{"id":369113,"date":"2025-11-10T12:06:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/369113\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T12:06:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:06:15","slug":"scientists-discover-mysterious-signs-of-life-in-bizarre-blue-volcanic-goo-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/369113\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover Mysterious Signs of Life in Bizarre Blue Volcanic Goo : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unexpected biosignatures<\/a> found in a startlingly blue volcanic goo beneath the Pacific Ocean may offer clues to life’s origins.<\/p>\n

Exhumed from mud volcanoes near<\/a> the Mariana Trench<\/a>, at depths of almost 3,000 meters (9,833 feet), the bizarrely colored sediment samples contain fats from mysterious living organisms.<\/p>\n

With an extremely high pH of 12 \u2013 among the highest recorded in a natural ecosystem \u2013 this nutrient-poor ooze would cause severe burns to your skin on contact. Yet researchers have now confirmed that some extremophile microbes<\/a> live there.<\/p>\n

“It is simply exciting to obtain insights into such a microbial habitat because we suspect that primordial life could have originated at precisely such sites,” says<\/a> University of Bremen organic geochemist Florence Schubotz.<\/p>\n

“What is fascinating about these findings is that life under these extreme conditions, such as high pH and low organic carbon concentrations, is even possible.”<\/p>\n

Related: Microbial Life Has Been Found Deep in Earth’s Crust Beneath The Ocean Floor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Bremen geoscientist Palash Kumawat and colleagues examined 2 of 9 mud volcano sediment cores extracted in 2022<\/a>, during the R\/V Sonne expedition SO292\/2.<\/p>\n

The bottom section of one taken from the Pacman volcano consists mainly of serpentinite<\/a> with bits of brucite<\/a>, largely untouched by the seawater above, allowing it to maintain its striking color.<\/p>\n

At shallower depths, closer to the mud from the ocean floor, the volcanic sediment pales to a lighter blue-green, and the brucite has been dissolved by salt water.<\/p>\n

\"LayersAnatomy of the core sample retrieved from the Pacman mud volcano, showing serpentinite (Srp) and brucite (Brc) at lower depths. (Kumawat et al., Commun. Earth Environ., 2025<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Within these serpentinite layers, Kumawat and team detected fats from bacterial and archaeal cell membranes \u2013 the microbes’ “first line of defense” against highly alkaline conditions.<\/p>\n

The mostly intact state of the fats indicates multiple communities of microbes are currently eking out a living in these extreme conditions, the researchers explain. The molecules also revealed an abrupt shift in types of organisms between the ocean-floor pelagic sediment and serpentinite mud.<\/p>\n

Serpentinites are known to help sustain chemosynthetic life<\/a> in other low-nutrient locations across the ocean’s vast floor, and now Kumawat and colleagues have confirmed this can also occur in deeper and denser serpentinite mud.<\/p>\n

\"Win<\/a><\/p>\n

Like plants do through photosynthesis, these microbes make their own energy from methane by consuming sulfate<\/a>, which produces corrosive hydrogen sulfide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Until now, the presence of methane-producing microorganisms in this system has been presumed, but could not be directly confirmed,” says<\/a> Schubotz.<\/p>\n

Life below the seafloor is estimated to make up 15 percent<\/a> of Earth’s biomass, which means it contributes significantly to Earth’s nutrient cycles. But we know very little about it.<\/p>\n

So Kumawat and team are keen to explore these extremophiles further and see what they can tell us about how life sparked into existence on a planet nowhere near as hospitable<\/a> as Earth is today.<\/p>\n

This research was published in Communications Earth & Environment<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unexpected biosignatures found in a startlingly blue volcanic goo beneath the Pacific Ocean may offer clues to life’s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":369114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[352,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-369113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-msft-content","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115525319708898099","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}