Two Billion-Year-Old Liquid Time Capsule Could Contain Life

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Some lifeforms can thrive in some of the most extreme environments on the planet. By studying extreme lifeforms, we can learn how and where life can emerge on alien planets.

Scientists have discovered signs of life isolated water pockets in rock fractures under the Moab Khotsong mine. These liquid time capsules are filled with water that is estimated to be 2 billion years old.

Moab Khotsong mine, South Africa. Image source

Trapped in the rock, two miles under a grassy plain in South Africa these liquid pockets are hot, salty, devoid of nutrients from the surface, and may be chemically similar to water deposits on Mars.

Now, researchers think they may have found things living in this long-sequestered water.

“There is a potential that [the pockets] were isolated over that long time scale. So this would be a unique opportunity to see life, essentially, evolving in a bubble,” said Devan Nisson, a graduate student at Princeton University in New Jersey, who conducted the research with colleagues, including Esta van Heerden from North-West University in South Africa.

Nisson presented preliminary findings from the ongoing research project this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

When researchers examined the material under a scanning electron microscope, they saw rodlike shapes that appeared to be bacteria or similar-looking microbes called archaea.

One of the cells was pinched in the middle, apparently in the process of dividing. Nisson points out it’s possible the shapes were minerals.

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To determine for sure whether the water contains living cells, Nisson and her colleagues plan to try to extract and sequence DNA.

Genetic data would also help reveal whether the cells are indeed creatures that have been isolated for billions of years, or whether they are more familiar microbes introduced when miners drilled into the chamber.

This scanning electron microscope image shows material taken from an ancient water deposit. Researchers believe the peanut-shaped object in the middle may be a cell dividing. Image: Inside Science/Tullis Onstott and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials Imaging & Analysis Center

Even without DNA, the researchers can still get clues about whether life might be able to survive there. Water in the pockets is about seven times saltier than seawater and reaches temperatures of up to 129 degrees Fahrenheit, right at the edge of what life is thought to tolerate.

Inside Science reports, “Nisson and her colleagues have found an abundance of small organic acids that could supply the carbon required to build and maintain cellular structures. They have also found ions such as nitrate and sulfate, which some microbes can use in metabolic processes to generate energy.”

Together, the findings suggest that life could survive in extreme environments such as deep under South Africa, adding hope that it could survive on Mars and other extraterrestrial bodies as well.

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff