{"id":95927,"date":"2019-09-07T19:42:29","date_gmt":"2019-09-08T02:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/strange-life-forms-found-deep-in-a-mine-point-to-vast-underground-galapagos"},"modified":"2019-09-07T19:42:29","modified_gmt":"2019-09-08T02:42:29","slug":"strange-life-forms-found-deep-in-a-mine-point-to-vast-underground-galapagos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/strange-life-forms-found-deep-in-a-mine-point-to-vast-underground-galapagos","title":{"rendered":"Strange life-forms found deep in a mine point to vast \u2018underground Galapagos\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/strange-life-forms-found-deep-in-a-mine-point-to-vast-underground-galapagos2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Something odd is stirring in the depths of Canada\u2019s Kidd Mine. The zinc and copper mine, 350 miles northwest of Toronto, is the deepest spot ever explored on land and the reservoir of the oldest known water. And yet 7,900 feet below the surface, in perpetual darkness and in waters that have remained undisturbed for up to two billion years, the mine is teeming with life.<\/p>\n<p>Many scientists had doubted that anything could live under such extreme conditions. But in July, a team led by University of Toronto geologist Barbara Sherwood Lollar reported that the <a href=\"https:\/\/deepcarbon.net\/worlds-oldest-groundwater-supports-life-through-water-rock-chemistry\">mine\u2019s dark, deep water harbors a population of remarkable microbes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The single-celled organisms don\u2019t need oxygen because they breathe sulfur compounds. Nor do they need sunlight. Instead, they live off chemicals in the surrounding rock \u2014 in particular, the glittery mineral pyrite, commonly known as fool\u2019s gold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Something odd is stirring in the depths of Canada\u2019s Kidd Mine. The zinc and copper mine, 350 miles northwest of Toronto, is the deepest spot ever explored on land and the reservoir of the oldest known water. And yet 7,900 feet below the surface, in perpetual darkness and in waters that have remained undisturbed for [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}