Mat Laporte's Blog, page 22
April 9, 2016
April 8, 2016
April 4, 2016
The Subharmonic Murmur of Black Tentacular Voids
Stanza I
A landscape of archaeal
And bacterial species
Living under extreme
Environmental conditions
High temperatures
Ionizing radiation
Hydrostatic pressure
Ultraviolet light
Salinity
Low or high levels of pH
Tolerant of heavy metals
Very low levels of water
Very low levels of light
One dark night
Night more viscous than the dawn
Night that has united the living and the nonliving
Transforming the living in the nonliving
Stanza II
Generating models
Of primordial life, and
The opacity of
Non-planetary ground.
The phylogeological distribution
Of other extremophiles
In distant cladograms
Does not provide evidence of their possible antiquity.
Given the shortened gap in descriptions
Of xenobiological transition between
The probiotic synthesis of biomechanical compounds
And the last common ancestor (LCA) of all extant living being
Water and ice in the solar system
Giving witness to the extinction
Of ice-dependent organisms
On earth
Even as the signatures of life – or life itself – are
In evidence, in extraterrestrial ice
Stanza III
Temperatures constrains all life,
In the permafrost,
Hibernating for millions of years or
Decomposing for millions of years.
No well-established growth temperatures
In thermotolerant caves
For living optimally
For any of the Bacteria, Archaea, or Fungi.
The amoeba Echinamoeba thermanrum grows
Optimally at Topt > 50°C and is
One of the few truly thermophilic eukaryotes
Of terrestrial, nonanthropogenic environments.
Such environments are enriched in elements
Such as arsenic (As), antimony (Sb), and
Mercury (Hg), such that thermotolerant surfaces
Experiencing evaporation also have
Elevated salinity and, therefore
Halophilic inhabitants.
Stanza IV
Many microbes in deep sea are not
Autochthonous residents,
Descending to the deep as components
Of phytodetrital aggregates.
Such piezophiles (or barophiles) are
Defined by optimal growth rates
Far beyond atmospheric pressure
Where 1 atm = ~0,1 MPa
An ocean time-series study
A long-term, oligotrophic, habitat assessment
Shows the fraction of group Ia Crenarchaea in the total picoplankton
Increase with depth of the deepest site.
D. profundis 500-1T, Japan sea, Popt = 15MPa
Moritella abyssi 2693T, Mariana Trench, Popt = 30MPa
Psychromonas profunda 2825T, estern Tropical Atlantic, Popt = 25MPa
A life form in dynamic, cosmic equilibrium
With its environmentIs dead.
Life in space can only occur
Temporarily
In a dormant state –
A cold, ice-covered moon
Of some distant planet.
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