearing microgastropods (snails no larger than five millimetres) have a variety of diets and lifestyles and perform many functions in marine ecosystems, says ecologist Ivan Nekhaev, from St Petersburg State University.

"There are 66 known species in four sub-classes, Nekhaev says, but half of them have only had the external appearance of the shell studied. Important details of the internal structure and sequence of genes, traditionally used in the classification of animals, remain unknown.

"Part of that is no doubt because studying these animals is not easy.

“'Imagine a two-millimetre mollusc in front of you. From it, you need to extract its reproductive system, which is… tenths of a millimetre,” Nekhaev says. “This is a very delicate, laborious and meticulous work.”

"He and colleague Ekaterina Krol appear up for the task, however. They’ve summarised and analysed known information on the species composition and lifestyle of these animals in the eastern sector of the Arctic and described two species, with two others being worked on.

***

“'Despite the formal resemblance, the physiology and requirements for living conditions of these animals can vary significantly. The shape of the shell of some species is typical of the more southern areas.

“When they are found, it is often written that this is due to climate change. Such publications raise information noise, which makes it difficult to capture real changes in ecosystems.”

"To date 51 of the 66 species have been found in the Barents Sea, between Russia and Norway, but as few as 10-20 in other seas of the eastern Arctic and nine in the deep-water Arctic basin.

"However, an analysis of the similarity of species composition in different regions has also revealed a connection between the distribution of species complexes and hydrological conditions."

Comment: It seems as if extremeophiles can be larger than microscopic. Again we see life thriving everywhere on Earth.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/john-priscu-finds-life-in-antarcticas-frozen-lakes-20200...

"But this is why I’ve done these winters: We’re figuring out how these ecosystems function with so little energy input and wanted to get a year-round look. One thing that’s keeping them alive is relic organic matter deposited from the ocean in an earlier geologic era. Metabolisms are so low that these organisms can survive by consuming this ancient food matter.

***

"The U.S. got a piece of the accretion ice from 11,800 feet below the surface, which was still 490 feet above the lake. I didn’t have much ice to work with. The sample I got was roughly 20 inches long and about 3.5 inches in diameter, but that piece of ice changed my life. We took it to the lab and examined it under the cleanest conditions, using a scanning electron microscope to look at cells and minerals, and an atomic force microscope to examine cells at the atomic level. And bingo, we started seeing microbes. Extrapolating from the accretion ice, we estimated bacterial concentrations on the lake’s surface of about 100,000 cells per milliliter — about one-tenth that found in the ocean or the average non-frozen lake.

***

"All the numbers we had extrapolated from the Vostok accretion ice — about 100,000 cells per millimeter — were confirmed in Lake Whillans. And this time we had solid proof — measurements from an actual lake sample, without having to rely on extrapolations. These are the moments you live for.

"There’s no sunlight beneath half a mile of ice, so of course there’s no photosynthesis. Instead, we’ve identified a number of microbes called chemolithoautotrophs, which basically eat minerals for a living. They get their energy from the oxidation of inorganic compounds, and they get carbon from carbon dioxide. We also discovered that methane was diffusing upward from the sediments, fueling bacteria that oxidize methane for energy.

***

"We know that water can be trapped under glaciers in lakes or streams for a long time, but it eventually goes into the ocean. Lake Whillans drains every 10 years or so, and our geophysics teams have given us a pretty clear picture of the channels from Whillans and other lakes that flow into the Southern Ocean. It’s kind of like the Mississippi Delta with 3,000 feet of ice on it. We sampled roughly 6 miles out from where the Whillans’ flow meets the sea beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. And we found that enough nutrients [including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and iron] are being discharged from the lake to support a microbial ecosystem in the ocean waters below the ice. No one imagined that was possible.

***

"We drilled into Lake Mercer last year, going through about 3,500 feet of ice, and we found life there, too. But it’s different from what we see in Whillans, and the chemistry and dissolved oxygen levels are different. Cell density in Mercer is approximately 10 times lower. It’s not as productive as Whillans, which is three times saltier. Mercer gets a third of its water from East Antarctica, whereas Whillans gets most of its water from West Antarctica."

Comment: I assume the life found got there when the Antarctica was warm, and adapted as the climate changed. All living material is made to be tough. And to survive makes no mistakes as seen in complex multicellular forms.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exotic-creature-in-antarctica-has-survived-m...

"In the decades after Wise's discovery, scientists tried to piece together a rough history of the landscape where Tullbergia was found. Seafloor sediments revealed that Antarctica had experienced 38 ice ages in the past five million years. During those freezes its glaciers thickened, rising inland and cloaking many of the mountain slopes that are exposed today. Temperatures were 5 degrees C to 10 degrees C colder than at present. Most researchers assumed the rising ice sheets “more or less wiped everything out,” says Steven Chown, a polar ecologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

***

"But the results for Tullbergia and Antarctophorus suggested that even in warm times, the movement of these animals was more restricted than people thought. Two populations of Antarctophorus collected from exposed ridges on opposite sides of Shackleton Glacier appeared not to have interbred for five million years—despite the fact that they lived just 10 kilometers apart, the width of the gap that the glacier flows through. “It's quite surprising,” Hogg says. “Five million years is a long time.” It appeared that the species had not traveled at all.

***

"The analysis of Tullbergia collected around Shackleton Glacier stunned the researchers even more: the gene sequences from all four sites were virtually identical. “It's like they're all clones,” Adams says. That could mean that all the animals are descended from a couple of individuals and that these descendants have never bred with any outside populations. “That is something that we're all trying to wrestle [with] to explain,” Adams says.

"How could Tullbergia have persisted for millions of years, pinned down by ice during at least 30 ice ages, without moving more than a few kilometers or breeding with other populations? This question is all the more puzzling because for much of that time, these animals were trapped in a narrow zone between deadly ice and deadly salt.

***

"Turn over a rock above the trimline at Shackleton or any other Transantarctic mountain, and the soil underneath is often crusted in white salts. “It's not a good salt. It's not Himalayan rock salt,” Adams quips. “Put your tongue on this stuff, and it will light you up.”

"The salt is high in nitrate, toxic to many living things. Nitrate constantly rains down on Earth as ultraviolet radiation reacts with atmospheric gases. In most parts of the world, it does not accumulate in soils, because rain washes it away. But in dry places, like the Transantarctic Mountains, it can build up over millennia, until it reaches toxic levels.

"These high places also accumulate perchlorate, an oxidizing chemical used in disinfectants and rocket propellants—and famous, as discovered by the Phoenix Mars Lander, for making the surface of that planet an unpleasant place.

"The salts create a catch-22 for small animals such as springtails trying to escape advancing glaciers: remaining in place means they will become buried underneath ice, but creeping uphill leads to places that are “just nasty, toxic,” Adams says. “Really crappy habitat.”

***

"But with each new ice age, most of the populations died off. Tullbergia bears the scars of that brutal history in its DNA. The fact that every individual from around Shackleton Glacier carries virtually identical gene sequences suggests that at some point in the past, as few as two of the animals managed to survive. Every representative alive today is descended from those progenitors, which may have been lucky enough to be blown by a windstorm onto a patch of Goldilocks ground the size of a basketball court. Tullbergia “came extremely close to extinction,” Adams says."

Comment: It shows us how tough life on Earth can be. My thought is God purposely made it that way to be sure life persisted after its origin .