In the 1970's, an Austrian Astrophysicist named Thomas Gold proposed
the theory that the origin of life first developed not on the surface
crust of the Earth, but several kilometers below the surface, where
rising temperatures finally set a limit. The sub-surface life
obtains its energy not from photosynthesis but from the chemical
sources in fluids migrating upwards through the crust. The mass of
the deep biosphere may be comparable to that of the surface biosphere.
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| Thomas Gold |
It is claimed that the subsurface microbial life may be widespread on
other bodies in our solar system and throughout the universe. The
discovery of the late 1990's of nanobes, filament like structures
that are smaller thane bacteria, but that contain DNA in it; which
lend significant credence to Gold's theory.
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| Nanobes |
Thomas Gold also asserted that a trickle of food from a deep,
unreachable, source is needed for survival because life arising in a
puddle of organic material is likely to consume all of its food and
become extinct. Gold's theory is that the flow of such food is due to
out-gassing of primordial methane from the Earth's mantle which gives
the explanation of the food supply of the deep microbes is that the
organisms subsist on hydrogen released by an interaction between
water and iron compounds in rocks.
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