From: "ExoticRainforest" <Steve at ExoticRainforest.com> on 2007.05.24 at 19:06:10(15701)
Ted,
Far be it for me to discredit or vouch for any of this!
But I did find it interesting due to another interest dear to my heart.
I'm one of less than a thousand people in the world who can document
having logged over 5000 scuba dives. My time in the water as a
professional underwater photographer included time in a deep
submersible. Never got to go down to the deep water in the mid-Atlantic
rift or the really deep water off Galapagos but I recently saw a National
Geographic special which featured deep ocean dives to both areas of the ocean
where live volcanoes are constantly spewing on the ocean floor. The
National Geographic team found large incredible marine life actually using the
noxious gasses produced by these volcanoes as a food source. And to top
that, many were living in water with a temp approaching 800 degrees! Some
were photographed crawling into vents so hot it was actually burning them alive
and they were happily gathering and eating the stuff!
Nothing ought to be able to live in complete darkness, with
extremely high temperatures while using "poisons" as food, but they
do! So I don't have any idea if anything in this article is factual, but
apparently life can and does exist in places we would not have previously
expected it to survive. Perhaps the "Blob" exists as well!
Steve Lucas
| +More |
www.ExoticRainforest.com
----- Original Message -----
From:
ted.held@us.henkel.com
To: Discussion of aroids
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 9:37
AM
Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] OT: Fungi that eat
ionizing radiation?
I looked a little at this
reference and I am putting myself down as a skeptic. This paper looks to have
been published without peer review through funding from George Soros. Neither
of those is proof by itself, of course, but it makes the scientifically minded
put on the brakes a little bit. I was interested in the claim that living
fungi were found growing inside Chernobyl and I clicked on the reference
indicated in the paper, at the NIH, and no article was listed there. The site
was, in fact, the NIH site, but there was no article. This blunder would never
happen in a peer-reviewed paper. Then there's the whole idea that some living thing (defined according
to how that is understood by those of us who live on Earth) can not only
survive ionizing radiation but utilize it to perform life functions. I have
watched certain effects of ionizing radiation (x-rays) on formerly living
materials and would be surprised if melanin could even withstand ionizing
radiation without charring all the way to carbon, much less "eat" it. Then, of
course, the life form would have to have some cell structure to support the
melanin and make use of the energy products therefrom. Big doubts.
Ionizing radiation is severe stuff. And
my understanding of the Chernobyl reactor is that it is now encased in
concrete and nobody with any sense goes anywhere near it. But they have robots
in there that are able to retrieve samples? And some researchers at Albert
Einstein have these samples and are conducting research, also using ionizing
radiation? And word of such a discovery did not make it onto the evening
news? I don't have time to pursue
this further, but it smells like "fringe" science. That is to say, a hoax.
There is a lot of this kind of stuff on the internet. You have to be
careful. Ted.
Steve Marak
Sent by: aroid-l-bounces@gizmoworks.com
05/24/2007 12:03 AM
Please respond
toDiscussion of aroids
To
Aroid list
cc
Subject
[Aroid-l] OT: Fungi that eat
ionizing radiation?
A bit off topic, but I know others on the list like these things
too ...A post today on one of the bulb lists I follow gave a link to
a"fascinating-if-true" paper on the possibility that some fungi can use
ionizingradiation as a direct energy source in a way similar to plant's
use of visiblelight. An abstract is
at:http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/aeco-erd051607.phpand
the full paper seems to be available online at PLoS ONE
at:http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0000457Ok, it's not exactly
"The Blob", but the part about melanized fungi colonizingthe walls of the
damaged Chernobyl reactor has at least a bit of those old1960's science
fiction "B" movies about it. If it were April 1, I'd assume it was a joke
... but I admit I hope it's true. Steve-- Steve Marak--
samarak@gizmoworks.com_______________________________________________Aroid-l
mailing
listAroid-l@gizmoworks.comhttp://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/listinfo/aroid-l
_______________________________________________Aroid-l mailing
listAroid-l@gizmoworks.comhttp://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/listinfo/aroid-l
_______________________________________________
Aroid-l mailing list
Aroid-l@gizmoworks.com
http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/listinfo/aroid-l
|