Scientists Unveil Huge Biosphere Of Life Under Our Planet’s Surface

It seems that the latest discoveries are hinting at the fact that our beloved Earth is not quite the planet we believe it is. Far below the surface spaces, this could be keeping a dark biosphere of subterranean lifeforms that experts are now just beginning to understand.

Lots of organisms are living where life should not exist

Here there are lurking some of the world’s deepest and oldest organisms which are thriving in a place where life as we know it should not even exist.

In the new research, scientists have quantified the dark matter of the microbial world like they never did before.

“Ten years ago, we had sampled only a few sites – the kinds of places we’d expect to find life,” explains microbiologist Karen Lloyd from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

“Now, thanks to ultra-deep sampling, we know we can find them pretty much everywhere, albeit the sampling has obviously reached only an infinitesimally tiny part of the deep biosphere.”

The sampling remains in its early stages. For more than ten years, over 1,000 experts which included Lloyd and his partner researchers estimated the deep biosphere – the zone of life under Earth’s surface – occupies a volume of between 2 to 2.3 billion cubic kilometers (0.48 to 0.55 billion cubic miles).

15 to 23 billion tons of carbon mass

This means about twice the volume of all the Earth’s oceans which we have to admit it’s another environment that hasn’t been completely explored by humans.

Just like in our oceans, the deep biosphere is a really abundant source of tons of lifeforms – the population is totaling 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon mass.

Bacteria and archaea – some forms of microbes –  dominate the deep biosphere. No one has any idea about how many kinds of organisms we’re talking about.

The Guardian reported that some of the microorganisms can exist there even for millennia.