I've read that there's two or three times the 'surface' biomass of Earth, living as micro-organisms, deep underground. Kilometer's deep, by some accounts.

 

Most life is a mile deep?

 

How true is this?

 

(I'm not asking for web-links. I'm asking for people who know what they are talking about).

This is something that I too have heard about but never really looked into in any great depth (boom boom). I had a quick look on google, and this came up:

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/3_29_97/bob1.htm

 

It's not exactly academically brilliant but it was certainly interesting.

"The desert is an ocean with it's life underground, and a perfect disguise above."

I read something about subterranean microorganisms that live near the mantle and produce chemicals which we find inside the Earths crust. I only saw it in passing; but I remember it was some theory related to the existence of Oil in the Earths crust.

 

can anyone give me more information about this?

Generally called subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems (SLME or SLiME). They are usually measured indirectly, by molecular or genetic byproducts, which doesn't give a precise measure of the biomass. Plus the only research sites are mines, which can obviously suffer from contamination. As such the biomass estimates should be taken with a grain of (ba)salt.

 

Zing!

Dr. Dalek, I'd like to know if oil is non (ex) organic too.