Is it possible that not all life on earth is dependent on the light from the sun? Is it true that bacterial life can and does exist in the centre of a rock, completely seperated from the rays of the sun? In my previous post on photosynthesis I commented that most, but not all, life on earth ultimately depends on light radiation from our sun, the star around which we revolve.
In a future post, I propose to deal with how a new community of living organisms was discovered in the late 1970s to be living near hot, deep ocean vents, too far below for the sun's rays to reach it, that form where there are cracks in the earth's crust, exposing it to the hot mantle beneath it. Some have postulated that these living organisms were the first living organisms on earth.
In a previous posting I talked about the process of Photosynthesis, where energy from the sun is harnessed by certain types of living cells to make food for the cell, food that is then stored by the cell as well as eaten by other living organisms. It turns out that this method of making food is by far the most common way used by living cells on earth today. But is it the only one and was it the first method of harnessing energy ever used by living cells in the past?
In a future posting, I will show evidence that there are living cells that, instead of using the electromagnetic energy of the sun, are able to extract energy from the chemical bonds of mineral molecules released by hot, deep ocean vents that form open links between earth's crust and the hot mantle below it. They then use this extracted energy to make their own food and maintain themselves as living organisms.
I will also show that some types of bacteria live in the middle of deep rocks with no contact with the outside environment. They are capable of extracting energy from the chemical bonds of minerals that actually make up the rock.
Some scientists beleive that living cells deep in the ocean near hot ocean vents may have been the first forms of life that evolved on earth and were protected somewhat from the heavy early bombardment of the earth by asteroids, comets and other foreign bodies, bombardment of which would have delayed the onset of a photosynthetic environment till much later when the heavy bombardment was over.
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3
