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Biological Information, a Mile and a Half Beneath the Ocean Floor

Scientists sent a drill to the lowest depths under the sea ever reached, and found a surprise: living organisms. How did they get there? The BBC relays the questions the scientists are asking:

"Were these microbes just in a swamp, and loving life in a swamp, because there is all sorts of carbon available, oxygen, organic matter… and then that gets buried?" pondered Dr Trembath-Reichert.

"It could be that they didn’t get a chance to escape — they couldn’t exactly walk out. So is it that they were there to begin with and then they could maintain life?

"Or were they like microbes that were able to travel down to those depths from the surface?"

The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) sent their drill down to a depth of 2400 meters — a mile and a half. "The tiny, single-celled organisms survive in this harsh environment on a low-calorie diet of hydrocarbon compounds and have a very slow metabolism," they found. The results are being reported to the American Geophysical Union.

What this means is that genetic information can be found deep under the earth:

The team found that microbes, despite having no light, no oxygen, barely any water and very limited nutrients, thrived in the cores….

Everywhere we look, even in the harshest environments, life seems to find a way to survive. (Emphasis added.)

The team had to figure out what these microbes eat. They found that carbon and methyl compounds in coal worked just fine, "about as tasty to eat, when it comes to coal, as you could get for microbes."

Digestion of nutrients for growth and reproduction isn’t a geological process. It doesn’t just emerge from rocks. It requires molecular machines and genetic instructions. Even if these microbes live "life in the slow lane," they possess much of the same genetic information as their counterparts on the surface.

Here’s another astonishing thought: even though out of sight and out of mind till now, these microbes may play an important supporting role for the whole biosphere:

The discovery of vast ecosystems of microbes deeper and deeper underground is causing scientists to reassess the role that these organisms play in the carbon cycle.

Because these organisms take in hydrocarbons and expel methane, a greenhouse gas, as a waste product, they may be having a greater impact on the system that governs the Earth’s climate than was previously thought.

The existence of a "carbon cycle" that supports life is evidence for intelligent design (just as are the water cycle, nitrogen cycle, oxygen cycle, and other global cycles that sustain life). Clearly, these microbes were there performing their "role" long before anyone started worrying about global warming.

As expected, the media use this finding to speculate about life on other planets:

If life can survive in the most extreme conditions on Earth, perhaps it has found a way to cope with harsh environments elsewhere in the cosmos.

See how they toy with words. "Life… has found a way." How? The microbes couldn’t care less about finding ways to do things. They have no brains. If they didn’t have the genetic information and machinery to survive and play their role, nothing would happen.

While evolutionists tiptoe past the major question of how genetic information and molecular machinery could arise by chance, we can marvel once more at the vast extent of complex specified information found throughout the biosphere. Once again, as Bill Dembski writes in Being as Communion, we see that "information" is fundamental, and material substances are there to support it.

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Evolution News & Science Today (EN) provides original reporting and analysis about evolution, neuroscience, bioethics, intelligent design and other science-related issues, including breaking news about scientific research. It also covers the impact of science on culture and conflicts over free speech and academic freedom in science. Finally, it fact-checks and critiques media coverage of scientific issues.

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